marlyse.comme, myself and my life
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
A piece of the past… and still tasting good.
My first memories of eating black licorice wheels dates back to when we (my sister Francesca and myself) spent our summer with our German nanny back at her home, I must have been 8, maybe even a year younger.
We had many nannies over the years, but this one, she came for 1 year and stayed for 5, yes she was special. Especially important to my sister as a person, to me she was very important because she was the first nanny that stayed, who could hold up to my mother and more important, who had a connection with her parents - 2 people who I adored.
Never did I have a grandmother and I only knew my grandfather on my father’s side, my mom’s dad died when she was 14 and it seems - as I remember it - that she never really got along with her step dad. And anyways, her family was far away, South Africa and Australia, I had (and have) absolutely no connections to that branch.
I loved my grandfather - “Opa” how I called him, “Paps” how my dad called him - and the huge house he lived in, but he was something from the past, mostly he would sit in his arm chair, or at the dinner table or in a chair in the yard or at the piano, on the little bench. Rarely do I remember him moving around, and if he did, he was towering high, so very high over me, even in his bent age. He was “old school” and he was fascinating and always up for a joke with his grandkids, and I remember hours of sitting around the little coffee table and chatting and listening to his stories. He was an impressive man, at his place one would indulge in delightful pastry and get spoiled by his cousin Margaret who was taking care of him, play a game of Bocce in his immensely beautiful yard. I loved him and his place, but he was “controlled fun”, one would go to him dressed-up and show manners around him, even explore his basement full of old wonders, but one would not get messy and dirty or wild.
How different was it when we went to Germany to visit Gisela’s mother and dad. He was a quiet man, worked on the railways and she, well she was there for us and allowed us to do whatever we wanted and she’d bake these great treats, Streuselkuchen, one of Germany’s typical crumb cakes which she would bake 1-inch high on large cookie sheets.
It is the place were I remember visiting for the first time a fair and was allowed to shoot a BB-gun (and even managed to win something) or to fly in these airy circles on my favorite swing rides (the swings were attached to really long metal chains and the forces of going in circles would carry one higher and higher but not in a scary but much more dreamy way). And it’s the place I learned to be very scared of thunderstorms and remember sitting downstairs, cuddled into the arms of either her or him, with my sister mirroring my own emotions right next to me.
We were free to do whatever we wanted to do. We could roam the neighborhood with other kids around the block and over the years we’d get friends with quiet a few of them. That was the time I learned to ring on door bells and then to run away really fast, laughing and holding our bellies when the people came to the door to find only emptiness. Or to call random phone numbers, change our voices and say these ridiculous things between giggles. It was also the time I first tried riding a bike (and hurt myself real badly in the attempt). And I remember the dairy bus which would bring every day fresh milk and the possibility of some ice cream.
But mainly I remember the weddings and the traditions. There was a church close by and we witnessed many weddings and always made sure to stand on the steps when the bride would come out the door because that, that was the moment to ready oneself to pick-up as many of the pennies and colorful wrapped hard candies people would toss in the air while the newly weds would pass under it.
The hard candies was one of the goodies, but much more important to me were the pennies, because only 5 of them would get me a black licorice wheel, and a good wedding would easily leave me with 75 cents which ended up with a huge bag of delight. And then I would sit there for hours and carefully eat one wheel after the other - if you ever had one of them, you know that the wheel is actually made up of 2 single strips next to each other - I had my own system, the system that probably every child at some point comes across of unrolling one half and nibbling on that one before going over to the second half.
There are things of the past which are not good to hold on to, but this is definitely not one which I would file in that category.
The other day I managed to find them online, and today the first delivery - uhm… 10 bags, that should hold for a little while (haha) - arrived. Haribo, the maker of these Licorice Wheels has since many years a little jingle which every kid and grownup in Germany and adjacent countries knows, with the slogan “Haribo macht Kinder froh, und Erwachsene ebenso” which is a cute rime of (literally) “Haribo makes kids happy, and grownups just as much”.
And just as in those days I was sitting here today, carefully unwinding the first half of the wheel, sucking in every ounce of smell and taste before going over to the second strip. But that one I only managed down to the first half and then I lost patience and popped the whole rest to chew and finish. But I have still 10 bags minus 3 wheels to go…
I’m sure I’ll get again the full hang of it, and I am looking forwards to it - the hang of making time stand still with nothing else in it than a black string of taste.
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