I did at least an hour of sorting every day, after we took the goats to see Mr. Z. Then Eli worked on his recital dance and especially on his solo. (I think he comes up with a new version every single day.)
Sorting out Uncle Gregor’s basement didn’t go fast, because there were a LOT of boxes. But it wasn’t really hard either. I mean, maybe somebody can use four bags of sweaters with fake pearl buttons, but Mom said not her, and Oma said she never gets cold anymore, and Eli said it might freak people out to see a sweater flying around anyway, like it surprised Dad when she forgot to take her apron off and came to say hi. So I knew which pile to put all those in.
I labeled a new pile too: stuff to ask Oma about. I put all the kitchen stuff in there, and all the photos, and anything with old handwriting that was hard to read. That way, I wouldn’t give anything she really wanted away by accident.
Mom stopped by a couple of times to pick up bags and bags of clothes with no holes or anything, to take to a place out near the farms she works with. (You don’t give people stuff that’s already trashed, because that’s not respectful.) And Dad took the boxes of records and fourteen lamps to the Maple Falls thrift store on his lunch break. After that, we had a LOT more space to work.
Then, when we got hungry or bored, we made some lunch, and worked on Eli’s costume and my computer notes, and on the GOAT Obstacle Course, and read, and thought up more ghost research to try during our kaffeeklatsch.
Oma stayed home and got ready for our kaffeeklatsch. Mr. Ziedrich came over most days before we got back, so Oma could bake stuff, and sometimes Oma invited Ms. Stevermer too.
I have to say, kaffeeklatsches are a pretty good invention. I kept Mr. Z. up to date on how my projects were going, and Eli tried out his solos before a test audience. We filled Oma and Mr. Z. in on the comics we were reading, and Mr. Z. shared what he’d been reading about new inventions and scientific discoveries and some pretty cool projects we might build someday. And of course Oma told us all about how the sauerkraut was doing. (Pretty good, I guess, even though it just sat in the crock smelling like old socks. At least, it wasn’t moldy.)
Ms. Stevermer always asked how our ghost research was coming along. So we shared our notes with her, about how far Oma could go from her crock, and how we’d proven that the goats could hear her and see her, and what happened when Oma took a bite of something (it fell straight through her mouth and onto the floor, and Oma said she couldn’t even taste it), and how long Oma could hold her breath if she stuck her face in the bathroom sink when it was full of water (we all got bored after twenty minutes). We told her our theory that maybe our ages had something to do with why we could see Oma and no one else could. She thought we should explore that further, when we had time.
I’d found a couple more of Oma’s recipes, so she made these moon-shaped almond cookies that were pretty good. And I found her bowl with the handle, and she decided she liked Mom’s cake pans better than hers anyway. But I hadn’t found her special gugelhupf pan or her poppy-seed grinder yet. (I thought I did the other day, but it turned out to be somebody else’s meat grinder, and Oma said no way, we definitely could not give that a try with her poppy seeds, so that went back to the pile that somebody else could use. And we already tried putting poppy seeds in the food processor. Didn’t work.)
When we were done catching up, Mr. Z. asked Oma a lot of questions about her family, and saved all the answers in a stack for us.
I caught Dad reading them in the kitchen one day after dinner while Oma was playing checkers with Asad in the family room, and Eli was doing hockey-style announcing for them.
Dad saw me, and put the page down with a smile.
“You know you could ask her stuff too,” I told him. “She loves to talk about her family.”
Dad nodded. “You’re right, I should. I was just thinking…Do you remember your grandma Schenk?”
“Not really,” I told him. “She didn’t make sauerkraut, did she?”
Dad shook his head. “Nah, she was interested in other stuff. I wish I could have asked her some of these things before she died, though. Then I could tell you and Asad more about her.”
“Sorry, Dad—I think if she was in the basement, Oma or I would have run into her by now. Tell you what, though: I’ll find a binder, and we can make a section for Oma, and a section for Grandma Schenk, and maybe Grandpa Schenk and Great-Aunt Gerta too, and you can write down whatever you do know,” I said.
Dad smiled, even though he still looked kind of sad. He reached out and gave me a hug. “That’s a great idea. And who knows, maybe your uncle remembers some stories about them.”
We still got to have dessert after dinner too, so we could keep up with everything Oma baked. Asad begged her to make brownies, but she just smiled and told him she’d make something he would love. (She made him something called zwieback that she said was a cookie, but it looked more like a cracker, and kind of tasted like one. It had raisins. It didn’t go well.)
In the sixteenth box, I found another frame.
Mom got to pick the next photo for our wall. It was of her in her fancy wedding dress, sitting on Dad’s lap at their wedding. Uncle Gregor is pretending to push Dad’s wheelchair at the camera person, and Grandmom and Grandpop Davis and Aunt Nia are all laughing.
Mom told us about how she and Dad had been talking about getting married when their army contracts were up. When Dad got injured right before then, they decided to do it as soon as he got out of the hospital, even before he got used to his new leg.
“I told your dad I was not going to sit on the sidelines at my own wedding, though,” Mom said, laughing. “So I danced every single dance in that ridiculous dress—with your aunt Nia, your uncle Gregor, my parents, and all our friends.”
“Didn’t you get bored watching everyone else dance?” Eli asked Dad.
Dad shook his head. “I could have watched her all night,” he said, smiling. “Besides, she saved all the slow dances for me.”
“Dance with me too!” Asad said, and Mom and Dad laughed and led him into the kitchen, where there was more room for dancing.
Oma floated over to where Eli and I were sitting. “Did my grandson come to the wedding?” she asked, still looking at Mom’s photo.
“Nah, Grandpa Schenk died before they got married, when Mom and Dad were in the army and Uncle Gregor was still in school,” I told her. “Mom only met him once or twice, when they were on leave.”
Oma stared from Mom’s photo to hers, and back again. Maybe she was crying, or maybe her eyes were just glowing more than usual.
The day I finished sorting the twenty-sixth box in Uncle Gregor’s basement, I found Oma’s special gugelhupf pan and poppy-seed grinder in a box with a bunch of National Geographic magazines. I took them all out and shook them, and a recipe card fell out, for something called Mohngugelhupf. I put the magazines in the pile that someone else could use, and packed the rest up to give to Oma at our kaffeeklatsch.
“This is wonderful, Hans Dieter!” Oma cried, swooping in to give me a ghostly kiss on the forehead. She stuck her ghostly fingers into the poppy-seed grinder. A few very dusty poppy seeds fell out the bottom.
“Careful, Oma!” I told her. “I bet that thing could take your finger right off.”
“Wait, did you have to flatten out your fingers or something to get them in there?” Eli wanted to know, opening his notebook. “Could you stick your finger through these fork prongs so I can see how it works?”
“Perhaps I could clean that for you,” Mr. Z. said.
Oma floated the poppy-seed grinder over and dropped it in Mr. Z.’s hands. “Tomorrow we can make my Mohngugelhupf!”
“Actually, Eli and I are going to Rose’s RadioJunkYardBirds tomorrow,” I told her. “I need to make a list of exactly what components I’m buying for my project.”
“That can wait,” Oma said. “Tomorrow is Mohngugelhupf day! You will love it as much as my grandson did.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to hurt Oma’s feelings, but I wasn’t sure how to tell her I really wanted to do my plan, not hers.
“I bet we will, Mrs. S.! Well, unless it has raisins in it,” Eli said. “But we can’t help you tomorrow, because this is the next step of HD’s plan, and we have to keep him on track for the fair. You know how that goes.”
Oma’s ghostly form drooped a little. “But…I wanted to bake this with him.”
“Sorry, Oma, but Eli’s right,” I said. “I could help you the next day, though.” It might get me a little off track on the basement project, but I could probably catch up, if I skipped the obstacle course for a couple of days.
Mr. Z. came back in, drying off the pieces of the poppy-seed grinder with a dish towel. “I haven’t used one of these since I was a boy, helping my oma.”
Oma grabbed her pencil. Tell Hans Dieter how much he will love helping me tomorrow, she wrote, and shoved the paper at Mr. Z.
Slowly he set the pieces down, and picked up the paper, looking at my face.
“HD finished box twenty-six today.” Eli opened my notebook and showed him the steps of my plan. “We’re supposed to go to Rose’s tomorrow and make a list.”
“Ah, I see,” Mr. Z. said.
“Well, I do not see,” Oma muttered.
Mr. Z. settled back into his chair and tapped his fingers together thoughtfully. “The first time I tasted Mohngugelhupf, I knew it was magic,” he said at last. “We were visiting my oma—yes, for kaffeeklatsch—and she took the pan out of the oven. I could not imagine what could make that glorious smell!”
“Yes, yes!” Oma said. “And Hans Dieter—”
Mr. Z. couldn’t hear her, though, so he kept talking. “But I did not help her make that first cake. Sometimes we fall in love with the magic, before we learn more.”
Oma got quiet. Perhaps.
“Would you let me help you, this time?” Mr. Z. asked. “I would like one more turn with a poppy-seed grinder.”
Oma looked at me, and I held my breath.
Just this once, she wrote at last.
I let my breath out, and grinned at Eli.
I’d found another frame, so that night it was Dad’s turn to pick a photo. He picked one from when Asad was born, when we went to visit Mom in the hospital. Mom’s still in her hospital outfit, looking tired, but she’s smiling, and Dad is grinning and has his arm around her. I don’t look too sure about things, and Asad is screaming his head off.
Will you tell us about this photo? Oma wrote.
Dad nodded, clearing his throat. “I’ve had a lot of happy days in my life, but this was one of the happiest,” he said. Then he stopped, and had to wipe his eyes.
“That’s because you didn’t have to do the hard part,” Mom said, laughing. She hugged him while he got himself back together.
Then he cleared his throat again. “Of all the things I’ve done here on this earth, I’m proudest of you boys, and of being your dad.”
Trust Asad to ruin Dad’s moment. “We’re loud! We’re proud! We’re gonna take off and fly in a cloud!” he yelled, running around the family room. “And…TACKLE!” He grabbed Oma around the waist and tried to tackle her to the ground. Good thing I was there to catch him.
After Mom and Dad calmed Asad down again and went to get the kitchen squared away, Oma floated over to me. “Did your oma take care of you when your brother was born?”
“You mean Grandma Schenk?” I shook my head. “She moved to Arizona to help her sister a few years after Grandpa Schenk died. Mom says some people have a hard time staying in a place where everything reminds them of someone they’ve lost. But Uncle Gregor took care of me while Dad took Mom to the hospital, and Grandmom and Grandpop Davis came up to help us out, so we were fine.”
Oma was shaking her head. “No, no—you cannot move. You cannot leave everything behind….What if you forget?”
I shrugged. “I guess she was ready to move on.”