Well, this is awkward!

Dear grandchildren,

It’s a bit…well, awkward for a child – even a grown child – to hear details about their parent’s sexual history. I probably skipped over this little chapter when I read Dad’s book the first and second times. But this time I had to edit it.

And you know what? It’s actually really sweet.

(Except that it’s my Dad. So, ew?)

I was sitting in the waiting room of the medical office, along with maybe twenty other miserable specimens of humanity. Dr. Barbara von Renthe, Nora’s mother, was one of the first doctors allowed to open a medical practice again, and hers was in a large office complex that housed mainly the Russian occupation headquarters.

I had developed a bad infection in my left armpit and my arm was in a sling, the elbow held away from my body by a makeshift contraption Nora had fashioned for me. Rainer and I, along with Ulli and Renate, had planned to leave the next day for München. We expected that it would be a journey of at least a few days and that we would need to use any means of transportation that presented itself at the moment. The trip would require quick decisions, breathless sprints, long hours of waiting on cold train station platforms - and all this with heavy and precious luggage.

Every time a burst of pain shot through the carbuncle in my armpit, my face distorted. Nora was probably right: I was in absolutely no condition to undertake this kind of trip. She had been trying to convince me of it, and now was enlisting her mother’s medical authority to support her efforts to keep me back a little while longer. Now it was looking like Rainer, Renate and Ulli would probably have to leave for München without me.

When it was finally my turn — the last hour had gone by faster because Nora had arrived and was sitting next to me — “Dr. Mummi” took one look at the mess under my arm and proclaimed “You belong in a hospital, but they don’t have room. The next best thing is our house, and Nora is going to be your nurse. And you, Nora, will have a chance to show what you can do as a nurse, since you want to become a doctor!” She cleaned and dressed the nasty infection, gave me some sulfonamides — the new wonder drug from America — and released me into the care of my sweetheart-nurse, with detailed medical instructions to the exuberant apprentice.

Nora basked in her new role. She had been a nurse’s aide before, but never had she taken sole responsibility for a patient.

Once we reached Nora’s home-hospital, I was bedded down in a guest room that connected to a hallway and shared a a common balcony with Nora’s bedroom. It was the only available room in the house, and I was much too miserable to wonder whether it was by design that I got this room - and if so, was it mother’s or daughter’s idea, or both?

I recovered quickly. The antibiotics did their work, the hot compresses and the Ichtamol relieved the pressure of the bursting pus pockets, and after a few days my temperature was almost back to normal. While I recovered, I was alone much of the day, while Nora was in school and her mother was in her medical office, but evenings with Nora were long and beautiful.

One night, I lay awake debating whether I should be bold enough to go through the door and visit my “nurse” next door. We had spent all evening reading love poetry in German, French and English, and torturing each other with our resolve to waituntil we were “mature enough.” But when the lights were out and separation seemed so cruelly final, I decided that I really hadn’t meant all I had said that evening about waiting and all that.

I half thought, half whispered Nora’s name, tentatively, like a question.

The door, which had only been ajar, opened slowly, silently, and the lovely naked figure, silhouetted against the night window, moved toward my bed. “Tes pas, enfants de mon silence...” I thought as my heart pounded in my throat, “Ombre divine...^[1]”

Without a word, Nora slipped under my blanket. I put my arm around her and whispered in her ear:“....Car j’ai vécu de vous attendre, et mon cœur n’était que vos pas...”^[2]

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^[1] “Your steps, as children of my silence … heavenly shadow….” (Paul Valéry)

^[2] “...for I have only existed on expecting you, and my heart was nothing but your steps…”