Reunions and Language Adventures

Imagine this -- you’re 52 years old and have reconnected with a cousin you haven’t seen since you were 12 and she was 8. That’s 40, count ‘em, 40 years meine Freunde. Due to the age difference, you didn’t know your cousin well way back then. Now imagine that, through email conversations, you find that you have ridiculous amounts of stuff in common -- world views, attitudes about family, friends, art and life in general. All that and you both like fairy tales and Thai food.

Della lives in Berlin and doesn’t get back to the States much -- I live in Boston and don’t need much of an excuse to travel ("oh look, the sun came up -- let’s go!"). Jen and I packed up our rucksacks and made our way to the airport.

Our friend Brenda was flying down from Dublin to meet us. Jen and I had not seen her since we were last in Ireland (9 years ago) and, incredibly, just happened to run into her at at a pub on Quay Street in Galway. No kidding -- shocked the hell out of us all.

I was a bit nervous, before the first dinner party, as to how I’d fare in my lip-reading endeavors.  Accents (other than Boston accents, to which I’m accustomed) complicate things. Della grew up in Yonkers so I anticipated a bit of a New York accent. Martin is from Berlin so German inflected timbre and Brenda would have a Dublin rhythm and tone. Della and Martin’s kids spent the first part of their lives in the Netherlands so they were total wild cards.

 I was happily surprised -- stunned actually. I never do well reading someone I’ve just met or see only occasionally’s lips but I managed to follow the conversation rather well. Of course things went more smoothly with Jen filling in the gaps with sign.

The next day Brenda, Jen and I were off to the Oranienburger Straße to look at fresh contemporary wild art. We happened on a store with interesting crafts in the window. I was looking at some very interesting large colorfield-esque magnets when the shopkeeper came over to talk with me about these wonderful pieces. She was speaking in rapid fire German -- as the only one of our group who understood a smattering of the language I intended to say, in German, “I’m deaf, speak slowly and I’ll try to read your lips.” What came out instead was “Ich bin Traube...” I didn’t get beyond that -- the woman was looking at me as though I had a distinct surplus of heads, all a bit crazy looking, and kept on, at a galloping pace, with her sales pitch. I got the gist of what she was saying and allowed that “Ich verstahe” (I understand). Later, as we left the store, I consulted my handy dandy English/German phrase book and found out that I’d told her NOT that I’m deaf but that I’m a bunch of grapes. “Ich bin taub” would have been the thing to say.

Hey, I get points for effort, don't I? Don't I?! Ahem, onward to the wild art.