When I was a kid,
I thought teachers were overworked, underpaid, and got no respect from anyone,
probably because I’d seen all the teacher films on Million Dollar Movie – Up the Down Staircase; To Sir, With Love; The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie; The
Blackboard Jungle – and certainly none of them glorified the profession. I certainly didn’t see myself teaching
anyone anything.
But then my great-uncle Max
remarried when I was twelve. The news astonished me because he had been single
as long as I had known him: ex-Aunt Emily had divorced him years before I was
even born and I’d had no idea he was in the market for a new wife. It turns out that he wasn’t, at least
not for just any new wife. He
wanted one in particular, a woman named Gisela, his adolescent sweetheart in
Germany during the run-up to the Second World War. They had lost each other when he fled Germany around 1938 to
avoid a concentration camp and Gisela, a Catholic and in no immediate danger,
remained behind. After she
and Max separated, each created a new life and married other people. Gisela moved to a rural area in southwestern
Germany while Max built his photography career in Chicago. Eventually, both of their marriages
came undone for one reason or another.
Apparently Max never forgot her and probably wondered more and more if
what might have been could be still so, early in 1971, he returned to Germany
to look for her, found her, married her, and brought her to America and, within
a few weeks, to our house.
The visit was
intended to be a mixture of business with pleasure since, in addition to seeing
us, Max was due to photograph the transformers illustrating Westinghouse’s
newest catalog, published by my dad’s sales support division. That meant that he and my father would
be out of the house all day. My
mother and older sister would be at work, too. Since it was summer and I was off from school, it didn’t
take long to determine that I was the one designated to stay home all day with
the old German lady while everyone else scarpered off to places more
interesting. At that age, the
thought of spending an entire day with any adult bored me senseless, but a
foreign one who, due to the fact that she spoke no English, couldn’t even talk
with me was a living death.
Besides the communication situation, there was the unwelcome threat to
my autonomy. This houseguest would
keep me from doing what I loved, specifically with her in the house I couldn’t
lie on my bed and read until the sun had long left its apex in the summer blue
sky.
After breakfast,
when Gisela went to dress, I seized the opportunity to sit alone at the kitchen
table and sneak a quick read of an Agatha Christie. I became so engrossed in the adventures of Hercule Poirot
and the Clapham cook I didn’t hear her returning footsteps. At the last moment,
just as Gisela re-entered the kitchen, I tried to ditch Agatha. Because I had started too late, Gisela
caught sight of the book sliding under the chair cushion. Something about what she saw made her
face open. She pointed to Agatha,
then to me, and to the book again, then to herself. I guessed that she might be indicating that she liked to
read and asking if I liked to read, too, so I nodded and said, “Yes, I love to
read; it’s my favorite thing to do.”
Although she didn’t understand my words, the enthusiasm in my voice must
have spoken to her because she smiled, crinkling her blue eyes, and turned to
leave the room.
She returned less
than a minute later clutching a book, a children’s reading primer with Hans und Fritz printed on its
cover. She stood a few feet away
and held it toward me with a hopeful expression on her face. I had to stretch to reach the book, but
I accepted it and riffled the pages.
It was simple story with pen and ink drawings of two children, telling
of their adventures in clear, concise language designed to teach English to
German children. I opened it to the first page. She continued to stand by a chair and nodded toward me with
an expression more intensely hopeful than the last. I cocked my head to the left like a puzzled squirrel. What was she saying? She tugged at the chair and began to
motion next to me. “What? Oh,
okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, “ I
answered her absently, nodding while I spoke.
I read the book
aloud, slowly, and Gisela listened attentively. Sometimes she tried to follow along in the book but at that
distance it was hard for her to see the pages so I gestured for her to move
closer to me. Now that she could
see more clearly, she followed along even more intently. Sometimes she reached out to run her
index finger across the page under the words as she tried to determine which
part of the text I was reading.
Her brow furrowed slightly as she whispered the words I spoke after I
read them aloud. She appeared so engaged
in mastering the words that I felt bad that it was such a short book and I
started over. Then I started
again. Sometimes she gazed at me
as I read the words aloud and once or twice she turned my face toward hers by
very gently placing her soft, cool fingers on my jaw or my lips so she could
feel the shape of my face as I created the sounds. Startled and, at first, puzzled by the gesture, finally I
figured out what she was doing - she was trying to understand how to form the
strange-sounding English words that seemed to possess the same meaning as the
more guttural language she already knew.
Ultimately I was
able to discern which chubby boy was Hans and which was Fritz and, flattered by
her obvious appreciation of my reading skill, I began to alter my voice for
each character. Then I pointed at
them when the drawing indicated actions, like jumping rope, shooting marbles,
slipping down a slide, or eating a meal so she could learn the verb in English
representing the action she surely recognized. Eventually, I must have read the
whole book through ten or twelve times.
The hours passed and my family
returned home. Immediately upon
entering the house, Max walked over to embrace Gisela and he asked her in
German what she’d done all day.
She smiled, and then she picked up Hans
und Fritz and read the entire book aloud with mostly correct
pronunciation. I remember the
amazement on Max’s face as he heard her speaking English, a little haltingly,
but still speaking it, and she beamed when he hugged her. When he asked her how she had
learned to do that in one day, she reached across the table and clasped the
back of my wrist.
This point
is where a lesser woman would announce that this moment of interpersonal warmth
and educational triumph inspired her career choice by having allowed her to
discover that she was a born teacher.
Alas, life is not like the movies and I am not Sandy Dennis.
Here is also where
a lesser woman would claim that this day’s triumph was just the beginning for Gisela,
that she became a fluent English speaker.
That isn’t true, either.
When I visited Max and Gisela in Southern California four years later
she still couldn’t speak a word of English, although she could read Hans und Fritz aloud from cover to
cover, so I guess I taught her something.
Regardless, Gisela
taught me something, although I wasn’t aware of it until decades later when I
missed a train in Paris: she taught me that you can actually spend an entire
day - rather pleasantly – communicating with someone you cannot talk to. If only every day of my life were so
fruitful.
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