Bergen Belsen<\/a>, but that\u2019s just another place she never heard of, so I won\u2019t complicate things by mentioning it \u2013 and he decided, well, to come back. And I think for today we can leave out the part about how in the interval his grandmother was part of founding the State of Israel, how my family moved there from America to be part of the miracle of the return to our Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile, and that at one time we believed that now that we had our own state we and our children would never want to live anywhere else. All of that may be implied when another Jew asks me what Michael is doing here, here in the land of the killers, of all places outside of our Holy Land, but in this little room in a beauty salon populated by a work-weary woman who is massaging my hands with cream, I will keep it simple, one mother to another, proud of our young-adult children venturing out into the world to seek their futures. Why ruin a perfectly sunny day in May with all those dark memories, unfathomable ironies and unanswerable questions when we just came here to have a little fun?<\/p>\n\u201cEverything okay?\u201d she asks, looking up from my left hand, which she is holding in both of hers and rubbing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything\u2019s fine,\u201d I smile back at her.<\/p>\n
My husband\u2019s Uncle Meir, who unlike his parents and siblings fled Germany before the war, is emphatic about not visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons: \u201cThis generation had nothing to do with that,\u201d he told me. So I look at this kind lady and tell myself: \u201cIt is not her fault she was born to a bunch of murderers.\u201d Nor was Michael responsible for the dreams of his fathers. He rebelled against the idea that just because he was born a Jew in Israel he had to be religious or Zionist. He is neither.<\/p>\n
It pained me when Michael announced that in Germany he felt at home. This is not something I expected to hear from my Israeli-born son. But I suspect the grandmother he never met passed on certain subtle aspects of German culture to his father, who passed them on to him, giving things in this country a familiar, comfortable feel. Before Michael I had almost never heard a Jew say anything positive about Germany: I heard a lot of people say they would not set foot there \u2013 including my husband, until he changed his mind \u2013 and that they \u201ccouldn\u2019t stand the sound of the German language.\u201d Even though Israel has maintained relations with Germany for more than 40 years now, most of the people I know can not resist making a snide comment at the mention of that country. Few met the news of Michael\u2019s moving there with equanimity. For a long time I couldn\u2019t say the name of the country out loud. I would say \u201cmy son went to Europe.\u201d One day I took the bus home from my Russian class with a classmate, and she told me she had a daughter who was living \u201cin Europe.\u201d To which I said \u201cI have a son in Germany too!\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, Michael states plainly that Germany\u2019s public civility and cleanliness make him feel comfortable and welcome here, just as much as Israel\u2019s noise and chaos always bothered him.<\/p>\n
So you see, I wrap up my closing argument in my imaginary answer to the cosmetician\u2019s question about how my son ended up here, I thought my son would stay in Israel, with us, but he decided to move away and live here, just like young people do all the time, just like your daughter in London, I tell my new friend, although still silently, in my head, as she massages some cream into the backs of my hands.<\/p>\n
I am so engrossed in thought that it takes me a while to notice something is amiss. I don\u2019t see any bottles of nail polish in the room. This is not like any of the manicures I have ever had, surrounded by hundreds of colorful little bottles forcing me to make a deliciously agonizing choice. For half an hour my hands have been massaged, peeled and rubbed with cream, my cuticles have been poked and my nails have been filed, but where is this going? When I try to broach the issue, I am so anxious I can\u2019t think of any pseudo-German word for \u201ccolor\u201d or even \u201cred,\u201d so I try faking it with an accent, coming out with something like \u201cruhd,\u201d gesturing and lapsing into English: \u201cWhere are the colors?\u201d<\/p>\n
The manicurist points to a shelf behind me, on which there are six bottles of polish, all nearly indistinguishable shades of bright pink. I ask, in English, if that\u2019s all. Yes, it is. I choose the darkest one, hoping it is redder than it looks, but when she paints my pinky nail it comes out electric pink, and I scream: \u201cNo, no, no, forget about it!\u201d This cuts right through the language barrier.<\/p>\n
She wipes it off and continues her program of cream, peeling, mask and massage as I try to get over my shock. I try to put a positive spin on my disappointment. I have been having hand pains for some time because I type so much, and maybe, I comfort myself, I am getting just the treatment I need even though I didn\u2019t ask for it. But still, it said \u201cmanicure\u201d on their sign and that is what I asked for. Is it possible that the only word in German I had no doubt about, that I thought I really knew, that I didn\u2019t try to cobble together out of fragments of two thousand years of globe-spanning Jewish linguistic history, could the word \u201cmanicure\u201d have more than one meaning? Could they take it literally to mean \u201chand treatment,\u201d without nail polish? Apparently they could and they did and they charged me 25 euros.<\/p>\n
I go out into the street staring at my boring, colorless nails in disbelief. I could have filed my nails and put cream on my hands myself. What did I just pay 25 euros for? What is wrong with this country? \u00a0When I meet Michael at my hotel I am indignant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe what just happened,\u201d I begin my rant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went for a manicure, at that place we saw the other day, and look, look!\u201d I shove the backs of my hands into his face.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, what?\u201d<\/p>\n
Boys, I sigh. My daughter would have gasped. \u201cNo color! No nail polish!\u201d I spell it out to him. \u201cWhat\u2019s the point of getting a manicure if you don\u2019t get your nails polished?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a bummer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it cost me twice as much as it does in Israel!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is wrong with these people?\u201d I scream. \u201cYou tell me. What kind of people are they?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMom?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCome with me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
And I look at my son, mein kind<\/em>, this six-foot man with a blond pony tail who makes waitresses blush, this citizen of the world who knows his way around town and speaks the language, and I feel safe and cared for and I follow.<\/p>\nHe leads me across the street, holding a hand to my elbow, gently reminding me to watch out for the trams. He takes me to the drug store and for another 10 euros I get my favorite shade of braun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After my previous guest post Beware: Adult Content generated a high volume of traffic to Michael’s blog, he invited me back, and I will be contributing occasionally (even though we both know what really drove the traffic surge were the key words “adult content”). As I end my visit to Leipzig I offer you a … Continue reading My German Manicure<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,7],"tags":[23,56,60,62,64,65,66,72,582,86,87,95,99,107,118,160,165],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2683,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions\/2683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.didyoulearnanything.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}