walnuts

time travel by way of nuts

The year is 2002, 2005, or 2007 – I’m not sure, and honestly, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it is summertime, and I am spending the day, along with the small army that is my extended family, at my Oma Oma’s house. 

The cast of characters is vast and charming. There is, of course, my immediate family:  my brother and my mother. My brother, Zach, is who knows how old, but in my astute observation as a pre-teen, 4 years his senior, he is nothing but a small, silly child. Let’s estimate that he’s 6 years old. My mother, in her mid-thirties, is vibrant and excited to get us out of the house for the day, as mothers often are when their kids have been slowly driving them insane, what with their complaining and non stop existing under the same roof and such when school is out. 

The rest of the scene on this fine summer day consists of people in two very specific camps, as it happens in every family: adults and children. The adults are numerous, but the children are even stronger in numbers. As for adults, there’s my mother Tante Brigitte, Tante Eva, Tante Heidi, Tante Herta, Tante Rosie, Tante Julie, Tante Meg and honestly, probably a handful of other aunts who are there, but whose presence goes unchecked by me among the chaos. In my memory, there’s not an adult man in our family to be found for miles – perhaps this really is the truth, or perhaps my young, frivolous brain simply tuned them out. In any case, the house is packed with the women who have and are raising us, their brigade of little ones. 

But make no mistake, we are the real stars of this show, us, the children. Or, as we relate to Oma Oma, the great grandchildren, as it were. We are an impressively large cohort, and darling to boot, all gangly legs and big brown eyes (some blue!) and, in my subset of cousins, aggressively, aggressively female. I hit the jackpot in this regard – within the years surrounding my birth, I have five female cousins, all of whom I see multiple times a year on days such as this. Ahead of me are Ashley, Nicky and Julianna who are all older than me by two years or less, and following soon after are Kristen and Claire who both trail me by a few months and one year, respectively. Among these girls and the wider radius of our endless cousin corral, I am at ease. I am a Benesch woman, as the Tantes always say. In total, we are 20 great grandchildren (which would eventually grow to 28), and we are all at Oma Oma’s house in Roseville, Michigan together on a sunny day in the early 2000s. 

The day is hot and sticky, and so, in search of respite from the punishing heat, we, the platoon of great grandchildren, retreat to our Oma Oma’s cellar. Like moths to a lamp, we stand huddled around a metal contraption in the dim light of a damp basement. The walls are covered in maps, tapestries, framed family photos, and those kitschy placards that feel much less kitschy when I realize they’re actually authentic German signs with text written in that confusing, old-fashioned German font, Fraktur. By the light of a single, rectangular fire escape window above the basement bar stocked with Kahlua and who knows what else, we go about our self-appointed work: methodically separating walnuts from their massive shells with the help of a gigantic, heavy metal nutcracker. The cleaver is gargantuan and practically ice-cold, a delicious sensation in the relentless summer heat. Our hands are so tiny and weak that it takes several attempts to apply enough pressure to get the shell to separate from its inner treasure. We take turns at bat, like wannabe-heroes trying to pull Excalibur from the stone. Eventually someone among us becomes King Arthur – a walnut has been extracted! We cheer and take lessons from this mighty cousin, all hoping to have the strength to uncover this fascinating nut, one which none of us, in fact, will eat. Hours pass by, the dozen or so of us children ceaselessly halving large nuts, in nearly silent joy. By the end of the day, there is a towering bowl of walnuts, perfectly fresh and ready to be eaten, sitting untouched, on Oma Oma’s table. 

This is a scene of my childhood, one of those memories that feels like gold as I dig it up, nearly twenty years later, from the depths of my mind. 

German is my family’s native language, and though it’s been mostly lost in my mother’s generation before me, it lives on in both big and small ways in our family. Family titles have been one of those strongholds of tradition. “Oma” is German for grandma. There’s a proper name for great grandma in German, of course – Uroma – which is much easier to pronounce than you think. It’s simply the “ooh” sound that people make when they see fireworks on the Fourth of July, tacked in front of the word Oma. Ur-Oma. “Ooh” Oma. Great grandma. 

But my Oma Oma was never interested in being Uroma, or even Old Oma. She had no desire to look or act or be called something that aged her even just a day beyond her actual age. She was a timeless woman in that way, someone who defied age with her playfulness, her resilience, her commitment to see the world as a welcoming place, despite all the grief and struggle it dealt her. And as someone who became all at once a refugee and a widow with four kids at the ripe age of 29 in 1944, she had known her fair share of grief and struggle. 

As her great-grandchild, I only knew my Oma Oma as an elderly woman of course. I had never known her appearance as anything but the weather-worn, wrinkly face she appeared with throughout my childhood. But even as a little girl, I could tell she had a special spark in her. That inside her lived an invincible summer, a youthful girl who loved life. It was clear even to me then, and her house was perfect evidence.   

Oma Oma’s house was a magical world in and of itself. Bursting at the seams with curious items, her home was truly a treasure trove of history, knick-knacks, delicious treats and family heirlooms. The range of what her house contained was downright astonishing, and she delighted in the act of revealing its abundance to us, with each unveiled trapdoor and sleight of hand. 

Hidden in a cupboard in the living room was a stash of KitKats, seemingly without end, which she would dole out to each of us great grandchildren with great care when we visited. Her bathroom was bursting with all kinds of handmade soaps from every corner of the globe, which she had picked up on her various travels, the cruises through the Bahamas, resorts in Mexico, condo stays in Florida. In the basement there were boxes of stringed beads – one porcelain white and one deep, royal blue – which we found utterly fascinating. I cannot tell you the dozens, if not hundreds of hours we spent untangling, playing with, hanging up, appreciating, and ultimately deconstructing the yards and yards of beads coiled up in those boxes. The bedroom was famous for a terrifying doll dressed in traditional Transylvanian Saxon clothes (our homeland, which is now Romania), which we great grandchildren avoided like the plague (it’s that creepy-looking). The garage had a functional tricycle that I swear must have been there since goddamn 1965, the kitchen was overflowing with donuts that she had fried and dusted with powdered sugar herself, and on the wall above the back porch door hung an honest-to-god cuckoo clock that she had seriously brought over from Bavaria, who knows when on who knows what trip back to Europe. Her house was, by all measures, hilariously cool. A gift that always kept giving. 

But the crowning jewel of Oma Oma’s house of wonders was in fact, the garden out back. It was a charming little Eden. I’m smiling now just imagining the neat little rows of stepping stones laid carefully between glorious, booming squares of green. She had the most incredible green thumb, Oma Oma. There wasn’t a plant in the world she couldn’t master, and her garden was clear evidence of her talent. Each neat plot was filled with a different variety of flowers, fruits and vegetables – each year, without fail, she grew a half-dozen variety of roses, dahlias, cucumbers, several kinds of tomatoes, strawberries, zinnias and even raspberries, the wildest of her endeavors. She tended to that garden with expert care. Looking back, I think the garden gave her some extra purpose, some structure, to keep going all those years living on her own. She loved that garden so much. And to her delight, so did we. It was a special privilege to be handed a bowl and told to see what the garden had to offer; you had to beat out a great many competitors, including Oma Oma herself, in order to be granted that honor. In my mind’s eye, the garden lives on as a gorgeous sea of green, dotted with punches of color from fruits and flowers, in an eternal June. Sunshine and a light breeze, Oma and her mess of white, fuzzy hair waving from the back porch door, just inside the kitchen. 

Oma Oma kept a meticulous record of us great grandchildren by way of our school photos and portraits from the laundry list of sports that we all played: softball, basketball, dance, soccer and all the rest, she had us all tacked up to her fridge in collared shirts and jerseys and tutus, with names and dates written on the back for later filing. Getting a spot on the fridge actually felt like winning the lottery, in many ways. With so many great grandchildren and a finite amount of real estate on the refrigerator, plus competition from the occasional postcard she picked up from her travels or from that of a friend, it was a pretty high honor to see your soccer headshot posted up in the kitchen with a tourist-trap magnet. The collection of school photos and postcards and family portraits was like looking through a window into her life, into our family even. It was a smorgasbord of where she’d been, who had just graduated from elementary school, who had lost a tooth or joined a baseball team. Seeing our faces up there, the lot of us kids, our precious faces smiling back, reminded me that I belonged to something bigger than myself. That I belonged to us, our Oma Oma, our family. 

In retrospect, it’s remarkable to notice how much joy, how much space for awe and fun and play that my Oma Oma carved into her life as an elderly woman. I had always heard stories of my Oma Oma as a young girl and how she got up to absurd hijinks. There was the story about the dinner party, where she climbed under the table and tied two men’s  shoes together. Or the time when she let mice loose, at yet another party? Then there was the story about how she would breastfeed her twins, my Tante Rosie and Onkel John, by laying them both on the bed and leaning over with her breasts hanging down onto them. Efficient, she said! I remember the way she mimicked the gesture to us when she told the story, how her smile cracked her whole face open, how her voice boomed with laughter at the memory of something she thought was hilariously genius. Oma Oma made everything easy. She made joy in spite of everything look so, so effortlessly easy.  

But let the record show, for all the joy and hijinks and acting so young at heart, Oma Oma was actually old as hell. Healthy! But still “was alive during World War I” kind of old (seriously, she was born in November 1914). At this time, when her hoard of great grandchildren would descend upon her house for summertime activities like a circus setting up shop, she was approaching her early 90’s. And like the legend she was, she wouldn’t pass away for a long time after that – at 98 years old, in fact, and in great health until the very last weeks, to be exact. We were lucky that way. 

We had the massive privilege of knowing her, really knowing her, before she passed away. I was 17 years old when she passed, and I remember our last moments very clearly. She was living in a palliative care unit in metro Detroit. Strangely, she looked exactly as she always had to me, simply a bit more tired. A little weaker, sure, but sharp as ever. When I entered her room, my Onkel John, her son, was standing next to her, while I stood at the foot of the bed. We said hello and she started joking, of course, as she always did. She saw Zach and said “He’s my favorite!” and we all cracked up. We took to asking her if she was hungry, if she wanted food, and through the questions, she had either grown tired or confused. I decided to switch into German to get our point across more effectively. I had been taking German in school for several years at that point, and it was my specific goal to speak German with my Oma Oma before she passed – this was, I realized, my moment. 

“Oma, hast du Hunger? Oder möchtest du was zum Trinken?” I asked her. 

She looked at me quizzically. “Du kannst Deutsch,” she said. Not a question, a statement. You can speak German. 

“Ja, ich kann!” I answered. 

“Dann warum reden wir hier Englisch?!” she responded with a big belly laugh. 

“Das ist eine gute Frage Oma, das weiß ich nicht!” I said in response. 

I’m still not so sure if I ever got an answer to my question, whether she was hungry or thirsty. Someone brought water anyway, I’m pretty sure, and the conversation turned to something or someone else. But I remember that brief interaction with her in her final days and feel such peace. I showed her my dedication to our language, my dedication to her, my love for her. My love for our family. I showed her what I could say, the very little German it was at the time, and she affirmed it to me – you can speak German. It felt like her going-away present to me. 

I think back to my aversion for walnuts and chuckle at the wastefulness of our industry on those summer days in Oma Oma’s basement. We must have shelled dozens, if not hundreds of walnuts, between the lot of us. The energy simply radiated off of us; we were children in the summer at a time when the Internet and mobile phones were a nuisance handled only by adults. Unburdened and eager, we had nothing but time and curiosity. And at some points, boredom. The days melted into each other and the world seemed so singularly small without the busyness of school or the buzz of technology in our pockets. But that’s exactly why we kept ourselves so entertained with those unappealing nuts – to stave off the boredom. And somehow, along the way, it turned into fun. 

These days, I am an adult. Twenty-eight years old, to be exact. I hang my laundry and file taxes (in two countries) and cook dinner (most nights), and do all the things that practical adults do. But my favorite task among them is a Sunday night ritual. Guided by a recipe that my mother dug out of some lifestyle magazine in who knows what year, I bake banana bread every Sunday night. Like clockwork, I grease the pan and line it with baking paper and whip together the ingredients that I can now practically recite in my sleep. Flour, sugar, baking soda (not powder!), a pinch of salt, all the wet ingredients, walnuts – and chocolate chips of course, because I’m extra. The simplicity and satisfaction of making something out of nothing helps me to start my week on a good note. And as the practical adult I am (heavy sarcasm, that’s a work-in-progress), I take two slices of the sweet bread with me to work as breakfast every morning. 

As I chop the walnuts to add to the batter on Sunday nights in my apartment in Vienna, I think back to those many summer days spent cleaving nuts apart from their stubborn shells, surrounded by my many cousins, in a chilly basement in metro Detroit. The smell of the finely chopped nuts, earthy and aromatic, reminds me that life is really quite cyclical. That the good things come back to visit us in new ways, with old joys and new lessons as life unfolds and transforms. That comfort is everywhere, all around, if only I take a moment to look for it. And that in my heart, I’ll always be that long-legged baby girl, splitting walnuts and playing with beads in Oma Oma’s basement, if only I make space for her in my heart.