Returning to America

My flight with Lufthansa landed at Ohare Airport around 10:00pm Wednesday night. Exhausted from no sleep and emotionally wrung out, I found my parents, we collected my bags and I said my "thanks you's" and "goodbyes." The long drive home was quiet, except for questions from my parents. Ten minutes into the drive, fatigue overtook me and I fell fast asleep in the back seat of my father's '76 Chevy Station Wagon.
Jet lag and the seven-hour time difference had finally gotten the best of me. I woke briefly when we arrived at home and stayed awake long enough to change my clothes, thank my parents for the trip and climb into bed. Sleep was my saviour, my respite and my escape from 11:30pm that dark Wednesday night until 5pm Thursday evening. Then I climbed drousily out of bed, ate dinner and visited with my parents and brother and promptly went back to sleep again at 10pm.

Thursday morning I rose with the sun, poured myself a cup of black coffee and sat down with my English-German dictionary to write Mario a letter. My German was so basic I had to look up each word, one at a time, and write down whatever translation the dictionary provided. In retrospect, my letter must have been a garbled mess of nonsensical German gibberish. The one page letter took me more than two hours to write. The process was painstaking but it was a labor of love.

My letter was deposited into the outgoing mail slot, then I nervously walked back to the house to approach my parents with the ideas I'd formulated regarding how to get back to Germany. You see, rather than sleep on the flight back home, I had spent hours thinking of ways I could convince my parents to let me return. After considering numerous possibilities, I had come up with what I considered to be two viable options:

Option #1) Convince my parents that I would be a much more serious student in Germany than I was in America because I felt less stressed in Germany, was more readily accepted by my peers and was genuinely interested in learning the language and the culture as well as all the normal lessons. Given these considerations I expected my parents to at least acknowledge the validity of my points and, hopefully, just send me back to Germany, as soon as possible, allowing me to stay for the remainder of my education.

Option #2) The teachers were already planning a return trip to Germany in the spring and it would be a chance to be reunited with Mario so we could make plans and avoid being separated again. If all else failed, I hoped and prayed this would be my chance.

Had my parents owned a crystal ball and been able to see into my near future, they might have consented to allowing me to go back to Germany immediately and stay for as long as I liked. Knowing the outcome of my remaining time at West Chicago Community High School, I believe it's fair to say I would have had a greater chance for success, not to mention happiness, at Eringerfeld. When I think about it, I can only wonder and speculate how different my life would have been if things had worked out that way. But life works out the way it does for a reason.

My parents were not quick to receive either of my ideas, though they said they would consider a return trip in the spring if I could cover the cost. That one little kernal of hope was enough to breathe new life into me and I sprang into action, first writing Mario a second, nonsensical letter then starting to look for a job. Despite the fact that spring was eight months away, the knowledge that there was a way back to Mario was enough to boost my spirit and motivate me to do the very best I could at school, home and work once I got a job.

Two weeks later the school year began and I had gotten a job as a bus girl at a local restaurant. My plan to return to Germany was moving in the right direction and everything was falling into place. I sent Mario a third letter, excitedly telling him of my plan to come back and sent the letter off. It was the third letter I'd written him in the two weeks since I'd returned home.

The first week of school was uneventful. Then at the beginning of the second week of school, I ran into one of the boys, Dave, who had gone on the trip to Germany with me. Dave and I exchanged small talk about classes and then he asked me if I'd heard the news about the next trip to Germany. When I told him I hadn't heard anything, he responded that the teachers had decided to go to a different school on the next trip, in a completely different part of Germany. It was a well-known fact that our teachers had not cared for the host teacher in Germany, feeling he was rude and snobbish. Rather than deal with him again, they'd decided to go to a different school during the spring trip.

My heart dropped as I stood there, my feet cemented in place as I listened to Dave's words. "We have to talk to the teachers," I exclaimed to Dave. Dave had no obligation to me. He hadn't known me before the trip and we didn't have any classes together now. But out of the entire group of nineteen students who had gone on the trip to Germany, Dave was the only one willing to go with me to meet with the teachers and administration so we could plead our case for going back to Eringerfeld. In the end, the decision stood and the trip was planned for the next group of exchange students to spend one month at a school in Germany, located about 200 miles away from Eringerfeld. Sadly, we learned later that there was to be a different host teacher at Eringerfeld on the next trip; one who had been a favorite amongst us all, including our teachers. But by the time we learned this, it was too late. Plans had already been made with the other school and it was too late to change them.

Each day became part of a cycle of waking up, going to school, going through the motions of life, checking the mailbox for letters from Mario and going to bed at night so I could do it all over again the next day. Sadness was my constant companion and I lived to hear from Mario. I needed his reassurance that we would work things out. I needed his love. I needed to feel connected to him, even if it was just through words. Even if I didn't understand the words.

Days passed by and turned into weeks and soon September was gone. Not one letter from Mario arrived. I checked the mailbox everyday afterschool, sure that his letter would be waiting for me. But it never was.

"Why isn't he writing me?" I wondered. As more days passed by I stopped asking myself "why" and began to simply tell myself he wasn't going to write back. Maybe he had decided he didn't love me anymore. Maybe I was too far away...out of sight, out of mind. Maybe he'd found a new girlfriend. Or maybe he'd never loved me in the first place. And, at the end of October 1980, I decided that was the reason I never heard from Mario after I left Eringerfeld...he had never loved me in the first place. Call it self-preservation. Call it the only way I knew how to move on from the feelings of sadness, loneliness and abandonment. But I decided that Mario had forgotten all about me and resumed his normal life the day I left Eringerfeld. Somehow, he had found a way to go on without giving me another thought. Whether it was out of grief or the fact that I was "out of sight, out of mind", Mario had allowed life to go on. And, indeed, as the clock ticked and time moved forward, slowly but surely, life moved on, too.