(no subject)
Jan. 17th, 2011 03:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettEnglish is not my mother tongue, and I am bereft. My debt of grief is owing.
She was named Ernestine Romana Muchitsch, and she married the name Brett.
She read Shakespeare in translation under the covers.
She had a rockery to remind her of the Alps.
She is why I drink Zitronenwaßer, and why I say Erdapfel and Palatschinken and grüß Gott, when I am not saying grüezi, and she is why I persist in using the esszett, and we buried her on St Cecilia's day, except that we did not: we sang for her on St Cecilia's day, in the church where I was christened, and I read for her with my voice loud and strong, and I was first home to lay out the food for the wake, and her coffin was so small.
She followed us to the crematorium the next day, where we sang for her again, and I was the only one to wait with her until the Schubert had finished.
We shan't bury her til August.
I spent the weekend in her kitchen, and she wasn't there to chase me out. It is the kitchen where I said my first words, and they were heiß und naß (always und: and is the wrong shape for my mouth); it is the kitchen where I learnt to make Marillenknödel.
For weeks before she died I had been wishing for Faschingskrapfen. I thought I'd never get to eat them again, and then we - my mother and my aunt and I, a coven, and all of a sudden I am adult - we got there, we three, and the door was opened to us, and the last of her laundry was still on the kitchen door, and Papa hadn't tidied - anything, really - any more than he had to: her medicines were still on the table, and we had to change the tablecloth; and I opened the fridge to tidy away and there on the shelf were the Seelkuchen.
And bit by bit we tidied her away.
Papa wore his wedding suit to the funeral.
He learned enough Austrian to marry her there, you know, and she brought her piano over, and they played Scrabble every night, and you could tell when he was truly worried because he stopped sniping at her. They met at Mass and made their introductions when he offered her a lift - or was it an umbrella? - home, one week, in the rain, for she was small and quiet and looked lonely, ever so lonely, for she was here by herself as an au pair to improve her English, that she might teach it better at home.
She went back for a year, to be sure, and then they married.
They married twice.
They married on her birthday, on April the second, in the legal sense, and Papa received a married man's tax allowance for the year, and on his way back to England they stopped off in Salzburg and bought wedding rings.
They married in their true and religious sense some months later, and in the meantime he called her his Halbefrau.
She was my culture: my prayer and my song and my tongue and my food, cooking by touch and by ear and not by weight; she was the Heiliger Nikolaus and a tree adorned with candles and the censer swung over the wooden table. She was a greenhouse smelling of tomato stems. She was fuchsias and woodsmoke.
She was exasperating and she was exuberant and I am cast adrift, and there is still so much more to tell.
She was named Ernestine Romana Muchitsch, and she married the name Brett.
She read Shakespeare in translation under the covers.
She had a rockery to remind her of the Alps.
She is why I drink Zitronenwaßer, and why I say Erdapfel and Palatschinken and grüß Gott, when I am not saying grüezi, and she is why I persist in using the esszett, and we buried her on St Cecilia's day, except that we did not: we sang for her on St Cecilia's day, in the church where I was christened, and I read for her with my voice loud and strong, and I was first home to lay out the food for the wake, and her coffin was so small.
She followed us to the crematorium the next day, where we sang for her again, and I was the only one to wait with her until the Schubert had finished.
We shan't bury her til August.
I spent the weekend in her kitchen, and she wasn't there to chase me out. It is the kitchen where I said my first words, and they were heiß und naß (always und: and is the wrong shape for my mouth); it is the kitchen where I learnt to make Marillenknödel.
For weeks before she died I had been wishing for Faschingskrapfen. I thought I'd never get to eat them again, and then we - my mother and my aunt and I, a coven, and all of a sudden I am adult - we got there, we three, and the door was opened to us, and the last of her laundry was still on the kitchen door, and Papa hadn't tidied - anything, really - any more than he had to: her medicines were still on the table, and we had to change the tablecloth; and I opened the fridge to tidy away and there on the shelf were the Seelkuchen.
And bit by bit we tidied her away.
Papa wore his wedding suit to the funeral.
He learned enough Austrian to marry her there, you know, and she brought her piano over, and they played Scrabble every night, and you could tell when he was truly worried because he stopped sniping at her. They met at Mass and made their introductions when he offered her a lift - or was it an umbrella? - home, one week, in the rain, for she was small and quiet and looked lonely, ever so lonely, for she was here by herself as an au pair to improve her English, that she might teach it better at home.
She went back for a year, to be sure, and then they married.
They married twice.
They married on her birthday, on April the second, in the legal sense, and Papa received a married man's tax allowance for the year, and on his way back to England they stopped off in Salzburg and bought wedding rings.
They married in their true and religious sense some months later, and in the meantime he called her his Halbefrau.
She was my culture: my prayer and my song and my tongue and my food, cooking by touch and by ear and not by weight; she was the Heiliger Nikolaus and a tree adorned with candles and the censer swung over the wooden table. She was a greenhouse smelling of tomato stems. She was fuchsias and woodsmoke.
She was exasperating and she was exuberant and I am cast adrift, and there is still so much more to tell.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-17 09:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-17 10:10 am (UTC)