Things you don't tell your parents

Sometimes our children do crazy things that terrify us. But it can also be your parent who does the really risky things.  My mom told me about this time when she was young.  This is her story, in her own words: 

My mother, leaning on the car, starting out on her journey with two friends

 “In 1959, I hitchhiked to Israel from Italy.   I hitched with two other South African women; all in our early twenties.  We had started off in Italy but the price to go to Israel by boat was beyond our budget, which was when we decided to hitchhike.  I knew my parents would have worried so to hide what I was doing from them, I wrote a stack of re-assuring postcards for my parents and gave them to a friend to post at regular intervals. 

We started in Rome then we went to Greece and then to Turkey and then to Syria and then to Jordan and then to Jerusalem.  We hitchhiked the whole way.  

My mom on the right, pretending she can read a map

Some places we stayed a bit longer than in other places; we stayed for three days in Aleppo, for example.  What I remember about Aleppo was that we had a picnic with an artist there. We made friends quickly, and those friends drove us to Damascus and then onto Beirut. 

We stayed in Beirut for three days. What I liked best about Beirut was a famous restaurant called Les Caves Du Roy where I sang with the band. I sang a few songs and they offered me a permanent job, but I turned it down. I had places to go.

My mom, en route, on the extreme right, having a laugh

We hiked from Beirut to Amman with Datsun trucks.  People would also ask us where we were heading. Three English girls hiking in the Middle East was very unusual. We wanted to get out of Amman. It felt unsafe and unpleasant. There was nothing to stay there for.  The questions now became more personal about where we were heading. I made up a story that we heard in Palestine that there was an airport that would take us straight back to South Africa. We said we had planned to go to Saudi Arabia but every one warned us against that because of the white slave trade.  We had every intention of going to Jerusalem. We found a guy that agreed to take us there and then we found a place to stay in the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem.  We went to see the sights. I only wanted to see the Wailing Wall.   The Wall looked like nothing special. It was just a wall and people were just going around their business in front of it. I knew I couldn’t go up and touch it or kiss it because I didn’t want people to know I was Jewish.

Mandelbaum Gate 

To get into Israel we needed to get an exit permit.  The interview at the office was a bit scary. The official asked us why we were going to occupied Palestine.  Then the Big Lie started about the airplane that went directly to South Africa. They wanted to see the money that would pay for our flight to South Africa.  I realized then that I was in trouble because I didn’t have any cash to show them that I could buy the tickets. But the other two women could.  They gave us the necessary permits and we were directed to the Mandelbaum Gate where we handed in the visas. We were very nervous. We did it very fast but I did take the time to look back. It was very emotional.  I could see the Jordanian guns pointing back towards the square towards Israel. On the Israeli side, there were no guns.  I could just see a playground and I could see children playing. I realised I was in a different place. It stopped being a game when I saw the Jordanian guns and the Israeli children on the other side.

On the other side, the Israeli security guard stamped my passport and gave me a visa for two weeks. I said no, I’m staying here.  He said: why would you want to stay here? At this point I started crying and told him I was Jewish. He whisked me off to the other interrogation room where they asked me about the route I had taken to get there. He was not friendly and very suspicious of me. I told them the truth about where I had been and he said to me if you were my daughter I would lock you up and throw away the key.   He gave me a visa for three months and said I had to report to the police every month.  The other girls went to the airport to fly back to South Africa, and I hitchhiked alone to Tel Aviv.

I had no job. I was quite lost at that time. I worked at a coffee bar, at a sheet music store. I taught English privately. I babysat. Then one day when I was babysitting, the woman told me about a physiotherapy course that sounded interesting. So I applied for that and got in.   Slowly, I started to build my life in Israel.   Years later a journalist asked me to tell my story but I refused. I felt foolish for the risks I had taken and for the lies I had told my parents.  I never told anyone the whole story of what happened until now"

My brother, me and my mom 

Three days in Frankfurt Am Main

I was working as a copywriter in an ad agency in New York. I was doing well. I had won an Emmy award for a commercial I had written. My boss had given me a book as a present. In the inside cover, he wrote: 'one day, all of New York will know your name'.

I had a job I was good at, friends, a little apartment, a cat and gym membership. I also had a green card and a shelves full of books I had collected from Shakespeare books, Strand books and even Barnes and Noble. I had a handsome, intelligent, hardworking boyfriend who lived in Germany. So I quit my job and said goodbye to my friend and gave away my books.

I got on a plane and went to live in Germany where I had no friends and no job.  In retrospect, it seems like a bad decision.

My handsome boyfriend picked me up from the airport and took me back to his apartment. It was in an industrial area behind the train station. It had fluorescent green sofas and a wall-to-wall carpet to match. There was no mat under the carpet so it felt hard underfoot. There was no fridge. There was tinned meat and beer in a cool box. There were no shops around or bookshops and restaurants like in New York. Then the handsome boyfriend went back to work.

He said he didn't want to get married. I said I did. I needed to because I didn't have a visa to work in Germany.  I wanted to marry and have children with him. That was my plan.

On the day I arrived in Germany, he came back from work very late. The next day, he went back to work and I went back to the airport to pick up some boxes I had sent from New York. It was tricky finding my way around that part of Frankfurt airport because I couldn't say much in German.  But I managed, and I came back to his apartment with the boxes in a taxi. I was brave, but not brave enough.

A week after I arrived, he had a business trip for a few days in Berlin. I wanted to go with, but he thought it wasn't a good idea because he would be working very hard. So I stayed alone in Frankfurt in his apartment with the green sofa and hard floors, behind the train station. I stayed alone in a city where I didn't know anyone. And couldn't really speak the language. So I did what I usually do in those situations. I drank a lot of brandy and Coke. I wrote and I cried. The  drunker I got, the more it hurt and the worse I wrote.

It was like that for three days.

Now when I think back to that scorched earth time, I wonder why I didn't gather myself, pack my stuff and take a taxi to the airport. I could have bought a ticket back to New York or to Cape Town. Why didn't I? I could have ended that pain.  Why didn't I leave. Why did I think I had no options?  I was the woman who had won awards and who had retrieved her boxes alone from Frankfurt airport. I wish I had been brave enough to have left then. I wish I had been imaginative enough to see a different future for myself.  I imprisoned myself with a picture of the life I wanted at any cost.  I stayed and I stayed. I wish I could tell that crying, drunk, lonely woman to get up, pack up and get a taxi back to the airport.   I want to tell her she is worth more. I want to tell her that there is some shit that you don't have to take. But even now I don't know where to tell her to go once she gets to the airport because she is really can't go backwards, and there is no future yet. I see her scanning departure times for London, New York, Cape Town and not knowing where to go.

So I stayed, and I waited for him to come home. And he did. We got married and had three children.  It took me another 26 years to figure out where to go and how to get there, but I finally did it. I live with my youngest daughter now, in a tiny house in London. I have a lovely job, kind friends and full bookshelves. I'm still working on the gym membership.