by Christine Mcdermott

Created on: July 12, 2009

The day was sunny and bright in the city of Mainz, Germany. The girls woke up in their hotel suite ready to see all the wonders their mother and father must have seen. Or maybe not. Ann forgot for a moment that the time her parents shared in Mainz was full of bombed buildings, smoke in the air, and an unease within the city. Her mom and dad shared a time of war; the girls were there to see the birth of a love that lasted a lifetime.

As the three of them got ready, her mom Hildegard, her sister Debby, and Ann talked about events the night before. They had met more of their German relatives: an aunt and a cousin's new wife. Their cousin was out of the city, in Italy, being the artist he had always been. The German relatives decided to take the three of them out to see the nightlife in the city, to a Gasthaus, where they were able to get to know each other well. The five of them tasted many of the local specialties including Nakischewurst (which was raw sausage) and Neuerwein, a wine that had not been fermented yet. They laughed together and felt the warmth of family and friends, along with a closeness that Ann would never forget.

The best was yet to come, however, when on the next day, Hildegard's nervousness was starting to be apparent. Ann and Debby's dad had passed away the year before, and one of his last wishes was for the three of them to visit the place where he and their mother had met. They were going to relive the intensity of their parent's love, which nothing could compare to, even during wartime. Ann thought about how the three of them were called the Three Muskateers because, if given a choice, there was no one each of them would rather spend time with, than each other.

Today was their day, to explore and imagine the past. As the three of them got into the car, Ann realized how she had been driving in a foreign country and was not doing too badly. She did have a fleeting thought, more a question, as to what the roads may have been like during the war...but kept the thought to herself as they rolled out. The three of them first drove to a small town outside of Mainz, called Gustavsburg. This is where Hildegard had been born and where she had grown up. Tears welled in her mother's eyes as she viewed her birth home while inspiring the two of them with pleasant remembrances of her earlier youth in bloom. Ann just remembered seeing the deeply-pitted bullet holes on the side of the stone house and clutched her stomach, thinking how horrible

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