This is the windmill that is in the center of the town of Osterholz. I know it very well. I spent many hours drawing it in high school art class. Grin! Home is a funny concept. If you’ve always lived in the same place, you know where you call home. For me, having moved every three years of my childhood, home isn’t just where I live today – it’s the places I’ve lived with the happiest of memories.
I look back on the places I’ve lived and I feel “homesick” – even though if I returned to them today no one would know me and everything would have changed. I’m not sure I’d want to go back to some of these places, even if I could. They are so wonderful in my memory, I’d be afraid I might spoil them.
One of those places for me was Osterholz-Sharmbeck, a town outside of Bremen in northern Germany. Osterholz-Sharmbeck, as I remember it, sits on the edge of the Teufelsmoor (Devil’s Moor). I lived in a village outside of Osterholz from 1987 to 1991. When I look back at that period of my life, I think of it as “home.”
My parents had gotten a divorce in 1985. It was a horrible time for me. My world was ripped apart and turned upside down. My mom had always been a stay-at-home mom, and suddenly she was thrust into the labor market. She went to graduate school and within two years had earned her Masters degree while caring for Ryan and I and working full time. It was a major accomplishment – although life in our household for those two years was pretty stressful.
When my mom got a job overseas teaching in the U.S. Department of Defense Schools our lives became happy again. While we weren’t rich, it seemed like the financial pressure was less. My mom and I were the closest during this period. And, everything in life was exciting and an adventure. Even just going into town and buying a coke was an adventure when everything seemed foreign and you couldn’t speak the language. I loved the challenge of it. I loved the adventure of it. I soaked everything up that I could and absorbed it into my being. Today, when it’s cold, dark and rainy, I think of the Teufelsmoor and feel alive.
I don’t have any digital pictures of my most beloved places from there – can you even remember life before digital cameras and the internet?
So, taking a break from working on the HPS Newsletter today I started plugging in the names of places I remembered, and found some wonderful Web sites!! I’ve even been choked up looking at these places to see how they’ve changed, and amazingly, how much they’ve remained the same! And, now I can share them with you!
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