Fall is upon us

Dear Diary,

Here it is, November. Gosh, where has my year gone! Everyday, every week, every month, I have these thoughts, plans, agenda which I plan to accomplish...........and it hasn't happened.

I did make my trip to Germany (Bavaria to be precise) in May to meet my brother. When I got off the plane in Munich around 8 am, it did take almost 30 minutes to get to the baggage claim section of the airport. That was such a long 30 minutes. Yes, I was dead tired having been up for 24 hours at that point. There was no sleeping for me on the plane. Then there were the international check points to go through. Having to pass by armed guards who scrutinized your passport is not something I am used to. As I walked down the last ramp to get to the public area, there he was, Stephen, standing right there in front of me. It is hard to describe my feelings. Sure enough, it had been 32 years since I last saw him. But it more than that. He held his arms out for the biggest hug. And we started up a conversation that went non stop for ten days. We traveled, went sightseeing, visited the rest of my family members, ate too much, enjoyed ice cream every day, beer and pretzels every afternoon, wine every night and never got enough sleep. Neither one of us wanted to miss a minute.

Stephen is such a fun and funny person. And he is a wonderful father and now a grandfather, and great dog walker. He did well in his career and between that and the social systems in Germany, he got to retire at 58. He missed a lot of his usual routine and time with his family to keep my constant company for my whole trip except for the three days I spent with my Uncle Walter and cousins on that side of the family.

Uncle Walter and I both cried when we said our goodbyes because we both knew that we may never see each other again. He is about 80 years old and has a few health issues. Uncle Walter shared a lot of family stories, although his English is not so good now, and we spent hours going though old family photos. And in his possession was a photo album that appears to have been left at my Grandmother's house when Mom, Tina and I were in Germany in January 1964. He gave it to me. I could not remember ever having seeing photos of my sister when she was a baby. And picture of my Mom shortly after I was born holding me. She was 29 or 30 then but looked like a teenager. There were also letters that I had written to my Grandmother in a shoe box. One of those letters was written shortly after the deadly tornado outbreak in April 1974. I was letting the family know that we were all OK, but how close the storms were to us. And I was excited about going to a school dance. That was the only one of those letters I opened to read and it was so uncanny since it was only one and half weeks early that again, the southeastern part of our country was slammed with killer tornadoes.

My brother is 61 years old now and I surely can't wait another 32 years before I go back to visit. We have traded a few emails since I have come back home, but he is not much on writing, especially since his grasp of the English language is waning also - since he is retired, not much need for it anymore. But every one of my family member's English is better than my German which consists of less than 100 words.

I will try to visit back here before the end of the year.