1976. Herman Hesse and Vanilla Tea

Sex, Gin and Chocolate Cup Cakes. Part Four - On finding freedom in Wuppertal.

It was before Christmas when I last wrote a chapter from my messy memoir, Sex Gin, and Chocolate Cupcakes, in which I dig deep into my past and how it has shaped who I am, how I responded to the world, and where I am now. We have been blessed with a new grandson since then, and this week, at eleven weeks old, he has started to form sounds. Little ‘oos’ his tiny mouth puckering, playing with shapes and sounds and breaking into a smile that fills his face as he learns the joy of sound and the response this elicits from those he is ‘talking’ to. There is unbridled happiness in this for those who hear these first sounds, and from him, as he finds his voice. As I talk back to him, mirroring his sounds, I find tears brimming in my eyes, and I whisper to him, ‘Don’t let anyone silence you, sweetheart.’

It has got me thinking about when I was first silenced, when the societal and religious rules that my family lived by dictated what I was to think, do, and say, when the external voices of control, and consequently by me kept me silent as I stuffed down my voice and kept it trapped inside my body, when I was told that my words were not ‘nice’, that ‘no one wants to hear THAT story.’

Having written three pieces now, of this raw and experimental memoir, that is evolving as I write, it has surprised me just how good it feels to finally free the voice that was silenced for so many years, and just how much it is helping me understand the ‘whys,’ to move on from my past and leave the baggage behind.

So let’s go to Wuppertal, on the school German exchange, and I’ll tell you how I discovered a whole new world and why my mother used to say, ‘You were never the same after going to Germany.’