Channel People by Kathleen McAnear Smith
Christmas Market in Winchester 2019 Channel People The cold winter of Germany meant we could blow on our hands and see a soft cloud rise. We were young, my husband and I; and it was Christmas Eve. We’d been for a long walk over frozen ground and our conversation was of trying to remember a few words in German. It would mean so much to my mother in law. It was her night, her culture and we had promised that as she lived most of the year with the English side of the family; the conversation around the table on this night would be in German. Once inside Tante Lisel’s house, warm and glowing and full of advocaat and lebkuchen three nationalities of our family gathered. My dad would find the British English more challenging than remembering his high school German, and he tucked in his pocket the little American-English/English-American dictionary I found for him. It was the jokes that didn’t always translate well, but Oma Lizbet clearly insisted we light candles and sing Still...