I didn't get to see her very often since she lived in Germany, where my parents are from. I was born in Western Canada and had also lived in Toronto and Kitchener, Ontario, by the time I went to live with my Oma for a while when I was 6. She lived to be 96, but I only spent that one Christmas in 1963 with her, and it was magical.
That time is more vivid in my memory than almost any other time. I think it is because I was at that perfect age where I was starting to notice things outside of myself. It's as if all my senses were awakened during that winter. I especially remember how different everything smelled. For the first time I noticed the smell of coffee; I noticed the mouth-watering aroma of the hot crusty hard rolls that were delivered to everyone's door by the baker in time for breakfast every morning; and I noticed the smell of the few snow flakes that fell that year, only to melt soon after. It was so different from the cold, snowy winters I had loved in Canada!
Christmas was so simple that year. There was a small table-top tree with hand-blown glass ornaments and real wax candles which were lit at night. We sang German Christmas songs, and ate oranges and nuts fresh from the shell. I learned I loved hazelnuts that Christmas.
My Oma gave me a beautiful baby doll that Christmas. I remember how much I loved that doll, because I hadn't been able to bring any of my toys with me to Germany. Everything had been either thrown away or put in storage for our eventual move to the U.S. Receiving that doll meant I had something of my very own again, and it made me feel safe to be able to hold her tight.
Oma Mina lived in Neuss, a beautiful old city located along the Rhine River between Duesseldorf and Cologne.
This is the painted glass piece which I bought the last time I visited Germany and my Oma in 1988. Neuss is over 2000 years old and was an important settlement during the Roman occupation of Western Europe around the time of Christ. There are still many beautiful old buildings in the town, as well as some town gates dating from the Middle Ages. Everything about Neuss that Christmas seemed so strange and wonderful and exotic to me.
So much of what makes Christmas special to this day seems to revolve around the foods I encountered that Christmas long ago. For me it simply isn't Christmas without Lebkuchen (a type of gingerbread), marzipan, Spekulatius (windmill cookies), Domino Steine, and Stollen.
After that one Christmas with Oma Mina, my parents and I moved to the U.S., which has been my home ever since. I have tried to give my children a sense of their German heritage, as well as giving them the family Christmases I never had, with their Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and many cousins from my husband's side of the family. Will they have happy memories of Christmas to look back on when they are older? I really, really hope so.
By the way, this tablecloth was embroidered by one of Oma Mina's dearest friends, Frau Gerhards from Wevelinghoven. She made the most beautiful things just for the sheer pleasure of it. Her home was filled to the brim with things she had embroidered over many, many years.
I always loved to visit her with Oma Mina. Back then children had to sit still and listen while the adults talked - for hours. But I didn't mind, because she always had bought some delicious cookies or some other treat just for me. Sometimes while she was talking with Oma Mina, she would look over at me and give me a secret little wink. And if we were really lucky her sisters Billa and Zilla would be there, as well! Oh, they were characters! Billa had vertigo and could only go down the steep stairs in their house backwards! And Zilla was a short, round woman who rode a motorcycle to her job at the local sugar beet factory.
They are all gone now, but they live on in my memories and in the stories I tell my children. And someday, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to tell my grandchildren.
