Three places to vacation (5)

Wiedemannsweg 3, I went to see the place, a brick-house I used to call home, and I had no real sense of belonging there anymore. The house had been altered. The once teak-framed large picture-windows had been changed into white plastic-framed windows more in design like those that used to be there when the house was first built during the Nazi times in the 1930s. Seeing all the picture windows gone made me sad. The change was made simply to save on insurance. My mother would turn in her grave if she knew. The place where the largest of the windows used to be had received a door with windows left and right to open to a little terrace. I didn't think that was appropriate.



A consolation was that the apple tree was still there. The driveway was the same as always. It had been built to last. I still remember how it had been constructed so that you would not sink into the mud when it got really wet. A ditch had been dug there many years earlier. It had been filled with rocks and bricks and boulders from the remodeling job that my step-father and my mother had done shortly after the house had been bought. We had all been involved in this project. The objective had been to get rid of construction debris and to fortify the tire tracks for all eternity so that nobody would ever get stuck in our yard. Apparently that reminder of my past was permanent.