A “Stück” or Piece of Time

DUSSELDORF, GERMANY

Both excited and sad, we left our temporary home in Wood Green and dashed to Gatwick Airport on Saturday morning.  The London term is over and we’ve begun an 18 day trip visiting first Dusseldorf, then Marrakesh, and finally Spain.

Sebastien (Sasha's French boyfriend), Sasha, her mother and father

Our time in Dusseldorf was especially memorable and wonderful because we were meeting Sasha’s parents.  Sasha arrived in Charleston, South Carolina in August 1995 as Peter’s and my exchange student for a semester.  She settled right into our American life and attended a magnet high school in our area.  She watched and waited with us as I was pregnant with Lily.  Then she returned to her parents and her new home in Zoest, Germany, where her family had immigrated from Russia only a few years before.  We didn’t know when we’d see Sasha again, but fortunately our paths have crossed many times.  She traveled to Rome to see us when we were on our way to China in 1998; she met us several times in London when we lived in Kent from 2001-2004 since she was attending the London School of Economics, and she even joined us for several days in Cornwall in the spring of 2004 before we left the UK.  This fall we’ve met her in Berlin, London and now Dusseldorf.

This December was the first time we’d met her parents—some 16 years after we met her.  As we sat down to dinner in her parents’ apartment, her mother’s eyes filled with tears.  She wanted to tell us a story about meeting a man with whom she’d taken a German language class many years before.  She saw him at a concert and he had his back to her.  Next to him sat his teenage daughter whom she’d never met.  When she touched the girl’s shoulder she had the experience of actually touching time as the girl's existence matched the number of years between her and her old friend.  

Sasha's mother was having the same experience meeting our daughters.  Lily is our “slice of time” connecting Sasha's mother to us and Sasha to her American adventure.  She is the baby we were all waiting for and for whom Sasha wrote a lovely letter that is still included in Lily’s album.  I had tears in my eyes thinking about this physical connection of time—and realizing that Lily is now almost the age Sasha was when Sasha lived with us in Charleston, and Sasha is now almost the age I was when I was pregnant with Lily.  

Beth