Despite repeated jeers from my partner, I am remembering German.  When I was little a German-speaking family lived with us and at first we laughed at their language, and then began to speak it – probably with a Yiddish accent.  But we made ourselves understood.  And although I spent days looking at his chopped-off fingers (explained to me as the punishment for refusing to make weapons in forced labor) I grew to love him.  

last night, for instance, the taxi driver asked me as I was leaving – how I enjoyed the concert.  Like a child I answered “I didn’t.”  He answered me as to a child, “Why my dear? It is a very famous cathedral.” “It wasn’t clear, ” I said, and stumbled over what I would have said as a music critic.  Then I apologized that I spoke childishly and he smiled like my old friend Ignaz.  It was my moment of love.