I wrote this in March….it’s only taken 5 months to post!
Almost 15 years ago, Warren, Lewis’ older brother, studied in the town of Schlietz in East Germany. As luck would have it, work sent me to Frankfurt, and his host family had since relocated to Mainz. This meant we were only 90 minutes away. So on a Saturday morning, Lewis, my uncle who lives in Germany and I, set off to meet complete strangers. We had no real information about the Welsh family. We didn’t know what they looked like, whether they could speak English, or what they liked. We guessed sizes and brought a couple of t-shirts and key chains out of courtesy. We didn’t have a real connection to the family either. Petra, Michael, Stephanie and Frank were only names. So walking up to their apartment building was awkward. With what kind of conversation could we possibly fill an entire afternoon?
Once seated, coffee and German cake in hand, our conversation slowly began. Petra, Warren’s host mom, was as nervous as we were and kept jumping up and down to ensure that our glasses were never empty. She had looked around for remnants of Warren’s stay in her home and produced pictures of a young, skinny kid playing with her then 2-year old. The same girl, now a young woman, smiled politely and nuzzled her boyfriend just to my left. What an incredible change from the swaddled toddler. Stephanie, assured us that she remembered Warren and her eyes twinkled as she recalled the attention he gave her, to which her boyfriend shot her a weary and jealous glance. Petra produced a translation rock on which Warren had written a message and a toy that he had sent. She laughed as she admitted that after so many years she still had not mastered it. Lewis stood up and demonstrated its use; it was a clear connection to his older brother.
As the day wore on, the distance between us slowly wore away. We learned that Petra had re-married and her new husband, at her insistence, spent hours looking for Warren on the Internet. She had remembered Warren’s middle name and found him by trying combinations of his first name, last name, and middle name before being able to connect with him over LinkdIn. We told her about his new and beautiful home. We told her about how much he loves his children, what a good father he is, and about how healthy and happy his family his. There was an audible sense of relief in her voice and her eyes welled with tears to hear the news.
While I didn’t show it, I too was overcome with emotion. Just an hour ago Petra, to me, was a complete stranger, living in a different country, and with the stress of her own life. Yet we were somehow connected to each other for the care we shared for the Lewis family. She said that Warren was like a second son to her and that there were not many days she didn’t think of the year he spent with her family. She said that she had seen parts of Germany because of him and I got the feeling that his stay had changed her in ways she could not express with her limited command of English. I thought of the butterfly affect and the way that we can touch one person’s life without really knowing the effect until years later. It moved me that someone so far away still cared, and reminded me how, despite distance, people connect in meaningful ways.
