The Reawakening
By Francis DiBona
Germany,
1975
Vince
The day it happened started as an
ordinary day. There were no premonitions, no black cats, no broken mirrors. I
felt no foreboding, no ill-fated winds, no karma. Nothing but how great it was
to be alive. I lived a charmed life and I knew it. As I stepped into the shower
I felt its’ hot
water soothing my face, my head, my body, the soap-lathered washcloth cleansing
not just the oils and odors of a good night’s sleep, but also my spirit. I
stepped out, looked in the mirror and
thought, not bad, for thirty. I could use a few more push-ups and
sit-ups, but still not bad. I felt good
about myself, good about my life, and thankful for everything. All very
ordinary.
On the morning it happened I sat down
to breakfast with Kim and the boys as I did every morning. Kim always woke the
boys so that we could have breakfast together, scrambled eggs and bacon for
Steve and Dave, but only oatmeal, skim milk, and black coffee for me. A heavy
breakfast before going to work makes me feel slow and lethargic when I need to
be alert and on my feet. That morning I was operating on five patients,
starting with the base commander's wife, who was scheduled for colon surgery at
0800.
On the morning it happened, Kim and I
gave each other a short kiss on the lips followed by a longer, more sensual
kiss. Kim groaned and raised her left leg along my thigh and pushed her hips
into mine, a flirting come-on, announcing that she was hot and ready, and
making me wish I could call in sick. I looked at the boys, playing cars,
oblivious of our shenanigans, and I dreaded the day, hopefully years away, when
we would have to be more discreet.
I had known
Kim for nine joyful years. We dated during my last two years of medical school,
married shortly after I graduated, and trekked through five years of residency
and two year so far in the Air
Force. Considering that many of my classmates had been deployed to Vietnam, our
posting to Germany was golden, giving us opportunity to see all of Europe,
while immersing ourselves in the German language and culture.
I loved Kim's
long blond hair, her smile, her warmth, her humor, and intelligence. But I'm
ashamed to admit that what first attracted her to me was her chest. I saw her walking across the room at a medical school fraternity party sporting
a tight fitting lime green sweater, looking like a Hollywood star or Miss
October. My eyes zoomed in on her breasts but I did eventually force myself to look up at
her face, a little too late. She caught me gawking and came over to me ready to
ream me out. Her perfume, Ciara, was
intoxicating, neither flowery nor musky, as beguiling as she was.
"I saw
you staring at my chest!" she yelled
to be heard over the party noise, pointing her finger menacingly at me.
"It's not
polite to point," I told her.
"It's not
polite to stare,
especially a woman’s breasts.”
I held my
hands out, palms up and bounced them up and down like I was weighing two
cantaloupes.
"You have
two big, beautiful..." and here I paused for effect, "eyes!"
She gasped but
didn't frown. That would have been a bad omen.
I followed,
"Besides, you're the one walking around in that sweater! And that perfume!
Are you sure that's legal?"
“You are a misogynist pig!" she
said, but any wrath was already starting to melt.
"Thank
you." I said with a smile, stalling to get my bearings. "But I'm in
medical school and I don't understand such big words. What does... 'pig'
mean?" She had the faintest hint of a smile but before she countered I added, "I meant what does
'misogynist' mean? Is that the kind of doctor who delivers babies?" She grinned but was still was not sure how to
take me.
"No, a
misogynist is someone who hates women."
“That's not me." I replied
looking her right in the eyes. "I love a woman who can cook and
clean."
She laughed so
loud the party goers around us strained to see what was funny. She put her
hands on her hips, and gave me a stern mischievous look, but unable to maintain it, she
broke into a broad grin and said, "Well you are a chauvinist!"
Now I was the
one who could not keep a straight face.
"Wrong
again!” I said. “I'm a Catholic!"
The day it
happened had piercing mid February weather. I
noticed a light dusting of snow on the grass and trees, but there was none on
the road. I crossed my fingers that my car, a 14 year old Opel, parked on the
frozen street, would start without problems.
The best you could say about that car, which had as much rust as paint,
was that it was cheap and made the twenty mile round trip to the Air Force Base
without complaint. In a garage up the street we had our dream car, a pristine
two years old Volvo , safe, comfortable, reliable, and perfect for family
outings. We thought about buying a Porsche, but the Volvo had more room, and
was obviously much safer for the boys.
The road from
Traben Trarbach to Hahn Air Force Base meandered through a series of switch
backs, and then some real hair pin curves as it made its' way past Mosel vineyards, and then up the
mountain until it reached a plateau of rolling farms. On that plateau there
were several small villages whose main commerce was the production of compost
for the vineyards. The compost, while giving the Mosel wine a subtle flavor
that could not be matched with chemical fertilizers, saturated the towns with a
not so subtle odor. When we moved to this area the stench from the compost
piles felt oppressive but it wasn't too long before I began to actually like
the sweet-yet-pungent, earthy aroma of the twenty foot high stacks of straw and
cow manure. On a cold winter’s day like that day I would see steam
rising from these piles. I had learned from one of the farmers that they used a
centuries old process of growing sugar beets, barley, rye, and field corn to
feed the cows that made the manure, that made the compost, that fertilized the
vineyards, that made the world famous wines, that made this whole area prosper.
On that frigid
morning my hands were numb, even with my leather driving gloves, as I put the
key in the ignition and started to crank the engine. It turned over on the
second try and I thought, "Thank you, Jesus," and put the car into
gear.
One, or maybe
two seconds later, I was
in a strange room looking out onto a strange courtyard with green grass and
tulips blooming. People were walking around in shirt sleeves, basking in the
warmth of the sun, while I was in a bed and had an IV in my left hand, which
was tied down. When I tried to move, stiff and aching all over, I found that my
body was harnessed to the bed as well. I did not know any of the four or five
people in the room. One of them, a fetching woman with long blond hair in a
ponytail, wearing a tight green sweater which accentuated her bosom, came to
me, blotting the tears in her eyes with a tissue. Her fragrance was delicious.
"Vince,
you are awake! Oh, Sweetheart! Oh, Vincent!
We've been praying for this for months." And then she leaned in surprising me with a
warm, passionate kiss on the lips, groaning ever so slightly.
I looked at
her and asked, "Who are you?"
Kim
The morning
Vince's Opel hit the black ice, skidded off the road, and rolled four times before
landing in a field 35 feet below the road, started with all the usual drudgery.
Vince insisted that we all have breakfast together, even the boys, at 6:30
every morning so that we could spend "quality time" together. As a
surgeon his hours were unpredictable, and he wanted at least one meal with us
as a family. I could understand that, but 6:30? And though he only had cereal
or toast, a cup of coffee, and some juice, he insisted that the boys have a
full cooked breakfast. They didn't have to be at Frau Polsch's Kinderschule
until a nine fifteen and that put a real kink in my day. Steve, the three year
old, would occasionally go back to sleep for a few hours but Dave, the four
year old, never did. And when Steve did go back to sleep Dave did not want to
play alone, so I didn't even get to cat nap. My woman's study group met at 10
a.m., and I would be the only one who had been up for nearly four hours. “Why
did I put up with this crap?”
they always asked.
Vince just
didn't get it. Everything was about him or "the family," which was
really about him. After medical school he decided to do his residency at the
University of Michigan because it was the "finest surgical program in the
country.” Ann Arbor was nice but what about where I
wanted to go? It was a thousand miles away from my parents in western
Minnesota, where I thought we should relocate. We wanted children or, I should
say, he wanted children, and it would be nice to have built-in babysitters, not
to mention loads of wisdom and experience. But U of M it was. And then near the
end of his residency, he decided to apply for the spot in Germany. Don’t
get me wrong. Germany was great and I was happy to be here. But shouldn't the
decision have been mine as well?
Most of the
things I initially loved about Vince were now irritating. Like every morning he
would come over and give me this big kiss in front of the boys. Then he would
grab one of my legs and pull it up against him and thrust his pelvis into mine.
Why did he think that was appropriate? We had sex every
three or four weeks and I hadn't enjoyed it a year. And that thing with the
Volvo. I wanted a Porsche but "Mr. Reasonable" wouldn't hear of it.
He read all these magazines and told me that the Volvo was two times less
likely to roll over than the Porsche and that if it did it was four times less
likely to cause bodily injury. Or something like that. I didn't really pay
attention. But the Porsche was so nice, so sleek. That Volvo was a big heavy
ugly box going down the road without appeal.
And he was a
chauvinist, not just disdaining women, but everyone and everything. He was
narcissistic and arrogant. He looked down on people who were not as smart as
him, not as dedicated, not as thin, or not as ramrod straight. He ate three perfect meals a day and
never snacked. His meat had all visible fat removed before cooking. He rarely
had a drink and never smoked cigarettes or pot. Come on! This was the the ‘70s,
Vietnam was just over, and most of our friends drank Mosel wine and got high.
He didn't like any popular music except for Stevie Wonder and The Beatles,
preferring Mozart, Wagner, and Puccini. Why did it take so long for me to see
what a stick in the mud he was or how pompous he could be?
Vince was adored by everyone he
worked with. He was a perfectionist in his surgery down to the finest detail so
that every scar was as minimal as possible. Anytime I walked into the hospital
with Vince I could see all of the admiring eyes following him. “Hello,
Dr. Riggio.”
“Guten
Tag, Herr Dr. Riggio.”
And then there
was that German receptionist, Giselle, with her long legs and short skirts.
That slut! The word was that she would give a blowjob to any doctor she could
get into a small room. She learned this strategy from another German worker,
Letta, who blew her way into Ken Babbage’s heart and sucked Ken out of his
marriage, his Air Force position, and his dignity. Six months after Ken and
Letta moved to the States they separated when Letta hooked up with another,
richer, American. I didn’t think Vince was under Giselle’s
spell but it was obvious that she was after him. Vince was too Catholic, too
straight, too pure to even notice.
On that
morning I got a phone call from Dr. Dunley,
the hospital commander.
"Hi, Kim.
This is Jared Dunley." He paused and after I acknowledged him said,
"There's been an accident. Vince has been injured, and is being helicoptered to
Wiesbaden." Wiesbaden was the Command Hospital for the Air Force in
Europe. This had to be serious.
"Is he all right?"
"Kim, I
don't want to sugar coat this. This was a terrible accident. But I know that he
is alive and has been stabilized and is in the air right now."
I didn't know
what to say.
"Kim,
please get dressed and gather a few personal items. Rose is on her way to take
care of the boys." Rose D’Amico,
a friend of ours, was a salt-of- the-earth woman, and a natural born mother.
"And my wife, Paula, will be there in 30 minutes to pick you up and drive
you to Wiesbaden. Don't worry about your house, the dishes, the laundry, your
library books, or anything like that. We will get that all covered."
I was crying
now. This was not just a few bruises and lacerations. Vince had been "stabilized." That meant
that at some point he must have been unstable. He could die. He might already
be dead. I couldn't stop sobbing. I could not catch my breath. I was doubled
over on the bench in the vestibule, the phone in my lap, still connected, my
half-full cup of coffee sitting precariously on the edge of the cushion. There
was a loud knock on the door and before I could get up to answer it, Rose
D'Amico came in trying to look relaxed and composed.
"Oh,
Kim!" She stood me up, careful to not spill the coffee, and gave me a hug.
"I don't
know what's going on for sure,”
she said with her thick Philadelphia
accent. “Nick
told me that Vince's car slid off the road up near Irmenach, and rolled over.
I'm so sorry."
And then we
were both crying. We hugged again. After a few minutes Rose and I walked o my bedroom to gather
up several changes of clothes, all my favorite color, green, bedroom slippers
and an second pair of shoes, my toothbrush, my glasses, a book and a magazine
from my night table. Rose found a suitcase and packed everything neatly into
it.
"Where's
Dave and Steve?" she asked.
"They're
at Frau Polsch's Kinderschule. I just got back from dropping them
off when Dr. Dunley called. This must be awful.” I
started crying again.
"Well
look, I'm going to get the boys and take them to my house for the time
being."
"I don't
know what to do," I pleaded.
"Don't
think about anything but Vince. We'll take care of the boys, everything."
But I really
didn't know what to do. Last night, before my world collapsed, before tears
dripped into my morning coffee, before I found it impossible to breathe, as I
walked into our bedroom and
saw Vince on his knees for his nightly prayers, I thought I would ask him for a
divorce.
Vince
I was awake,
but in a fog. I did not recognize any of the smiling faces in that room. I
understood the idea of husband and wife but not that Kim was my wife and I her
husband. She could have been Pat Nixon as far as I could tell. Of course, I
don't remember any of this directly,
it all being told to me later, much later, as my brain miraculously
unscrambled.
When I came
out of the coma and started talking, I knew nothing about being a doctor let
alone being a surgeon. I didn't know a suture from a hemostat, or the appendix
from the tonsils. I couldn't tell the speech therapist what a white cell did,
or where the ulna was. I had never heard of Marquette Medical School or the
University of Michigan, even though I spent four years at the first and five
years at the second.
Luckily for
me, through the great efforts of my doctors, nurses, therapists and, of course,
my friends and family, especially Kim, my mind started to recover. I began to
recall things from the past and my brain started again to record things that
were happening in the present so that I would remember them later. One day,
three months after the accident, Kim came into the room and I didn't see a
total stranger.
"You're
Kim," I said. "My wife, right?"
"Vince,
you just keep getting better!"
"Did I
get it right? You are Kim, right?"
"Yes, I'm
Kim, your wife. And I love you." She came over to me to give me a kiss.
Then I said
something I had never said before.
"You
bet'cha."
Kim
On the morning it happened, Paula
Dunley drove me to Wiesbaden. Vince was attached to a myriad of IVs and wires,
and was on a ventilator. His eyes were taped shut, the right side of his face
bruised and swollen, his head covered with a bandage, his beautiful locks
shaved off.
Dr. Dunley told me what they knew so
far. Vince's Opel hit a patch of black ice and slid off the road near Irmenach.
He was not driving very fast but the road was 30 or 40 feet higher than the
sugar beet field below and his car rolled several times before it came to rest.
A German farmer who was driving his tractor to the field witnessed the whole thing
and had the sense to head back to town and phone the police. He recognized the
car and knew that it belonged to an American doctor so the Germans notified the
Hahn Air Force Base as well as sending their own rescue team. Vince had been
thrown from the car and landed fifteen yards away from it. The Germans had him
on a stretcher, covered with blankets.The America corpsmen recognized Vince but
reached for his dog tags to confirm. His vitals were terrible. His pulse was
150 and his blood pressure was not registering. His breathing was irregular and
weak. They called the hospital and were told to intubate him, start an IV, and
get him back pronto. A helicopter was called to transfer him.
By the time we arrived in Wiesbaden, Vince had
been transfused eight units of blood. He had been to radiology where they did
x-rays of his abdomen, and scans of his head.
He had gone to surgery where a neurosurgeon drained a blood clot from
the right side of his head and placed a pressure monitor in his skull.
His neurosurgeon,
Dr. Chu, came by and filled in some details.They had removed a large hematoma
form the right side of his brain. This clot had been pushing the brain against
the other side of the skull. He also suffered other injuries to the brain. His cranial pressure
was very high and they were doing everything to reduce it. He was in a coma
from his head injuries and the high pressure. They also had him on a
barbiturate drip to put him in a further coma, which made sense to me until Dr.
Dunley explained to me that that this would “let his brain rest."
"Will he
be all right, Dr. Chu?”
I asked hopefully.
"I don't
know. He could die, be severely brain damaged or he might make a complete
recovery. We have to wait." Dr. Chu did an about-face and left the room without
saying goodbye. Not exactly Mr. Warmth.
And so here I
was, 5000 miles from my real home, with my brain-injured husband in critical
condition. I was surrounded by friends. There were now five people in the room,
not counting Vince, and we were all hugs and prayers and reassurances, but,
make no mistake about it, I was alone; I was scared; I was lost; and I was
helpless. I felt a knot in my stomach as though someone had punched me and the
pressure in my chest made it hard to breathe. Every few minutes I completely
broke down and had to be held to keep from falling to the tile floor. And I
felt like the floor was caving and I was falling through it. I cried and I
cried. It seemed like I would never, could never, stop. How would I go on? What
if he died?
Paula Dunley
took me to the hospital cafeteria and over tea, after I had regained my
composure, I confided in her. It
was not like me to confide in someone, and I really didn’t
know Paula well, but she would have to do for my mother right now.
"Vince
and I were drifting apart in the last few months," I told her. "I was
starting to think we should separate or, maybe, get divorced."
"You and
Vince are the most adorable couple I know. You guys are the poster kids for
what a great marriage should be. You two are so in love you make the rest of us
jealous. If you're having problems then they are just the kinds of problems
that everyone goes through now and then. You need to look into your soul to get
back to where the two of you fell off the track."
Over the next
few months I would have plenty of time to look into my soul and to reflect on
my life and marriage. I was helped in this by the Hospital Chaplain and also by
the Catholic priest, Father Duda. I had frequent visits with the psychiatrist,
the social worker and the various therapists and each of them contributed in
their own way. Eventually my parents came from Minnesota, and they hugged and
cuddled me until I had no more tears to shed.
And so during this time I searched my soul.
I peeled off layers of defense and excuses like an onion and finally got a good
look inside and, I have to tell you, I did not like what I found.
Vince
My recovery
continued sluggishly, my
physical recovery outpacing my mental recovery.
I was walking, lifting light weights, playing with toddler’s
puzzles, and drawing and writing long before I knew what to draw or write. They
moved me to the rehabilitation unit, where the highly skilled and motivated
staff, which had cared for thousands of seriously injured airmen from Vietnam,
drilled me at least four hours a day. I met physical therapists, occupational
therapists, speech therapists, neurologists, and psychologists, and surgeons.
Oh, did I meet surgeons. I had five operations, only two of which I remember.
My medical knowledge also slowly
returned. By the mid June, four months after the accident, I felt that I was
fully recovered, and was ready to return to Traben Trarbach, to Hahn AFB, and
to work. I yearned to be doing what I had trained to do but Jared Dunley threw
a monkey wrench into that machinery.
"Vince,
you are not ready to do surgery yet."
"But..,"
I started to interject. Jared cut me off.
"It's not
an option, Vince. I have consulted with lots of people but this is my decision.
You need at least one more month of rehabilitation. After that we are
temporarily reassigning you to Wiesbaden. You will work under Dr. Reese, the
head of surgery. I want you to work at least one or two months under
supervision before you return to Hahn. We have found a place for your family to
stay while you are here and we are still taking care of your house in Traben
Trarbach."
Getting my
career back on track turned out to be easy but as my mind improved and I
started seeing things more clearly, I realized that I had a much more pressing problem.
My marriage had been gradually and imperceptibly, at least to me, heading
toward the rocks.
Kim
Not only was Vince’s memory
of past events or people gone, but he was unable to retain new things,
forgetting things in just a few moments. The German police came by to ask him
some questions about the accident. He spoke to them in perfect German, more
fluent than before the accident, as though he no longer had to use English as
an intermediate language in his mind. He was not able to tell them anything
about the accident but he told one of the policemen, in perfect German, that
his hair was too long, that his tie was not tied properly and that his hands
were filthy. After they left and I asked him what he had said to the Germans.
He said, “What Germans?”
He couldn’t tell
the doctors where he grew up, where he went to school, or what he did for a
living, although he had a vague feeling that before the accident he may have
been a doctor.
“Where did you go to medical
school?” a speech
therapist asked him. He had no idea.
“What is a medical school?” she followed, trying to
determine if he understood the concept. “It’s a place you go to play doctor.” Everyone laughed but Vince
didn’t get the joke.
A nurse came into the room one day,
and asked if he needed anything. “Nice tits,” he told her. He reached out
to touch them, but she gracefully ducked, and avoided his hands. He may have
been a misogynist in some previous life, but he didn’t realize
that he was being inappropriate. Nor when he told Father Duda, the Catholic
priest, that God was the boogeyman. Nor when he told an orderly to “get my
fucking lunch.” Vince
never cursed before and was actually offended if someone cursed in his
presence, other than his father, who only cursed in Italian.
One day a nurse came into the room
to let me know that two German girls were here to visit with Vince. They said
that they worked with Vince at the Air Force Base. I peeked out between the
curtains and could see Giselle and another girl who looked like her twin.
Giselle had a basket with a ribbon. I asked the nurse to tell them that Vince
had some complications and could not have visitors for three or four days.
After they left the nurse brought in a basket of fruit and candy. After I
checked it to be sure there was nothing inappropriate, like condoms or lace
panties, I gave it to the nurse and asked her to put it in the employee lounge
for everyone to enjoy. I didn’t want anything from that hussy.
The day after
the accident the Catholic priest, Father Duda,
came to visit me. He told me that before Vince was wheeled into surgery,
because his dog tag said "Catholic," he had anointed him with Extreme Unction, a sacrament
of the Catholic Church, the Last Rites, administered to the extremely ill,
especially those at risk of dying, meant to give comfort and peace to the ill,
and to forgive sins for those unable to make a confession.
"Vince
never sinned," I told him.
Father Duda
smiled and said, "We all sin. It's in our nature."
"Vince
never sinned," I repeated. "Well, he is a devout Catholic. He
believes in God. He actually talks to God, and I mean personally, like God is
right in the room. He believes in Mary, Joseph, and all that stuff. He believes
in the Pope."
Father Duda
smiled again. "We don't believe in the Pope. He's a person like you
and me. He's just the leader of our Church."
"Well,
Vince told me the Pope was infallible."
“The
Pope is believed by Catholics to be infallible only in matters of faith, and
then only when he says that he is," Father Duda explained. "The Pope
cuts his face shaving, trips over his shoelaces, and spells words wrong
sometimes. He's not infallible like Superman. The Pope sins. Did you know that?
He goes to confession like all good Catholics. There were some popes, especially
a few hundred years ago, who were quite evil."
I changed the
subject. "We were married in a Catholic church, and I sort of said that I might
covert but I never did, which has been a
big disappointment for Vince."
Over the next
several weeks Father Duda visited every day. After a prayer, we would sit and talk. About God. About the
Air Force. About Germany. About Vince's immigrant, Italian family. About my
midwestern, heartland, Norwegian, Lutheran, farming background. Sometimes we
would just sit and say nothing. He never pressed me to become Catholic or even
suggested it, but one day a few weeks after the accident, I told him I was
ready.
"I hope
you are not doing this to bargain with God. To force God to heal Vince. God
doesn't like being forced into a corner.”
"No, not to
bargain. It's just that the way you explain it we're not that different,
Catholics and Lutherans, just details. And Vince is so devoted to his church. I
just think after nine years together I could do this for Vince."
So in the
Wiesbaden AFB Hospital Chapel, Father Duda baptized me in the presence of God, my sons, and some friends. As I
felt the water on my forehead, and listened to the solemn Latin words, a great
calm came over me. I prayed that Vince would wake up soon so I could tell him
about his newly-converted Catholic wife.
Vince
It's been
eight months since "the event" and things have settled down nicely.
Kim, the boys, and I are back in
Traben Trarbach and I am back doing surgery, and doing it well. The not one,
not two, but three months I worked with Dr. Reese at Wiesbaden were not
squandered, but well spent, even though I didn't think I needed them to begin
with. My reflexes and judgement were just slightly off kilter, like a well-made
knife that needed a bit more honing. Now I am razor sharp, one hundred percent
back to where I was before that morning.
Last week, Kim
and I took the boys for a drive up to Irmenach. We asked around, and were
eventually directed to the house of Herr Gerhardt Schmitt, the farmer who saved
my life by alerting the police about the accident. We were greeted at the door
by his wife who knew, at a glance, who we were and invited us in. Her husband
came into the room, and he and I stared
at each other for a moment before we embraced, both of us with moist eyes. We
spoke in German, even the boys, who were getting quite fluent. Frau Schmitt was a plump woman dressed in a
simple cotton dress. Her hands were hard and thickened from work in the fields.
She insisted we sit at her table and went off to prepare some tea and a huge
plate of roegenbrot and specht. The boys perked up when they
heard her mention she had some Gummi-Baerchen, their favorite German
candy (and the first German words they ever learned.)
The Schmitts
were kind and unpretentious, hardscrabble people like Kim's family, happily bound to this town and to
the earth. They produced compost, and it's hard to get wealthy doing that. But
the kitchen was spotless, its bare wooden floors sparkling, the dark oak
kitchen table covered with an elaborate German lace tablecloth, its walls adorned with old family
photographs, and its shelves stacked with fine china passed down over
generations, survivors of at least two wars. Frau Schmitt served the strong
tea, the rye bread and the ham on this china.
The Schmitts
wanted to know everything about us, where we came from, what kind of families
we had. Frau Schmitt wanted to know if people in America hated the Germans.
They're in their late fifties so they were in their twenties when Hitler rolled
into Poland and they like most Germans of their age were dedicated to the
Reich. Now they suffered from guilt for what Germany had inflicted on the
world. We told them that all was forgiven, that we Americans were glad that
Hitler was defeated but that we bore no grudge against the German people. And
that we, Kim and I, loved Germany, its people, its landscape, its wine and its
food, its great composers, and its great scientists.
Herr Schmitt
told us that when he saw my car
coming in his direction, he recognized the Opel, formerly owned by a woman in
Kessell, the next village over and he knew I was an Air Force officer and a
doctor. Almost everyone in Irmenach knew who I was, he told us, because I had
stopped one day to speak to one of the farmers and to inspect the compost
piles.
When he saw my Opel slide off the road and tumble
over, he didn't think I could have survived. He watched as first the Germans,
and then the Americans, came to my rescue and was encouraged when he saw them
start an IV, as that was surely a sign that I was still alive. He had heard
very little about my fate since then. Frau Schmitt told us how much they prayed
for me and how happy they were that I was well and that I came to see them. We
vowed to keep in touch and we did, the Schmitts providing the boys with two warm and gentle grandparents
nearby.
Kim
In marriage counseling we learned
that we had a marriage needing major reconstruction but worth saving. Our
reconciliation was made easier because the Vince who woke up in the ICU was not the
same Vince who had left for work that morning, still intense and striving for
perfection, but without arrogance and narcissism, the ugliest parts of his
personality. He was more relaxed and accepting of others. In therapy he said
that sliding off that road was the best thing that could have happened.
"It knocked some sense into me," he said.
And the
accident had knocked some sense into me
as well. I had come close to discarding something that only needed to be repaired.
I learned that I had come to resent the very things that had attracted me to
Vince, the things that made him such a great doctor and father, his
meticulousness, his drive, his attentiveness, his industry, his ethics, and his
faith. I had come to resent how perfect and ordered he was. And with
resentment, came distrust and then hatred. I know that some of this resentment
was from his hubris and his being such a bullhead. Some of it came from
jealousy of Vince’s accomplishments, his adulation by
the throngs around him, and even by his charisma. But some of it sprung from what I was
learning in my women’s studies, those 10 a.m. book
readings we had. That men were pigs; that all men put all women in their place;
that men drove women to depression; that women never gave their full consent to
sex; that sex was the equivalent of rape and that men used this sex/rape to
keep women under their thumbs. I saw Vince as part of a conspiracy to belittle
women. He was why I was unhappy. I resisted intimacy with Vince because he was
so high and mighty and because I didn’t want to give into this domination.
Vince
After I woke
up, I came to realize how lucky I was that Kim had tolerated my vanity and
bravado. My self-centered behavior had almost cost me my marriage and I vowed
to never let that happen again
but that was easier to say than to do. After only one session, the marriage
counselor recommended that I get individual treatment from someone else as
well. I have been seeing a kindly psychotherapist weekly since then. It took
many sessions before I could accept that it was I who needed to change, not
Kim. I used to snub psychiatrists, psychologists and all mental health workers,
thinking that they were not dealing with real diseases, and that all this “talk
therapy” didn’t help anyway. Have
I changed my opinion on that? You bet'cha!
On the first anniversary of the
accident I drove Kim and the boys up to Irmenach. Very carefully, I might add
since it was another frigid February day. We parked along the side of the road
at the exact spot where I had slipped on the black ice. We got out of the
Volvo, gazed onto the field below the road, and bowed our heads in silent
prayer. Herr Schmitt, working the fields, saw us and then aimed his tractor
toward us and climbed down to greet us. He wiped his right hand off on his
jacket and offered it to me. He gave Kim a bow and a broad smile and patted the
boys on the head as they hugged his legs. He
was aware that it was the one year anniversary of the accident and he was
hoping to see us. Frau Schmitt wanted to see as well. The boys climbed on to
the tractor for the ride to his house while we followed in the Volvo. Frau
Schmitt cried when she saw us. We sat at her kitchen table for nearly an hour
savoring her delicious apple tarts and strong tea. She had some coloring books
and treats for the boys who always felt so comfortable with “Oma.” As we were about to leave I
stood up and said, “Kim, I almost forgot. There is something I
want you to see in Herr Schmitt’s barn.”
Kim looked at me with
surprise, then gave me the same mischievous look she used at that fraternity
party so long ago. Like, “What do you nave up your sleeve?” Frau Schmitt, knowing what I
had done, could hardly contain herself. She lead us through the kitchen, clapping
her hands together and dancing like I never knew she could, past the oak table
with its’ fine German lace, past the heirloom china, and
out the side door facing the barn. Herr Schmitt followed behind, singing out
festively in German. The Schmitts slowly approached the barn, David and Stephen
jumping with glee at their feet, and with great pomp and flare opened the the
large swinging barn doors from both sides. Sitting in the barn, wrapped in a
gigantic white ribbon tied in a bow, bathed in streaks of sunlight beaming
through the rafters, was a 1971 Porsche, in mint condition. Its’ color, of course, was a
sparkling Metallic Green.
The End
Author’s Note. This is a work of fiction. I once met a man who had been in an accident and had no recollection of it or of his stay in the hospital. But I didn’t really know him I never knew if he was married, what kind of work he did or anything else about him. I was a doctor in the Air Force in Germany during the ‘70s but not a surgeon. I have fond memories of the Air Force and Germany. I had an amazing hospital commander while I was there. I am not Vince, not even close. Kim is not my first wife nor my second wife. Nor is she an amalgam of them, as if they could be amalgamated. There is an Irmenach in Germany and, yes, it does produce some of the best compost in the world.
