A Black Forest Fairy Tale

When I was seventeen, my Oma taught me a traditional recipe for black forest cake. I remember how she leaned over the counter, apron dusted in flower, hand mixing the batter just like they used to back in Germany. I watched as she demonstrated sifting the powder into the eggs, slicing cherries thin to spread in between layers. As the cakes sat in the oven, we made coffee and sat with cookies, and she told me how she met my Opa, her husband.

“I had grown up in Holland, it was so beautiful when I was young. Before the war, everything was green, growing. We would walk to school and to church with bare feet on the stone sidewalks. But news of the war was reaching us there, and the threats of an invasion became frequent and real. I was only eleven when Germany took our land. It was 1940 then, and it would be five years before we were independent again. While our country was occupied, we were forced out of school. Although we weren’t Jewish, our families were sent to camps to empty our houses, and to force us into factory work. Then finally, the war ended, and we were able to go home. Although our homes were broken, and some of our trauma would never heal, we were free once again.

“It wasn’t long after, when I was only a few years older than you, that I met a man I planned to marry. My mother loved him, and she wanted me to be with a good Dutch man; a man who knew our culture and was on the right side of our history. I loved him, I suppose, but before the wedding I planned a trip to Luxemburg. I think secretly I had hoped that on this trip I would get some sign, some reason, not to marry the man that was waiting for me back home. I was young, and didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with the first man my mother liked. But the last day of my trip came, and I hadn’t found a reason to stay away any longer. I packed my few things and made it to the train station ready to travel home and become a wife.

“As I waited beside the tracks, a train coming from West Germany arrived. Many of the Germans were still greeted with scowls, even after the country’s division and reparations. My mother had always spoke out against the Germans, especially after the war, and the rush of people climbing from the train reminded me of the soldiers that had once knocked on our door. But then as I watched the crowd, one man met my eye. He had dark hair, and held my gaze, and was sitting next to me a moment later. We eventually made our way to a café a short walk away and shared a slice of the exact cake we’re making! As we ate, he told me that he had grown up in East Germany and fled to the West when the war was over. As he looked for work, he found himself on a boat to Canada, where he was building a life. He had come back to Europe wanting to be with his family, but Germany was no longer his home. He was coming on the train to get to the coast of France, where he would board one final boat and move back to Canada for good. We sat for maybe an hour or two, at most, before I had to go catch the final train of the day. But as we stood on the platform, neither of us could say goodbye. I looked at this man, and he looked at me. I told him I didn’t want to go home, and he told me that he would be waiting for me in Canada.

“I did go home that night, but only to pack a bigger suitcase, and tell my mother I wouldn’t be coming home again for a while. She was furious I had found a German boy instead of a good Dutch man, but she didn’t try and stop me either. It wasn’t a week later when I stepped on a train again, this time without a ticket to return.”

The oven rang out from the other room and pulled us both from the story she was telling. We got up, and headed to the kitchen together, where we topped the cake with a whipped cream icing and the last of the cherry slices. My Opa came to try the cake with us when we finished, and as the two sat side by side, sharing a slice, I imagined them on that train platform decades ago, ready to run away together.