As we landed in Munich, I was listening to the B-side of Abbey Road. The lyrics as the wheels of the plane touched the German tarmac, from Golden Slumbers, were:
‘Once there was a way to get back home…’
Today we do some shopping, then we pick up dad from the train station and hit the Autobahn. Then, I think, beer.
My dad turns 80 next year.
My dad is an energetic, lively guy who, in my subjective eyes, looks no more than 70 (okay, maybe 74…). But it can’t be denied, my dad is a guy who’s getting old.
Luckily, he’s happy too, and surrounded by a wife, kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and (reluctantly) a dog who all love him. His house on the beach, his daily trips to the gym, his Monday night German choir rehearsals, I have no doubt these things all keep him feeling younger than he is, and help keep away most of the slowly-increasing effects of eight decades on the planet.
But to the boy, fleeing Nazi Germany with his father- who was a key figure in the resistance- moving from city to city and country to country, this contented elderly figure pottering around in his backyard somewhere in the south of the opposite hemisphere must not have even entered his mind as one of his potential destinies.
It is that very past though, however filled with war, fear, death and uncertainty, that led him to that backyard in Altona.
His experiences, as our own do for us, formed who he is and how he sees the world, even now, and while it’s something he’s always been happy to talk about, I’m ashamed by how little I know of it.
The truth is, his past is my origin story too. Dodge it as I may (and have), I have German blood, and the things I learned from my dad, as much as the things in him I swore I would never repeat, were all filtered through and flavoured by that. I can’t relate his upbringing to my own, and hope to understand it that way, because it was about as different a time and as different a place as you could try to find. War-torn Germany in the 1940s is to Melbourne in the 1980s what weisswurst is to pavlova.
History has never been an active category in my drunken-pub-trivia-night of a brain. As much as I love the tactile nature of the past and the way even the softest whisper can echo itself into a yell in the future, I don’t have the brain for dates and places and names. So sadly, as happened with my grandmother (on my mother’s side, another remarkable story fortunately captured on audio cassette), I have never properly absorbed the story of my dad’s childhood.
Actually, more often than not, the prevailing elements of his heritage- his accent, his epicurean preferences and habits, his insistence that my sister and I speak German at home- were things that made me angry or, worse, ashamed. To say I’d like to take those reactions back now is true but unproductive.
Acknowledging this ignorance is one thing, seeking to colour in the pages is another. As ashamed as I am of my lack of appreciation of his past, I also realise how lucky I am to figure this out now before it’s-dare I say it- too late. It’s not too late.
This is my plan. I won’t let the past slip away unrecorded, because I know with it will go an enormous part of who he was, and the true understanding of who I am.
So next year, as part of his 80th birthday celebrations, I will gather a video camera, a microphone, a camera, a tripod and my father, and we will make our way across Germany, visiting each of the places he lived.
In some, the houses he lived in may have been long removed, but I want him to find the small things- the street corners, the trees, the light in afternoon- or just the memory of those things, and I want him to share them with me.
In each place, I will set the camera on its tripod, attach the microphone to his collar, get him a beer, and let him talk. As long as he wants to.
I’m no documentary filmmaker. I don’t know what will happen or how I will use it later. In its way, it doesn’t actually matter. I want to hear what he has to say. I want others to be able to hear it. I want my children to hear it when they’re old enough to want to know about him.
But, I think most importantly, I want him to have been able to say it; to know absolutely that we value the role he’s played in our lives enough to want to know everything that made him who he is.
Note 1: At this time, my dad doesn’t know about this plan. It probably won’t stay a secret up until his birthday, especially if I keep posting about it online, but let’s see how long we can go without telling him.
Note 2: It should be noted that my mum is rad too, and has her own story worthy of telling. She will have her chance. One parent at a time!
Tristan Lutze, 2010
