About forty minutes drive north of Düsseldorf there is a small town called Mülheim. This town has no significance to me other than it houses two of our friends from our walk on the Camino de Santiago. It has been three years since any of us have seen each other with very little communication between. Their house sits on a little alleyway down a side street facing into a little wild area. It is wonderfully modern rustic that David and Lisa both helped in constructing with David’s father who lives on the floor bellow them.
This is where things start to get interesting. When we came into the driveway there were a couple men working on gutting a car and an older couple working in the garden, my first thought was, “it’s so nice to see people casually working outside on such a beautiful day just getting something done together.” We poked our heads into the door marked Effelsberg. Before we could even announce our arrival the old woman from the Eden came up to us asking my Mother if she was Lois, to which I thought, “oh, how nice of David and Lisa to tell their neighbors we were to arrive today.” Turns out this kind woman is David’s Mother and the man is his Father. Later we also realized that one of the men working on the car, who lives in another part of the housing complex, is David’s brother who lives with his sister in law and their three children. David’s sister and his other brother live here as well. They call this Mehrgeneration, a concept I know is popular in Spain and I’m sure other countries, but David claims is very unusual in Germany. Multiple generations under one roof. It seems to work out very nicely. They see each other when they choose and otherwise have entirely separate spaces. Lisa’s parents live only a few minutes drive away as well. It seems like a fantastical set up. Something I think many Americans might romanticize, but here, in actuality it seems to work quite smoothly.
It is a pleasure to see David and Lisa again and to hear about how their lives are going and what they are up to these days. We went on a bike ride through the valley to a town called Essen/Werden where we had a drink and then went out to Düsseldorf to see watch the Dortmond-Beyern Füßball game and watch the fireworks at the Japanese festival. The ride was beautiful, the beer refreshing, the city of Düsseldorf was uncomfortably crowded, the game disappointing, but the fireworks were some of the best I’ve ever seen. All in all it was an eventful day with many things packed into it.
Today David provided a wonderful breakfast, we started on some laundry, and have been practicing a few songs to play at his congregation later this evening. It has been an interesting way to get a look into the lives of Germans that have been living in the area of my ancestors for quite a few generations. David says at least his grandfather’s parents and maybe even theirs. There is something sad about my disconnection to that ability to be so close to my history, walking down the same streets my ancestors did many generations back, and yet I know that my history has just gone through a different path. I am just now trying to discover this way of living imbedded in my history in similar way to this and this gives me encouragement that maybe it is possible to come in contact with some of these things just by being here. In this way I can only be grateful for this loss I am experiencing in the face of those who still have that connection even if unintentionally so.
