Its been a while since we last came to our old house in up-state New York, the old great grand parents house. This house actually belonged to my family since the early 1800, it is one of the few things we keep from our family.
Strange thing about our family, is that everything is a secret, we know so little on how they lived and why they moved so much that it has become kind of my obsession to find out. I started at this old home, a home that represented so much for us that we have managed to keep it in our family. It has not been easy, believe me, we`ve been through tight situations where we considered at least twice on selling this place, but luck has been kind with us and we were able to keep it, and it is still there, old and blue and filled with stories and memories of better times.
Oma Frida, my great grand mother loved that house and died there, and that is where her story ended, or started, depends how you see it. She was a German immigrant, who left her family and married my great grand father; a crazy traveler and explorer who became quite a legend. That house belonged to my great great grand father and his family, he was a doctor and had his practice there. Many members of my family have lived there. Today it is an empty house, we kept some of the furniture and some books and old boxes with memories. We try going when possible, but life is hectic and it gets hard sometimes to travel all the way to up-state New York, to this tiny town called Brockport, close to Rochester. This year we went and found an amazing piece of our history.
We have been looking for my family on my great grand mothers side, as I said, she was born in Germany in a tiny house in Berlin. We know so little of her family and what happened to them after WWII, and we all thought that now with technology and so many resources, it would be a little bit easier to find something, whatever, names, addresses or birth certificates, however it just opened a bigger question mark in our family tree: Who was she? No one knows, we have not been able to find a single thing about her. She once mentioned to my mother, that she had a twin sister named Martha, Tante Martha as she called her. Her last name throws no results, none at all; no birth records, death records, real estate, nothing. We have searched immigration lists in the US, to find absolutely nothing on her, but somehow she came to America and married my great grand father, gave birth to 5 children, including my grand mother and passed away leaving no clue who she was.
My grand mother told us a couple of times, that my Great grand Mother Frida, sent letters to Germany during the war period, to her family, and she always included a spoonful of coffee, My grandma always thought that was awkward, and one day she asked her why she always poured a spoonful of coffee inside the envelope before mailing it; Oma Frida said "I know they are having the worst time in Berlin, Im not even sure they have something to eat, I wish I could send more, but times are hard and all I can send is a cup of coffee" My Grandma told the story and she believed it was a symbolic way to send comfort and company, kind of a "open my letter and read it while drinking a warm cup of coffee".
We are sure she was born in Germany and had family there, because my Grandmother and her siblings all spent a couple of years of their childhood in Berlin, My Grandma told me some stories about the time they were in Germany and stories of Tante Martha. Unfortunately my Grandma passed 30 years ago and left no clue of our family in Germany either. The more we search, the more we realise how little we knew of her.
This year, we kept our promise to meet at The Old House, its been almost 4 years since the last time we went there and this Christmas we decided to go and spend a few days there. We packed our things and got there around 8 p.m. Everything looked untouched, static, I believe time stands still there. I immediately felt so much guilt for not visiting this magnificent place in 4 years, after all, this is all we have left of them. We cleaned a little and went to bed.
The next day, my sister and her family arrived and we got busy cooking and fixing everything for the Christmas party. We searched for the old decorations, those are really special, some of them come form Germany and are about 100 years old, mostly wooden toys. We spent Christmas day telling old stories and reminiscing our childhood holidays in this house. Our kids were amused by all the crazy tales.
Just before ending this amazing trip, we decided to share with our kids some of the old things we keep at The Old House, things that belonged to Oma Frida and Popa Karl, mostly pictures and old letters. We found their old love letters and some letters sent to my Granma and her siblings for their birthdays. I then found a leather box, the size of a shoe box, maybe a little bit wider. I had never seen this box in my life, it was so well kept and so elegant. I asked my sister if she knew about this box, she nodded.
We opened it and found a old letters, they were written in german and were all sent to the same address in Berlin, all of them were returned to The Old House, but they were all closed, still sealed. We deduced to open one, old ground coffee fell into my hands, I immediately remembered the story of the spoonful of coffee my Oma added to her letters. We found them all, all sealed, all returned. They never got to their destination, the coffee was never delivered. My heart broke. But we got a tiny clue; An Address in Berlin!!
We looked for this address and got nowhere, the street does not exist, the names on the letter do not match any records in the area and there is no information on what could possibly happen to recipient; Tante Martha.
No clue who she was, we are even thinking if Oma Frida,was in fact named Frida.