Flowers for Mutti

How I became a flower thief

Monika and Mutti in Calgary, four days after landing in Canada

It must have been something about German uprightness, or the pervasive atmosphere of earnestness that drove me to steal flowers on my long afternoon walks in a leafy suburb of Kassel, the provincial capital of Hessen. I had a good excuse, as is so often the case with petty criminals: I just wanted to make my mother happy, show her that I cared and also, I didn’t feel like paying. Why spend money when there were so many free flowers blooming in immaculate German gardens that nobody ever seemed to pick.

But the real reason was simply boredom. I was hankering for a tiny thrill in the relentless predictability of five months living with my mother in Germany. Snatching marigolds or white daisies while nervously looking about for the dog that supposedly guarded the premises provided it. I never stole roses because I understood that deep possessiveness that overcomes gardeners when a stunning, orange and red bloom blesses them. I wasn’t out for blood; I just stole ordinary flowers that wouldn’t be missed though my mother was horrified as well as pleased when I came home with yet another big bunch of scrounged flowers.

They will catch you and call the police! She wailed. But nobody ever did and so I continued to enjoy adding a bit of surreptitious colour to the apartment and ignored my mother’s forebodings. And nobody ever burst out of a door, yelling Was machen sie denn da?!

Which means What the heck are you doing there. What indeed was I doing there, in Germany, in 1997 before the great fake millennial computer scare and the all too real catastrophe of 9/11. And all the other notable events since then that we could have done without. We didn’t know it, but those were the actual ‘good old days’. It was even before Princess Di died mysteriously in a Paris tunnel. That’s how innocent those days were. And my reasons for being there were just as innocent: I wanted to spend time with my mother before she died and to solve a niggling question: was I still German or had I become a full-fledged Canadian since I first set foot in Canada in 1953? Looking back this seems like a quaint problem but it bothered me and the only way to settle it was to live in the Fatherland for a few months. Why I suddenly harboured doubts about my identity at the advanced age of 57 escapes me now, but my mother’s invitation to come and stay and the sudden appearance of a German engineer on a UBC sabbatical looking for an apartment for five months sealed the deal. I cleaned out my things, signed an agreement, and flew to Frankfurt, which in those days wasn’t an ordeal. It was a long tiring trip but not horrible at all.

Having settled in with Mutti, I was free to ponder my identity crisis and get to know the Germans. I disrespectfully called them “Krauts” to her deep dismay. To her I was still her German daughter, slightly eccentric but that was to be expected. She was looking forward to sharing her favourite folksy TV programs with me and eating proper home cooked meals. I enjoy cooking and was appalled at the unhealthy foods in her pantry. I went shopping for olive oil, fresh veggies, and ice cream desserts the likes of which don’t exist in Canada. We settled into a routine: I would do all the cooking and shopping; she organized her cleaning lady who also did the laundry. In the afternoon, she liked to watch tennis matches. In the evening, it was folkloric choirs dressed in Dirndls and Lederhosen singing folksongs that I had learned as a kid. It should have tugged at my heartstrings, but no, all that tradition made me gag. What was wrong with me? The simple answer was that I was too Canadianized to appreciate old fashioned German Kultur. And so it was: within three weeks of living in Deutschland and speaking German like a native, I realized that my identity crisis was already over. I wasn’t one of them; I was not as formal nor work obsessed and not nearly as well off. And I didn’t care. Above all, I didn’t carry the heavy burden of guilt associated with the Holocaust that hovered over the land like a permanent black cloud.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but ditching my German identity wholesale during my teens was the price I paid. I had no idea who I was for most of my young adulthood, hovering uncertainly between my native self and my acquired one. And while this was disconcerting, it also freed me. I simply didn’t feel guilty. It wasn’t my problem though I felt its heavy weight. And I felt sorry for my erstwhile compatriots. I still do. I especially disagree with the widely held opinion that such a dreadful event as the Holocaust could only have happened in Germany. Human nature being what it is, I believe it could happen anywhere. And I would say that it’s time to stop blaming the entire nation. Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here: I am not denying that dreadful things happened during the Nazi era, but I am saying that blaming everyone who happened to be German at that time, including toddlers, is in itself a deeply fascistic idea. Why should a baby or a four-year-old be judged guilty for things that politicians did? Why indeed. In a free democratic society, nobody should be guilty by association, but we have recently seen the rise of this tendency, especially since the pandemic. Mitgefangen Mitgehangen; roughly if you’re caught with a certain bunch you’ll get hung with them too. See Trudeau/Truckers et al.

The ugly fallout from the pandemic is still hotly debated but one thing seems certain: we are as unable to face up to horrible truths as the Germans once were. We can’t seem to face that the vaccines are actually making millions sick and have killed thousands, that our elected governments panicked and failed us, that they had few qualms about trampling over our legal rights enshrined in our constitution. That people who were simply exercising their rights to refuse an experimental vaccine rushed out the door without due care were vilified. It’s not the same, but we are very far from admitting all this publicly.  Just like the Germans could not believe that Hitler was gassing millions of their former neighbours, we hate to admit that a majority of people and officials got this one wrong. Very wrong. Germans averted their eyes and pretended it wasn’t happening though rumours were rife. They had seen their Jewish neighbours carted off to places they preferred not to know. And that was indeed their fault. We can blame them for that and we are. The Germans are still paying reparations for their failure today. Though I still say that making the next generation pay for the sins of the elders is a serious mistake because all it does is prolong the original error. But if you want to have a career in academia, you would be well advised to hoe the accepted line which says that the Germans are ALL guilty and must pay. It’s not exaggeration to say that there is an extremely well-funded Holocaust industry housed in institutes and various organizations catering to the Humanities. If you happen to disagree with this way of seeing history, you will find yourself staring at closed doors. The Germans have dutifully paid for their collective sins since the war ended. Nobody dares to question this narrative, so they are always going to pay, not just with money but in emotional distress. The deeper reason I was always happy to leave Germany was this: I longed for the innocent blue skies and relatively clean conscience of my Canadian self. But this time, there was no escape. I was going to have to live in Germany for five long months.

I developed a painful case of homesickness for Canada. Vancouver, with its beaches where I windsurfed and its blue mountains. All I wanted was to spend the summer there, but alas, I was stuck in boring Kassel. How I yearned to go home. I knew after living in Germany for three whole weeks that I didn’t belong there; I wasn’t one of them. Strangely enough, everyone I met thought I was—and treated me accordingly. Had I just stuck to speaking English, they would have given me the respect due to foreigners, but since I spoke perfect high German, they were as unsociable with me as with anyone else. It’s difficult to pinpoint but Northern Europeans could learn a bit from the casual friendliness we take for granted. A certain formality is normal over there, and I believe it still is. I tried in vain to make new friends at cultural events. Nobody was even slightly interested. I came home from these excursions into museums and historical parks utterly frustrated. No wonder that on my long walks, I took it out on the flowers. After a while, Mutti began looking forward to the stolen bunches of flowers I brought home. We even laughed about it, and as the daughter of a judge, that could not have been easy for her. Maybe some Canadian wildness had rubbed off on her, after all.

When I finally returned to Canada in mid-August, I was greeted by a heat wave as well as a garbage collection strike. Vancouver was filthy and stank. Nonetheless, I felt like throwing myself on the hot, garbage strewn pavement and kissing it. Instead I headed for the nearest Starbucks counter and ordered a Frappucino. It tasted like home. Meanwhile the German engineer and his wife had trouble vacating my place. I began to get nervous about moving back in. Because something odd had happened: the engineer’s wife had fallen in love with the Vancouver lifestyle and balked at returning home to the small town outside of Hamburg where they owned a nice house. The marriage nearly broke up over this, as I understood it. Actually, I did understand it perfectly. That lady had caught a whiff of freedom, a particular Canadian version of it, that we enjoyed then and are now losing. She didn’t want to return to living under a cloud of guilt. And I knew exactly how she felt.