#1 Crailsheim

If there is a more idyllic place to start a life than in a small Southern German town (obviously not in wartime or during the Holocaust, or the Plague, but that would be true of anywhere, right? I don't know that I have ever encountered anyone who 'longed for' the carnage of war and death), I can't really think of where that would.  A town centre of cobbled streets and gingerbread trim, with charming bakeries and the like. A quiet place that will come to my mind when I learn the work 'Fernweh, because although I know I was loved there, I do not know the place and yet I miss it keenly. I will spend a summer at 14, trying to put the lost times of my German life together. None of them will fit. 

1976 sees a housing shortage but my dad finds an apartment not far from the post he's stationed at and my mom joins him after a few months, a top floor flat in the house of a an older German couple - Frau and Herr Schneicker.  There is a Fiat dealership behind the house and my parents will become lifelong friends with the son of the owner, Fried. He and my mom will go on to create an elaborate secondary market of motor oil and electrical goods over the years. She'll fund all of the family automobile purchases thusly when we move back to Germany in the mid 1980s. But for now, she walks the town, explores nearby Stuttgart and other cities whilst my dad spends hours keeping West Germany and US democracy safe. The propaganda coming out of DC in these days is strong, the wind from the East rattles the iron curtain, keeping an otherwise idyllic experience from being too much so.  

Peggy is tall -5'11- and lithe with shoulder length blonde hair and wide doe brown eyes. Jim is 5'10 and looks like a movie star. They are distributingly attractive in their youth. They are very much in love. 

They meet over my mother's senior year Spring Break in Virginia Beach, on a blind date. Jim is actually the back-up date in 1974. But there is a click and a moment and they get married in April 1976, the same year my grandparents retire and buy the Shawna Marie.  They honeymoon at Disney World (I know, it's not what I envision when I think 'wedded bliss,' either, but apparently giant swirling teacups are romantic. Who am I to judge? I go on dates to gun ranges). 

For two years, they write letters, visit one another, and make love grow; making love stay over the years. that proves a bit harder, although they do seem adept at making love come back. Is love a choker spaniel? A jaguarundi?   Walking her down the aisle, Jinx will compare love to the seasons. He'll also tell her she's not in love, she's in heat. 

My dad proposes: a pearl engagement ring. It's sweet but not really my mother. Not long after, it is upgraded - probably funded by my grandfather (he was a bit flashy like that), but she keeps the pearl ring in jewelry box.  

Their love is sweet, my mother almost virginal. Years later, on the eve before my own wedding, my mother is beside herself with the need to make a confession. 

'I have to tell you something important but don't want you to think less of me.'

'Mom...what are you going on about?'

'I wasn't a virgin when I married your dad. I slept with him a week before the wedding.' I hide my smile whilst two of my friends struggle not to laugh.  I put my arm on her shoulder. 

'Oh, mom. It's okay...it's better to know what you're getting into, you know?'

That touching blend of ingenue fueled by moxy and curiosity basically defines my mother in 1976.  She sets about settling into German life, but it's difficult. She doesn't have a car to hand and she's an explorer. When she finds herself pregnant in the spring of 1977, it is an excuse to get her license (this still baffles me). And as my dad used to tell it, that was the end of that: she was always gone, exploring. 

She goes into labor on a Friday afternoon 5th General Hospital is probably 30 minutes away. There is only one OB/GYN on staff. 12 other women go into labour that weekend. It will take 53 hours for me to arrive. She has to beg to be induced. Later that night, she begins to run a fever. The next day, they discover she has developed Toxic Shock Syndrome. She spends the first two weeks of my existence in ICU, my father and nurses holding me up to the window so she can see me. 

By all accounts, I am easy baby but I am prone to ear infections. I have to have my first set of eustachian tubes (did you know they were patented in Dayton, Ohio? My mother would insert here). 'But even when you were grizzly,  you were so sweet.' Tucks hair behind my ear. 'So sweet. When did it change?'

In the photos of this first home, the furniture is heavy. Not theirs, the flat comes furnished. Peggy is tired, smudges or exhaustion under her eyes. Life has begun to shape shift and she will spend the next 15 years moving house more often than not, being a single parent more often than feeling like she's married to the man she loves.