German-Jewish

Chapter 16

                The next couple months were rocky. There were good and bad things. Robert had gotten promoted to a desk job that paid even better than the factory, I'd been able to stay at my job, no matter how much I hated it. We'd also done some fun things. We'd gone to one of the ending Chicago Cubs baseball games, where I'd found my new appreciation for baseball, and Robert volunteered to take me to things he called "tourist-y."

"I have no idea what that means," I told him right away.

"Like, people who visit for vacation are tourists. Tourist traps or tourist-y places are where those people usually go."

"They wouldn't go if it wasn't worth it," I pointed out. He knew I really wanted to do it, so he agreed to go with me. This included the Shedd Aquarium, where I saw all the animals I'd ever hoped to see. That's the one thing I'd never stopped loving: animals.

We also went places like the Art Institute of Chicago, and often he went with me to just walk around and see everything. Months later I was still taking in things I'd never seen before. American culture was very different than German, so it's quite a shock.

Something I'd never expected to love was the music. I love music, of course, but I never expected to love American music. I sometimes still had trouble understanding what they were saying, but I didn't mind. Their accents (especially in Chicago) were hard to understand at times, along with the fact that they often run their words together. I'm pretty good with English, but learning technicalities and actually using it in America were completely different things.

Robert and I often went and listened to live music. That was by far some of the best experiences. I particularly loved jazz music and I soon got a record player and used it likely way more than it was intended. Robert pretended to not care, but I knew that he really liked it when we went to clubs and danced and had drinks.

Overall I thought life was going good. If five years ago you told me that I'd be where I am, doing as well as I am, I probably would have laughed.

I have good days and bad days when it comes to my anxiety after the war, though. Sometimes I get really sad because I remember how my best friends, who were basically sisters, were taken and that I have no idea how many of them are alive, how many are home, or anything about them. My nightmares became a little less frequent, but I didn't sleep a lot.

Robert, on the other hand, was doing better in his own ways. He'd had a semi-regular sleeping schedule and he seemed not to be too sad very much. He'd certainly been looking far better than even when he came home. He didn't look bad when we came back, but you could tell something had happened. He still has nightmares regularly, though. He's opened up a bit and talked to me about what happened to him in the camps and how it's affecting him.

That did wonders for him. Once he talked about it, he started getting better. The stubborn bastard finally listened to me and I intend to hold it over his head for the rest of his life.

Months of what normalcy we could get went by even more. Eventually, it marked a year since we came home from the war. We'd been through a lot since then. We'd fought, we'd made up, we'd fight again, and we'd make up again. As two very stubborn and hard-headed people, we fight more then I'd like to admit. We always have known we love each other, though.

To celebrate the year of having been out of the military, Robert and I went out to dinner. It was nice, but even after a year I will still point out that American portions are so much bigger than European. Robert said that before the war, he would've said that I'm crazy, but now that he feels forced to eat all of his food, he completely agrees.