“She’s like Jelly-roll like sculpture” da Pixies

So as of late I have been wearing my blond hair in a braid against my skull, a real German plait. Which is really no different than the Danish style. I mean I was destined for the drindl-type dress. Full skirt, tight bodice, of course I am not running around in them not for God’s sake. I am no longer a little girl, but the plait, well that is related to being a grown-up lady.

As fortune would have it, I am finding myself relating to quite a few German-Americans and Germans living in America, or as my afamily would phrase it, “I am surrounded by Krauts” My afamily is Danish and de facto has a resentment against Krauts, I mean who could blame them? The Danes and the Krauts have a particularly dark heritage. The Danes are SO PROUD of the the fact that they saved their Jews, which you know, they were given kinder treatment, holy shit that feels like treason to type.

I have noticed though of late, that me who has always expressed that ancestry holds no interest to me beyond a couple of generations, I am starting to feel like more and more of a fraud about things that did not bother me before. When I was in my twenties I worked on a project for the USHMM I was a sub-contractor under WGBH, the part that I worked on, I worked with a woman whose last name might as well have been, “Iamakraut” and I worked with a lot of other subs.

It was an emotional project, it had to do with the treatment and fate of Jewish children in Nazi Germany, it was tough. For a lot of people, people from South America, American Jews, Mexicans, French people who would occasionally turn to me an notice that I looked German, that I could have been a Nazi despite the fact that I wasn’t even close to being born at that time and when I bothered to be born, I was born in California. People broke down and left the room, took long breaks in the bathroom and then came back with angry eyes and told me I looked ‘Aryan’.

I was quick to deflect. “I am Danish, we saved our Jews” I explained. Then one moment as I was lifting my staple gun I thought “No, I didn’t save any Jews and I didn’t burn any of them either” I was claiming a heritage that I didn’t have and as a Nazi I didn’t have either. The next time a Chilean worker looked at me, who left Chile because he felt persecuted told me I looked like a Nazi, I smiled at him and said, “Yes, you are right, and I will shoot you in the back of the head after lunch, depending on what you have for lunch” I winked at him “I might eat your lunch first” Because I am not a Nazi, who killed innocent people any more than I am a Dane who saved anyone.

That was my first step to being able to accept that I was of the unholy German ilk.

When I turned 34 my natural mother came to visit me and we walked down the street and I expressed to her that I might be able to pass as German. Her mouth dropped. I am of English and German ancestry, but despite being in reunion for about 16 years at that point had not been able to accept who I was.

That didn’t bother me so much. These last few weeks after giving real Germans, real Danish Christmas treats and explaining what they were, bothered me just a bit. I started to feel like a fraud. I am English and German, the parts of me that seem so German ironically come from my English side, my German side is dark, there are dark Germans.

So many parts, and they start out so small, how difficult is it to be raised by Danes who are so proud of their resistance, their culture to accept that your own ancestry is a part of the big ugly?

Oh how I love being Danish, so much with their pretty red flag and their buttery baked-goods, their hearts and little orange horses that peppered my childhood, their cleanliness, their organization, their love of beauty and pleasure. How many times have I quoted or read e.e cummings?

i sing of Olaf glad and big
by E. E. Cummings

XXX

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but–though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments–
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
“I will not kiss your fucking flag”

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but–though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat–
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
“there is some shit I will not eat”

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.

How many times did I take comfort in this poem, so many.

But it is not my poem, it is not my people’s poem, it belongs to my aparents, the people that taught me their customs, not the krauts, not the villains.

I am left with shame and jealousy, except go Winston! except the Irish.

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January 11, 2012

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