80 Years of Trying Is Circling Down the Drain

[DFW]

68. The end of my story remains as yet unwritten

I got used to « losing » elections early. My first election ever, I proudly voted Republican. In 1971, the corrupt Philadelphia Democratic machine nominated the oafish thug Frank Rizzo, then the hated police commissioner, for mayor. The Republicans nominated a mild-mannered well-meaning bureaucrat. He lost. The next year, the Democrats nationally nominated McGovern. It was obvious then that he’d lose. My first ray of hope came in Borås, Sweden, where I stayed up all night in a tiny hotel watching the first win of a president that I had voted for.

Three years later, i celebrated with friends in France when the unwelcome Ayatollah finally went home. A year later, I watched in horror as Reagan was elected as one of the unintended consequences.

In 1982, I was already spending more time out of the USA than I was in it. The Reagan recession drove two fierce business rivals to the conclusion that they could either merge or perish. They wisely chose to merge. One was my employer of the past 7 years, and I was the last man standing to not desert the ship. In 3 weeks, we celebrate 50 years on the job for me. I was invited by Castro’s government to visit Cuba in 1982, an invitation I accepted. We also visited East Germany various times. We got to see socialism in practice and decided it was not for us.


In 1982, I also married the girl of my dreams in a double wedding with my brother. My wife was from Germany, and his was from Japan. The event was called « the Axis Wedding » by the Washington press, of which our father was a prominent member. Both wives wanted children, and both my brother and I were OK with that. So, I got two half-German daughters and my brother got two half Japanese sons. We all made sure all four grandchildren got dual nationality, so that they could choose to live in either country of their heritage when the time came. My wife and I spoke to our children only in out native languages, so that they could become fluent in both. My brother’s wife, sadly, refused to speak to her sons in Japanese, so they have only English as a native language, although my younger nephew has since become proficient in speaking and reading Arabic. He is also learning Ukrainian, since he has been living in Kyiv for close to four years. Our children have chosen very diverse careers in different countries. Our grandchildren mirror my parents’ grandchildren: two boys in North America, two girls in Europe. All four are already fluent in English and German, and have US and EU passports.

And so we have fought our way through the goings on. I have had heart issues, and genetics says cancer is due any day now (not so far, though). We are both 73 and the genetic odds say I don’t make it to 80. My wife has had cancer twice already, and beaten it twice. We don’t really have much of a choice. We’ll take what the genetic lottery draws for us, and play the hands as best we can.

Back home, I watch as my native land does its very best to commit suicide with one hand, and prevent it with the other. I don’t have two passports, and neither does my wife. I do have a permanent EU (German) residence/work permit, which I retain at the whim of the bureaucrats in Berlin, though quarterly tax payments of about $50,000 each probably provide some incentive for them to let me stay. I receive nothing in return.

My wife and I are halfway through our annual month on Cape Cod, USA, which we use each year for much needed battery recharging. The food, the people, the sunsets, the water—they remind us why we put up with everything else during the rest of the year.

A while ago, I made the following video for just such moments:

For the record, I am the composer, and recorded the guitars and the synthesizer. My friends from The Freedom Toast did the rest, all done at our studio in Atlanta.