Flight Into The Unknown

A fancy hotel in Bremen/Germany had lost my reservation. They put me up in a maid’s room above their pub, a few hundred feet away. Afraid to go down for dinner in the noisy pub full of men, I locked myself in and ate my last Granny Smith apple. Without television, radio or books, all I had was a magazine. I read it from cover to cover.

I came across an ad placed by a former German man living in Canada. He looked for a new mommy for his four-year-old daughter. Canada? I was intrigued. I wrote a reply and never thought I’d get a response.

Four weeks later, I found a large brown envelope with several ‘Beautiful British Columbia’ magazines, a letter with excellent handwriting and several photographs of father and daughter in my mailbox. Wow! I sat there, stunned, staring at all of that. My guts told me ‘watch out.

The Canadian man’s father, a lawyer, called me. He knew about the ad. He told me, “My son is not a fly-by-night. Sit down and answer his letter!”

An active letter exchange started. I visited the lawyer and his family; they were kind to me and, since I was a single lady alone in West Germany, I got hooked. Three months later, I got ‘engaged’ by telephone.

While I was on holiday, the lawyer and his wife organized our wedding without ever asking me. My parents were upset – but I was in love with the cute little girl and reluctantly went along with it. I did not know how to disentangle myself. Louis from Canada came for the wedding a week before it happened. His daughter spoke no German, my English was limited.

I left Germany seven months after I had answered the ad and immigrated to Vancouver, Canada. I realized soon after my arrival that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Louis used my hard-earned money to pay his debts. He even confessed, “I had to increase the loan to come to Germany to marry you.” I had no way of returning to Germany. I had been blinded by his well-to-do parents, thinking, ‘the apple does not fall far from the tree.’

I was in love with the little girl. I did want to disappoint her, she was happy to have a new mommy. I was afraid to tell my parents that they had been right to warn me. I tried to make the best of it, took English classes to be able to converse with the kid and neighbours. In Germany, I had been a health educator, giving lectures all over the country. Here I felt lost without mastering the language. I lived my teenage years in East Germany; after escaping to West Germany, I was considered a second class citizen.

We moved to Winnipeg after five months. A year later Louis’ second daughter came to live with us. Several months later, I bore a son; he kept the family together. A few happy years followed.

Louis went bankrupt. I lost my drive for life, I faced suicide several times but couldn’t do it because of my little boy. Louis told me, “Thei...