What kind of house did you grow up in? (Chapter 2)

Right after the small apartment in Bad Vilbel we moved to the fourth floor walk-up apartment in Frankfurt am/Main, Germany in a housing area called Platenstrasse.  The apartment was temporary housing until we could get into one of the nicer apartments.  It had originally been maids quarters and had been converted to family living.  It had 8 small bedrooms and the bathroom was split.  The bathtub was in one room and the toilet and sink in another.  It had a large living room and very small kitchen.  This is the first that I realized that Mom was not well.  She would get sick and disappear into the hospital for a few days at a time.  We had young couples that would come and take care of us and a part time maid named Gerda.  I didn't like her but it took a long time for Mom to realize that our dislike of her was grounded before Mom finally fired her.  It was in this apartment that got glasses for the first time.  I loved the fact that I could see!

I thought of that apartment as a fairy castle in a lot of ways.  I also loved it because it was a garret.  It had the tiny garret windows with the sloping ceiling and I had just read The Little Princess along with several other books with the protagonist in the attic - so it just played into my fantasy.  However it was too far for mom to climb so we moved to a first floor three bedroom apartment about 9 months later.

The most memorable thing about that apartment was that is was across the street from Laurence and Sally Neuberger.  I was in heaven when they had Todd and I practically lived there.  Todd's favorite person in the world was Bob, though.  One of his first words was Bobby.  Todd was my first babysitting job - I was 10 years old and got to watch him while he napped (Sally was across the street with Mom).  The other memorable thing about this apartment is Marianne and I washing the dishes.  For some reason we could not go and just wash them.  We took hours washing the dishes!  (It didn't help that Mom did not clean up as she went.  Omi was constantly telling her that life would be so much easier if she cleaned as cooked).  Granted we played to the point that water was so cold the grease had coagulated on the surface!  I remember one time that we took 4 1/2 hours to do the lunch dishes.  We never got to go out and play on Saturday afternoons because were doing the dishes!  To this day, I hate doing dishes - even with a dishwasher.  But now you understand why Marianne's memory would be of a dishwasher.  Suddenly we didn't take hours anymore.  After we had lived there about 9 months, we got word that Grandma and Grandpa Brugger were coming to live with us for 8-10 months.  We needed a bigger apartment.  So we moved to a 4 bedroom in the building just behind where we were living.

I will continue with more on that tomorrow.  For anyone that is interested - approx 198 days left before we leave Rhode Island.  I don't know if a countdown is helping me or putting me in a bigger panic!