Today, I've decided, is Germany day. Here's why ...
The past few days have been really hard, and I've felt physically sick every day. I've been told that I'm most likely having an anniversary reaction, and that everything should be better after next week is over. I don't think I can take another full week of feeling like this, but I also know that I can't ignore the anniversary or wish it away. So I've decided, at least for today, to try and outsmart this reaction. Instead of waiting for Friday and thinking about how it's almost been a year since my dad was with us, I'm going to use this next week and do something every day that celebrates my dad and makes me feel close to him. That's why today is Germany day. My dad loved Germany. He lived there as a foreign exchange student in high school, he had a Masters in German from Tech, and then we lived in Frankfurt, Germany (in a little town called Falkenstein) when I was little. One of my favorite things growing up was listening to my brother and dad speak German around each other. They were so fluent that they could even joke around in German. I loved our house in Germany, and I only recently realized how "different" our decor was. I thought everyone grew up with a bunch of cuckoo clocks and beer steins around the house.
This summer my brother and sister-in-law were sweet enough to invite their immediate families to go to DisneyWorld with them. One night we went to Epcot and ate dinner at Biergarten in Germany. That whole night was such a sensory experience for us because we felt like we were back in Germany. I loved looking in the different stores and seeing things we used to have around the house when I was little. We had a few of the German pyramids (wooden things where you light candles at the base and the heat makes the little wooden fans above spin), and we had a lot of German ornaments. I went into the toy shop and found the Steiff stuffed animals I had when I was five. They all had little yellow tags buttoned into the ear of the stuffed animal. Being there and listening to the music made me miss my dad, because he loved a party and would have been the first to jump up and make us all dance with him. But seeing my brother do that very thing with his kids made me realize how much of my dad's personality lives on in us.
So anyway, Germany day it is. I went to World Market this morning and got some Nutella for breakfast, I'm about to go to Henk's (German restaurant by the huge Half Price Books) for lunch with Ale, and then I'll swim later (since my dad was on a swim team in Germany and later coached swimming) and I'll ultimately end my day with one of three movies. When we lived in Germany, the only three movies we had in English (and watched over and over and over) were Grease 2, Footloose and The Man From Snowy River. So one of those will win today.
