Baby Blue Mercedes

Back when I sixteen, my father rented an enormous, top of the line, baby blue Mercedes sedan in Stockholm. We were traveling as a family of six, ages four to forty-three, our final destination: The Hague. We think they were having some trouble getting the car back towards Germany, because it was ridiculously cheap, and they made us a deal we could not refuse. I remember my father saying that we would probably never drive such a fancy automobile again, which I dismissed at the time, but it turned true close to fifty years later. The thing was that in addition to being somewhat embarrassed by the unaccustomed luxury, we would have to drive through Germany and Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France before turning it in. My father being of WWII vintage, also pink-cheeked and blue-eyed, conceivably Arian, although entirely white anglo saxon protestant, driving a Mercedes with "Deutschland" on its stern, he drew particularly nasty looks from many along the way, who treated him as if he were a former Nazi. We felt their enmity and our father's discomfort. It was probably worthwhile to feel the revulsion and know what it was like to be a German in post-war Europe.

There have been a few experiences and situations in my life which have made me feel squeamish or discomforted. Gardening in Greenwich for people I once considered my peers, for example, who wondered how it was that I was digging in their dirt. House painting for a schoolmates' parents in Easthampton made me feel awkward, as did carpentering for various friends over the years. This winter, caretaking with my wife in a grand house on the top of College Hill, filled with wall sized 19th century oil paintings, highboys, a Steinway grand, a spiraling staircase, a half dozen bedrooms upstairs is akin to my father in the German car. It feels strange to live here amidst such unaccustomed wealth. Part of life, I think, must be role playing, but this makes me feel like an impostor. I'll just have to get over it. Yet another of many changes; I might just say, consider the alternative! Ironically, my father grew up in just such luxury, living in a town bearing his family name. Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in a dozen generations. It is my good or bad fortune to be out of phase, at the end of such a grand legacy.