THE SHOVEL MADE A DULL RINGING SOUND as I thrust it desperately into the pile of frozen straw, dirt, and snow. The harsh January wind stung my face and numbed my fingers. My flimsy knit gloves did little to protect my tender young hands as I chipped away at the icy mound in search of the precious potatoes we’d stored there last autumn. Soon my runny nose had frozen—it seemed my nose was always running and my throat was often sore from infected tonsils. But none of that mattered. I had my assigned chore: to dig up the potatoes for our weekend meals.

One by one, I counted ten potatoes, stashing them in a burlap bag, and then dragged myself back through the cold to the school building where my parents both taught and where we had a three-room apartment on the third floor above the classrooms. During the winter, our rooms were heated by two coal-burning stoves, and the kitchen stove burned scrap wood that we collected from a nearby forest. With no indoor plumbing, I spent my early childhood trudging down the stairs and across the yard to the school latrines. But at least we had running cold water in our home and a solid roof over our heads. We may have been poor, but my brother and I didn’t know it. Everyone we knew lived in similar or worse conditions.

Reaching the third-floor landing with my precious cargo of potatoes, I pushed open the apartment door and kicked off my muddy shoes.

“Shut the door!” my mother said before I was even inside. I was used to her sharp commands and knew she expected immediate compliance.

That apartment was the first home I remember. I took my first steps there, but because of poor nutrition, constant illness, and the pathetic state of medical care in the GDR, those steps didn’t come until I was eighteen months old.

I dropped the dirt-clad potatoes into a bin in the kitchen and carefully removed the gloves from my frozen fingers.

“Did you count the potatoes?” my father asked.

“Yes—exactly ten.”

“Good. Now wash up and get to the table.”

“Can I warm up my hands first?” I asked, glancing toward the kitchen stove.

“They’ll thaw while you eat,” my father replied.

Over at the dingy sink, the ice-cold water felt surprisingly warm on my frozen hands. With that task completed, I headed to the kitchen table, where my mother waited with the dreaded spoonful of cod-liver oil, a torturous nightly ritual introduced by my grandfather, Opa Alwin, who had been served a daily dose of that wretched, dark brown—“but it is good for you”—goop while languishing with his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers in the bitter Norwegian cold during World War II.

Mother poured tea into my father’s tin mug and served us all thick slabs of rye bread slathered with rendered pork fat. I watched as Hans-Günther, three years my junior, listlessly played with his food. Apparently he did not like the taste.

As was typical in Germany, supper was a light meal, usually consisting of sandwiches. The main meal was served around noon, and our food was supplied by the school. Often it was barely edible, but it was food.

Up until fourth grade, the students all went to school with small beat-up aluminum pots attached to their backpacks. The meals were cooked somewhere off-site and transported in aluminum milk cans on a wooden handcart drawn by a dwarf woman named Ulla. When Ulla arrived at the schoolyard, we were already lined up single file and greeted her with a clanking cacophony produced by beating our small pots with our metal spoons.

“Ulla, what you got today?” we yelled at her.

“Nothing special,” she would answer honestly.

There was one meal that was worse than “nothing special.” It consisted of a spoonful of watery scrambled eggs, a little bit of mashed potatoes, and a generous helping of an overcooked greenish pap that had once been spinach. On the days when that meal was served, most of my classmates and I emptied our small pots surreptitiously behind the bushes and chose to go hungry in anticipation of a slice of bread and a piece of sausage at the evening meal.

Saturday was soup day, and Sunday was the only day of the week when either meat or fish was served. The scarcity of food meant there was an ironclad rule in our home: “You will not leave the table until you have finished all the food on your plate.” “I don’t like it” or “This makes me sick” were not acceptable excuses.

Besides raw tomatoes, there were two vegetables I absolutely hated: red beets and celery root. Though I was able to choke down the beets, celery root was a different matter.

One day as I forced the dreaded root down my throat, it came back up with everything else. My mother jumped up from the table, threw a wet cloth at me, and made me clean up the mess.

“Now get back to the table and finish your meal,” she said.

I wanted to protest, but her pressed lips and narrowed eyes sent me silently back to my plate. I took a deep breath and swallowed another bite—and it came right back up as the previous portion had.

Faced with a choice between enforcing the rules and having a mess on the table, my mother finally relented and changed the rule. I still had to eat my beets, and everything else on my plate, but thankfully no more celery root. Just the thought of it today makes me feel a bit queasy.

Life continued to be hard in the mid-1950s. Building a new life in the GDR required both intelligence and survival skills. My parents had both.

My mother was well-prepared for the task of supporting a family during times of limited resources. She had acquired all the necessary skills during an apprenticeship as a domestic aide. Her darning ability came in handy in the management of our limited supply of socks and stockings. We Dittrichs were never caught with holes in our socks.

Somehow, she got her hands on a prewar mechanical sewing machine, and with the help of that contraption she repaired and altered our clothes. For years, we wore silk undergarments fashioned from the remnants of a parachute my father had found in the woods.

All food was rationed, including staples such as milk, bread, flour, sugar, and meat. Coupons were printed by the central government and distributed by local leaders.

One day, at the start of the month, my mother sent me to buy milk and handed me a wallet with some money and all the food coupons for the entire month. When I returned to the apartment, I realized with great horror that I no longer had the wallet in my possession. There was no hiding the fact that our entire monthly ration was gone.

“Mutti, I have to tell you something, but please do not get angry.”

My mother gave me that stern look I was so afraid of and said, “What did you mess up this time?”

“Mama,” I said, using my most endearing voice, “the wallet is gone.”

The horror on my mother’s face was frightening. “Ach du meine Güte!” she exclaimed. “Do you know what you have done? That was the food for the entire month, and anybody who finds the wallet can use those coupons. Go to your room. There will be no supper tonight!”

With head hung low, I went to my room and cried myself to sleep. The next morning, my mother stated matter-of-factly, “Albrecht, you are in luck. One of the neighbors found the wallet and returned it to us. But you have to learn a lesson: No sweets for you for the entire month!”

So for the next thirty days, I went to bed without being able to satisfy my sweet tooth.

Our evening routine was always the same, regardless of the time of the year or day of the week. At 6:00 p.m., all play had to stop. Even if it was still light enough to play outside, my mother would stick her head out the third-floor window and yell, “Albrecht, bedtime!”

My friend and playmate Reiner was allowed to stay out longer, and he was always baffled by this clocklike rigidity. But I would trudge up the stairs, get cleaned up for supper, swallow the hated cod-liver oil, eat my sandwich, and get ready for bed.

Most nights, “getting ready” meant washing my hands and face with a washcloth and cold water. Saturday was the day we got a thorough cleaning, either in a wooden bathtub filled with water that was heated on the kitchen stove or at a communal bath at the local factory.

Every night, after I said “good night” to my father, my mother followed me to my room, tucked me into bed, and gave me a good-night kiss. Then she turned out the lights and closed the door behind her. There was never a bedtime story or a lullaby, just the most efficient routine to get the boys into bed.

One night, when I was about five years old, I playfully averted my face to avoid my mother’s kiss and said, “Mutti, I am bigger now. I do not need a good-night kiss anymore.”

She raised her eyebrows for a brief moment but quickly regained her composure.

“All right then,” she said curtly, and turned away.

Left alone in the dark, I was distraught. Did my mother not understand that I was trying to be funny? I was craving more hugging and kissing, not less. I wanted to take back my foolish joke, but the dark room and the fear that my mother would not understand my innermost thoughts and feelings held me back. Instead, I cried quietly until I fell asleep.

For years, my mother proudly shared this moment with others as proof of my early maturity. Her friends would chuckle as if I’d done something both comical and praiseworthy, while I would grin and duck my head. But my yearning for affection did not subside, no matter how many times my mother told that story.

From that night on, there were no more kisses for me.