Afton---Guten Nacht

So your first night in Germany, we had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of another family. Heidi and Cleve and baby Santa Maria lived on the floor below us. And could make themselves heard. Boy.

I had collapsed with you and Dad under our fedderdecker(down comforter)in our brand new surroundings. When what to my wondering ears did appear, a few hours later about 2 am, but shrill screaming, "Help, help, he's trying to kill me! Help! Help!" In perfect English? Perhaps it was the jet lag causing me nightmares?

No, I was fully awake, and there was no mistaking the cacophony beyond our door. "D," I whispered to your Dad, "go help whoever that is."

"Are you crazy?" he replied, and rolled over. Without another thought, I bolted from under that feather comforter and ran out the door and down one flight. "He's kicking me down the stairs," the blond woman wailed. How anyone would be capable of transporting this over 6 foot tall, big boned German woman in the hallway anywhere she didn't want to go was a puzzle to me. But I was too tired and confused to argue, and took her word for it, and told him to stop it right now. Cleve was tall, but slender. A black GI from the base in New Ulm. They both started to tell me their side of the story at the same time, but it was hard to process. I did gather that there was a baby involved in the squabble somehow, so I left them and ran into their apartment and found little 2 month old Santa Maria on the floor by the bed.

Others had gathered in the interim, and somehow eventually both the MPs from the base and the German Police appeared. Whew! Well, it turned out to be a dilemma for them to communicate in the first place, and to figure out who had jurisdiction in the second. So guess what? They struck a deal and in a Solomon like decision, I was given custody of little Santa Maria for the weekend, and told in all seriousness to guard the baby with my life, and under no circumstances to let either parent near her for the weekend. So I returned upstairs with a temporary orphan and brought you your first little "freund".

Ahhh, baby girl, what a kaleidoscope of changes for you in this new world you had so recently been welcomed to! Guten nacht, little one, back to dreamland.