Part 4
We had made contact with each other. The stage was now set. Between July 18th when I first responded to Cathy’s message on Facebook and about August 12 there were few e-mails back and forth. Cathy and Franz were on vacation, so access to the Internet and the ability to contact me was somewhat limited. I requested information about Franz such as “When was he born?” and whether I could get a scanned copy of the picture of my father and uncle just to make sure it was them. All messages that I received from them were in French which I translated (through Google Translate and other translation software) and shared with my sisters on a shared folder in Dropbox. On Franz and Cathy’s side of the ocean they were excited but originally seemed concerned that we would consider this an upheaval of our family. We quickly addressed that issue to allay all fears as we were very excited about this discovery and couldn’t wait to include Franz and his family into our own.
On August 12th Cathy and Franz had a friend of theirs transcribe in English a letter that explained to us Franz’s history, all of which I have described previously. They emailed it to me. I wrote back and explained how great it was to know them. It took over a month before we corresponded with them again. They returned from their vacation around September 20 and we began to communicate frequently, mostly via e-mail. Both my sisters began e-mailing them also. I again made all copies and translations available to my sisters, my son, nieces, nephews and cousins who might also be interested. Knowing that our U.S. family was planning to get together on the Friday of Thanksgiving/Chanukah week, my sister Marion suggested Cathy and Franz join us at my sister Leslie’s house when we would all be together. Leslie agreed. Cathy’s two daughters were both expecting babies, one in December and one in March. Since these were Cathy’s first grandchildren she knew that once the babies were born she would not have an opportunity to come to the U.S.; Cathy and Franz decided to seize the moment. They decided to come for the week of November 24 – December 3 and join us for Thanksgiving/Chanukah. It would be the first time they visited the United States.
Plans were made, passports obtained, Franz’s health was cleared for the trip, tickets purchased and even our U.S. government managed to resolve the issues which caused it to shutdown so there were no glitches. We continued to correspond via e-mail. They wanted to know what gifts to get the children in our family as well as what my sisters’ and my own likes were. We even tried to have a 4-way video Skype conversation with them (Marion from Texas, Leslie and Hank (my brother-in-law) from New Jersey, me from Long Island and Franz and Cathy from France). It ended up that I was the only person who could see everyone, and at one point the French Skype connection video froze. Hank was the translator on our side (having been born in Switzerland, he was fluent in French), Cathy’s son-in-law and daughter were translators on their side. Though the audio was working, we decided to scrap that call eventually and my sisters did separate Skype videos with them. I continued to use e-mail and the Skype text chat feature to interact with them.
As the most technologically proficient person of this whole group I looked rather impressive in my text chats, since I could cut and paste French conversations in Google and iTranslate very quickly and retranslate my English back to French. Franz and Cathy thought I was much more fluent in French conversation than I really was, which would prove itself out when we actually met and I conversed with them.
They planned on flying into Newark airport on Sunday, November 24th, get picked up by my sister and brother-in-law and stay at their house for the ten days that they were in the U.S. I was going to visit and stay with my sister from Monday to Wednesday, go home, and then come back on Friday with my family and stay until Saturday before going back home. My sister Marion and her husband, Stu, were coming in from Austin on Thursday, staying with her son’s family in New York City, and then joining the whole family on Friday. Marion stayed over until Saturday at Leslie’s house. She also spent time with Franz and Cathy in the city on Monday before going back to Austin.
Between September 21st and November 24th, my sisters and I started doing some intensive French language cramming. There were countless audio and text programs we used to relearn the French that each of us had taken over 40 years ago in high school. For me, French was the only course in my schooling career that I ever received a failing grade in. Even now, after Franz and Cathy have returned to France, we all continue to study French.
My first concern about meeting my brother was how to say hello – shake hands? embrace him? I talked to Leslie on the phone the night they arrived and she told me not to worry and that a hug and kiss on both cheeks was quite acceptable. We did that a lot over the days that they were here. Franz did point out to me on Friday that it was not necessary for me to kiss the cheeks of men, a hug, pat on the back, handshake worked fine.
I drove to New Jersey early on the morning of the 25th. There were many hugs. In addition to Leslie and Hank, their daughter, Jennifer, was also visiting. As soon as I got there, Marion called via a Skype video chat, so all of us were together talking. Hank did a lot of the translating for us as Leslie, Marion and I tried to use some of the French we had learned. For me, I was more like a deer in headlights. Jennifer suggested that I say something and my mind just froze.
I had an app on my iPhone that allowed me to speak in one language and have it repeat what I said in another language. I was hoping that would help. Not really. The iPhone speaker was too low for others to hear and a lot of the time it mis-heard what I was saying and translated it differently. When I tried to use it when Franz or Cathy spoke it had trouble also. Either they spoke too low or because in natural speech you add a lot of ums, ers and pauses to your conversation, iTranslate couldn’t quite figure out what they meant to say. Also if you paused too long thinking about what to say, iTranslate thought you were finished and began translating before it could hear the whole thought. In the end, I used it only when I was stuck on a word I didn’t know how to say or when they said something (usually a word) that I didn’t know. It worked pretty well for that. The other analogy in speaking and listening to them was that it was like watching a YouTube or streamed video on a very slow connection. When I wanted to say something I would start a sentence and then mid-way through my mind would start buffering what I said and I had to wait until it finished before I could continue to formulate and say the rest of what I intended.
Following lunch that first day, Leslie, Hank, Franz, Cathy and I took a trip to visit my father’s grave and do some shopping for gifts for Cathy’s upcoming grandchildren and others. The trip to the cemetery was very emotional. Cathy had asked whether or not it was appropriate to bring flowers to the graves. My sister explained to her that in Jewish tradition one does not bring flowers to graves, but bring stones. For those of you that want to know why, here is one explanation from an article written by Rabbi David Wolpe (http://goo.gl/QvY6iF): While flowers may be a good metaphor for the brevity of life, stones seem better suited to the permanence of memory. Stones do not die.
We selected some stones to bring with us and went off to the cemetery for our first stop. Both my parents and Hank’s parents are buried in the same cemetery as are my grandparents from my mother’s side and my grandmother from my father’s side. (My father’s father died and was buried in Germany). When we finally found my parent’s graves, through the maze of the cemetery, many tears were shed. This was the first meeting of Franz and his father. We put the stones that we brought from Leslie’s house on my father’s headstone and then Franz put a stone on too, however his did not come from Leslie’s house. Franz pulled a very smooth black stone from his pocket and placed it on the headstone. Its significance, as we found out later from Cathy, was very important. When Franz was sick with cancer and had his stroke, it was feared that he would not survive. Cathy gave Franz two stones. These stones represented both good luck and good health as he fought and recovered from his illnesses. One of these stones he keeps by his bedside at home, the other he carried around with him constantly in his pocket. It was this stone that he gave up and placed on our father’s headstone. Cathy gathered us in a circle, all holding hands, and in French she said “coupons la chaine mais ne la rompons pas” which literally translates to “Let’s cut the chain but do not break” meaning we are part of a whole and that even when the links of a chain come to disappear we must always remain united. More hugs, more tears. We then proceeded to find our grandmother’s grave before we left to go shopping for baby gift items.
On Tuesday we went to New York City met with my nephew, Michael (Marion’s son), where he works at the Mercantile Exchange. It was good for Franz as he was familiar with a lot of the activity that was going on from his days working for banks in France. After that we visited the World Trade Center memorial. We had lunch at a Belgium style restaurant, Le Pain Quotidien, before going home.
I didn’t spend much time with them on Wednesday, mostly gathering more family information about Franz’s children and Cathy’s family so I could update my genealogy program, “Reunion for Macintosh”. I also watched Cathy start to prepare little boxes of French chocolate that she brought from France to give to everyone as a gift on Friday. It was time to let her prepare her gifts and for me to go home and prepare myself for Friday’s festivities where Franz and Cathy were to meet all of our immediate family (23 all together).
What a powerful story! Thanks for sharing.