A fancy hotel in Bremen/Germany had lost my reservation. They put me up in a maid's room above their pub, a few hundred feet away. Afraid to go down for dinner in the noisy pub full of men, I locked myself in and ate my last Granny Smith apple. Without television, radio or books, all I had was a magazine. I read it from cover to cover.
I came across an ad placed by a former German man living in Canada. He looked for a new mommy for his four-year-old daughter. Canada? I was intrigued. I wrote a reply and never thought I'd get a response.
Four weeks later, I found a large brown envelope with several 'Beautiful British Columbia' magazines, a letter with excellent handwriting and several photographs of father and daughter in my mailbox. Wow! I sat there, stunned, staring at all of that. My guts told me 'watch out.
The Canadian man's father, a lawyer, called me. He knew about the ad. He told me, "My son is not a fly-by-night. Sit down and answer his letter!"
An active letter exchange started. I visited the lawyer and his family; they were kind to me and, since I was a single lady alone in West Germany, I got hooked. Three months later, I got 'engaged' by telephone.
While I was on holiday, the lawyer and his wife organized our wedding without ever asking me. My parents were upset - but I was in love with the cute little girl and reluctantly went along with it. I did not know how to disentangle myself. Louis from Canada came for the wedding a week before it happened. His daughter spoke no German, my English was limited.
I left Germany seven months after I had answered the ad and immigrated to Vancouver, Canada. I realized soon after my arrival that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Louis used my hard-earned money to pay his debts. He even confessed, "I had to increase the loan to come to Germany to marry you." I had no way of returning to Germany. I had been blinded by his well-to-do parents, thinking, 'the apple does not fall far from the tree.'
I was in love with the little girl. I did want to disappoint her, she was happy to have a new mommy. I was afraid to tell my parents that they had been right to warn me. I tried to make the best of it, took English classes to be able to converse with the kid and neighbours. In Germany, I had been a health educator, giving lectures all over the country. Here I felt lost without mastering the language. I lived my teenage years in East Germany; after escaping to West Germany, I was considered a second class citizen.
We moved to Winnipeg after five months. A year later Louis' second daughter came to live with us. Several months later, I bore a son; he kept the family together. A few happy years followed.
Louis went bankrupt. I lost my drive for life, I faced suicide several times but couldn't do it because of my little boy. Louis told me, "Their first mother left the girls, and if you do that, you'll ruin them for life."
Trials and tribulations were constant companions. For the last couple of years after twenty years of marriage, Louis had an affair that led to a nasty divorce. I lost everything and moved back to Vancouver, hoping to start a new life.