Last Sunday turned out to be a lovely family day at our home. It was beautiful to be surrounded by children, grand-children, and great grand-children for a few hours in the afternoon.  Some almond-cake was left from Gaby’s birthday. There was also freshly baked cheese-cake. Peter had baked this cake!

Our daughter Monika took a few pictures with her phone. On most pictures you can see either Lucas or Alex, Monika’s two little grandsons.
As promised, Monika let us have these pictures. So I am going to publish here some of them:

The older I get the more I seem to reflect on times past. I often felt very much out of place as a young person. Also I tended to be “zurückhaltend”, that is I was usually more the listener and observer and did not show a great deal of affection and emotion. On the other hand, I also remember times when I felt free and communicative and very talkative.

When I think of my parents, the most remarkable memory about them is, how very different they were. Here is a bit of how my father may have influenced me, and then how my mother’s influence was so very different.

My father was the most open minded and tolerant person. He liked to talk to me about a lot of things. He always treated me as though I was trustworthy and mature for my age, able to understand different points of view. Very rarely did I see him being angry with me. He only tended to be somewhat angry when, all of a sudden, I behaved in a very unpredictable way. Despite his open mindedness he was basically a very conservative man. If I showed signs of departing from his view of the world, this would upset him personally. Still, he was loving and forgiving, and eventually he was always able to accept my departure from some of his conservative views.

Now, my mother was in every way the opposite of my father. On the whole she was maybe rather tolerant as far as I was concerned because she loved me. But she made it very clear, that she did not love my father anymore. She showed not the least bit of tolerance towards him, on the contrary, she showed a lot of hatred, for in her opinion he was a “Versager” who did not do anything for his children. She thought it was not up to her to look after him when he had serious health issues. Maybe she thought he was just pretending. Also, she hardly ever talked to me about things that were important to me. She tended to keep very important things from me, for she wanted ‘to protect’ me! At least, this is how I remember it. I knew she loved me very much. Still, I always felt I was not the daughter she imagined I should be. I remember she telling me, I was an “Oppositionsgeist”. So I must have been speaking up about some things that disturbed me a great deal. I felt very bad for opposing her, but I could not help it. Of course, on the outside I tried very hard to go along with what she expected of me, just to keep the peace. Alas, I think I came into inner conflict about it. In short, I often did not feel happy about myself.

But all this is in the past. Peter suggested, I could insert a few photos with my father and mother and Baby Gaby in 1958.

Last Sunday was a great day for us. The following Sunday, which is Fathers’ Day here in Australia, we are all going to meet for lunch at a Thai Restaurant.