Signs for spargel, the pristine-white asparagus delicacy, dot the landscape of Hügelsheim, with much of Germany’s signature vegetable growing in the nearby mounded fields. Dad has his arm linked in mine as we walk, limping against me as we traverse the shiny cobblestones. It’s his preferred method to stabilize himself rather than the cane we dragged onto all four flights from Canada to Germany.

     Remember why we are here. This mantra sustains me.

     We amble down Bannwaldstraße, a well-kept street of apartment blocks and bungalows built in the ’sixties. Just like back home, geraniums fill window pots, bikes litter front yards, sunshades shield patios.

     “Down here.” Dad wanders ahead, his sense of direction confused by road construction that has reduced half the street to rubble. My stomach lurches as he navigates the curb, then stumbles but rights himself, too determined in his destination. He fares better earlier in the day, physically and mentally. Seventy seems too young to be as ill as he is, but then the just-world concept is a fallacy in health, practicality, real life. My body knows this, too, the ache in my back a persistent reminder.

     My backpack carries everything I anticipate Dad might need—all items he insists we could leave in our AirBnB but that he will come to use throughout the day: lozenges for his medication-induced dry mouth, pain pills, water to wash down the pills, the 5 p.m. inhaler that he forgets without my reminder, and a hefty, three-pound seat cushion to offer some relief for his spine, which we estimate to be fifty percent metal. This cushion cost me a hundred dollars—some fantastical, medical mix of liquid, foam, and gel—and dangles from my bag by means of a MacGyvered strapping system and a carabiner. It bonks into my ribs with each step like a metronome. A ticking clock. I shift the straps of my leather pack to a new pressure point and follow.

     I know we are in the right place by the way Dad plants himself in the middle of the street, hands on hips, bottom lip wobbling under his mustache. 

     “This was our flat here,” he says, pointing to the left side of a yellow building with white balconies, two floors high. A modern black door echoes a newer time; Dad stands before it,  considers knocking before deciding otherwise. He stands back and takes deep breaths while I snap photos to preserve the moment.

     Here is the apartment where my parents brought home my older sister, Meghan, and where she spent her first year, where she took first steps, where they were so full of joy as a new, united family. This is a home where things that would come after didn’t yet matter.

     Cancer killed Meghan six years ago. But looking at this small apartment with my dad on the other side of the world, she somehow feels alive.

 

Our city, an hour outside of Toronto, was not a typical hotbed of military families—at least, not in the 1980s. So for kids in our neighborhood, the idea of a parent not being around for Christmas, gone places without a say, was obscure and impossible. It had been months since Meghan and I had last seen Dad. Maybe he was on a course. Maybe an exercise in the field. All we knew was the absence of his army gear bulging from the confines of the basement, the sweaty, preserved stink of army-green canvas. No Dad yelling “COWABUNGA!” sporadically, like our favorite of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, determined to make us laugh in those brief moments at home.

     My sister and I stood outside our elementary school, sweltering against the early June sun that bounced off the play structures. Meghan held my hand tight, her backpack hanging casually off one shoulder while we waited for after-school pickup.

     “Mom will be here soon,” she said. Sensing my anxiety, she gave my hand a squeeze, knowing that home was the haven for my introversion.

     We heard the armored vehicle before it even came into view, turning the tree-lined corner and emerging like a camouflage behemoth. The throaty rumble of the engine jiggled my lungs like music with heavy bass while the barrel of the weapon on the turret swung back and forth like an elephant’s trunk. Classmates paused in their play, stared in disbelief. An earthquake? Apocalypse? A school takeover?

     Dad was in the spotter navigator position in the turret, his head sticking out of the manhole cover that led to the rest of the crew inside the vehicle. His reddish mustache, so different from the almost-black hair on his head, was tight and tidy as his military life demanded of him, a straight line across his grinning mouth. His arm lifted in a wave as the vehicle screeched to a halt. The sheer volume of hot metal in such proximity made me feel like I’d been sucking on coins.

     “You girls need a ride home?” He gave a thumbs-up. Thumbs-up for motorcycle rides and camping trips and cookies eaten before dinnertime. Thumbs-up as a placeholder for unspoken words.

     Meghan squealed, hopping from one foot to the next before breaking rank, dropping my hand to rush toward the massive machine. Fearless to my fearsome. Her sneakered feet on tiptoes as Dad climbed down until he could reach his tattooed arms to scoop her up like she weighed nothing at all, placing her so her legs dangled down into the manhole.

     “Your turn, Moo!” he hollered down to me. He had always called me Moo Moo, a moniker I cannot shake and no longer want to. I approached slowly until I stood so close that I could smell the rubber from the tire that dwarfed me. He hauled me up, toward the sky, the metal, the smell of army that was now a comfort.

     My dad was not a pilot, but I’d have dared anyone on those school grounds to tell me he was not capable of flight.

 

After Hügelsheim, our tour continues to the former Canadian military base of Baden-Baden, two minutes away. The building that once housed the bank where Mom worked still stands, squat and unimportant. The plane hangars remain as well as streets and some military housing, all of which we take snapshots while I cruise our rental SUV at a snail’s pace.

     “The warrant used to make us run all the way around the perimeter of the fence line,” Dad says. It’s easy to imagine him in uniform in 1981—I saw it every day of my life until I graduated from university. He cuts a fine figure in army green, albeit in a form different from that which his body takes now.

     “I’d have puked after five minutes.”

     He continues as if I haven’t spoken. “Yup, lots of memories here. That was the admin building there. The mess.” Fingers dart out the windows at buildings that have all been painted dark gray, like geometric rain clouds cemented to the wrong side of the earth.

     I complete the loop, the rest of the base now off limits for private flying lessons. “Want me to go around again?” He shakes his head, and I circle back through the gate from the direction we came. It feels like we’ve traveled across the world for a one-hour walk down memory lane.

     We keep the windows down to let the air whoosh through our hair and ears. The radio hums so low that I can barely make out the words, but I hum along, making a song of my own to fill the space.

     “Pull over!” Dad barks suddenly. “Right here!”

     Obeyance is immediate and ingrained. I bank to the right, veering alongside a farmer’s field, and try to quell my panic. “What? What’s wrong?”

     “Park there.” He has the door open before I manage a full stop.

     Irritation stirs in my gut, but I follow him from the car and out into the heat, oppressive for May, especially for winter-seasoned Canadians. Dad is clomping through the grass with purpose, a man on a mission, while I trail behind, tripping on my sandals.

     “Here,” he says proudly. Behind him is the Hügelsheim town sign carved into a thick slab of wood, illustrated with more spargel, the town crest, a church spire rising from the background. Quaintness from a different time. “I want a picture of us here. A selfie.” The word sounds strange coming from his mouth but I oblige, holding my phone camera out from our faces. When we look at the picture, his smile is tight and doesn’t reach his eyes.

     “Another one, Dad.” I stretch my arm as far as it will go, hoping that it captures some semblance of happiness.

     “When your sister was a newborn, I held her here in front of this sign, and your mom took a picture,” he says through gritted teeth, trying to hold his strained grin. “I want one of us now, too.”

 

Ten years old. Not quite a teen. 

     “What’s wrong, Moo?” Dad set down his boots, which he was polishing in rhythmic circles. It seemed he was always polishing boots, their mirrored shine reflecting back a distorted face.

     I trudged into the kitchen, my shins crusted with sand, hands hot with weeping blisters.     “Nothing.” Eyes on the shoes. I could focus my attention there, keep my shame from making itself known.

     “Something happen?” He peered out the window at the park from where I’d just come, so close to our house that the squeals of kids could be heard all hours of the day. Come evening, screaming from the tire swing morphed into brazen profanity and wispy curls of cigarette smoke from sullen teenagers who plonked themselves onto the monkey bars and harassed younger kids who dared to approach.

     By way of an answer, I pushed past him to the living room and flicked on the television. Not quite willing to stand up for myself when the boy in the leather jacket called me a slutty little shit. I rubbed my seeping hands onto the couch, streaking blood and clear fluid.

     Dad didn’t even put shoes on, perhaps not wanting to alert me to his plan. He merely slipped out the back door, still holding his chamois blackened with polish. The four teenagers didn’t look up until he was standing in front of them, but within minutes, they hung their heads in shame and loped off in different directions toward their respective homes.

     My dad is not a tall man, but hands on hips, shoulders erect and his form looming over the laconic teens, he looked like a giant.

 

In our now-commonplace stance of Dad’s arm linked in mine, we shuffle toward the steaming water, cautious on the slippery tiles. In this context, scantily clad in bathing suits, the body contact feels both too intimate and yet familiar, damp from the shower and our hair dripping a Hansel and Gretel trail behind us.

     After days touring Dad’s German highlights, he’s acquiesced to visiting the healing thermal spas of Baden-Baden, if not only because his body is in agony and our AirBnB doesn’t have a tub to soak in. The Caracalla Spa has indoor and outdoor pools of differing temperatures. We eye our options.

     “The hottest one for me,” Dad says, pointing at a hot tub with steam curlicuing from the water. Other guests smile at us while we approach, their cheeks pink with heat, and I wonder if they think I’ve targeted some rich, old, white man to ease me into my own retirement years.

     “I’ll help you in,” I say, as I step into the water. I feel like a lobster in a pot.

     “I can do it myself,” he whispers, not unkindly. People twenty years older than my dad are settled in pools already, the straps of their bathing suits sagging against the pulse of the bubbling water. I consider the depth of the stairs with overwhelming dubiousness, but we all deserve power over our bodies, and we have an audience of retirees smiling at us from below.

     I peel Dad’s hand from mine and place it on the metal railing so he can gingerly ease himself the rest of the way in. Immediately, his replaced knee gives way, but I am there to catch his elbow, my legs skidding out awkwardly to keep us both vertical. My splayed stance is a decidedly bad look in a skimpy one-piece but panic wins over pride. My heart thuds as we take a breath or two. That could have been bad. We have good insurance, right?

     “I’m just a frail old man, Dr. Moo,” he says to me, eyes crinkling with self-deprecating laughter, but there is a truth behind it we ignore. I wish he didn’t feel shame for a body broken in service of something bigger than himself. His country. Hope. I wish I didn’t, either.

     Sinking into the tiled seats, we let the warmth envelop us. Air pockets burp up from my bathing suit as the jets pulse against my spine. The spray that hits my mouth tastes lightly salinated, mineralized so that my skin is slippery and softened, rather than tight with chlorine.

     It takes two minutes before the heat is my undoing. “Dad, I’ve gotta move to a cooler pool. This water is roasting me like a ham.” I am in early onset perimenopause and have a thyroid disorder, neither which allows me to manage heat with grace. “I’ll go paddle around a bit and circle back to you, okay?”

     “Okay, Moo. Be careful.” This phrase of warning follows every parting we make, even when I remain in sight.

     The cooler pool is just a few steps from where Dad rests, but the temperature relief is instant. I press into a breaststroke, keeping my dyed head above water. Red hair is difficult to maintain now that my temples are more gray than anything else. Like so much else about my body edging toward forty, I measure the quality of the strands by the absence of something. Where they are left wanting.

     On my third loop of the pool, I see him. Dad’s elbows rest on the edge of the tub, his body dangling behind him into the heated water, eyes scanning the crowd for my redheaded beacon. I pop up and wave so he can see me, and his body visibly sinks back with relief. Relief and something else.

     I want to do a few more laps, but the vulnerability I saw flash across Dad’s face is the undercurrent of our entire week of travel. He needs me, and so many times, I have needed him, too. I exit the water, go to his side, and together we test the other pools, step by step.

 

The party was getting out of hand, even by teenage standards. Vomit dribbled down the side of the kitchen cabinets where someone had missed the sink, and the stink of the barbecue wafted inside, with someone having emptied the freezer of every possible meat product and thrown it on the grill. A game of strip poker unfolded to my left, the thrum of Ja Rule an ache in my ears. I stood with a syrupy wine cooler that I held to keep people from asking me why I was such a prude. Everyone was having fun, laughing, getting drunk. I pretended to be those things, too.

     I shuffled back and forth, desperate to pee, but something told me that if the kitchen looked like a crime scene, the bathroom would be worse. 

     “Can we go home soon?” I hollered into my friend’s ear.

     “Just a while longer, eh?” He squeezed my shoulder into his while I deflated, a grin spreading as he mouthed the rap lyrics.

     The bathroom. I couldn’t wait any longer, though the farm fields behind the house felt like a more appealing option. But it was dark, and the vulnerability of age, of a ripe body, of the surrounding altered inhibitions encouraged me to stay inside. I pushed open the door gently, like peeking in on a sleeping baby. The powder room smelled of bile, mildewed towels, and desperation—all so offensive that it took a moment to register the friend snorting a line of cocaine from the edge of the sink. The image before me didn’t make sense. How did one even buy cocaine? Were we even people who could afford cocaine? TV made it seem like powder snorters were movie stars and tortured artists. His eyes wobbled toward me, and I saw something there that tightened my chest. I pressed my lips into a placating grin and backed away, like one would upon meeting a bear in the woods.

     I snuck into the primary bedroom, teetering on the edge of the king bed while I whispered into the phone receiver. Dad didn’t ask questions when I climbed into his pickup, reeking of booze that someone had spilled down my linen pants. He wordlessly wrapped me in a hug and drove me home.

 

Berlin has been exciting but exhausting, a portion of the trip that has us ready for home. The hotel lobby is dead at 3 a.m., save for the same clerk who had given us directions to Checkpoint Charlie and sections of the Berlin Wall. Our heavy luggage, including Dad’s CPAP machine, are monoliths by the locked glass doors.

     The Circus Hotel sits at a busy intersection of five streets, some one-way, some only for buses, all of them bustling with bikers and pedestrians.

     “You remember how to get to the parking garage?” the clerk asks me as he hands back my credit card. Even with their proffered map, it had been confusing enough in the middle of the day, and I’d driven in circles several times to find the right block.

     “Yup, I’m good, thanks.” Surreptitiously, I prep like a woman headed into battle, like so many others traversing a city at night. Keys laced between my fingers. Phone set to emergency dial.

     “I should come with you,” Dad says, grabbing at my arm. “It’s late, and who knows what goes on out there.” I look at his cane, think of how far we walked yesterday and his limping pain, think of the flight we can’t be late for, and shake my head.

     “I’ll be fine, Dad.” I smile to assure him I mean it. To assure myself, too.

     It’s just eight blocks to the car. Ten minutes, max. The city is less abrasive this time of night. Restaurant patio chairs are stacked atop one another, the traffic lights tinkling red, then green in a predictive pattern. I begin walking in what I hope is the right direction, Dad’s silhouette glimmering behind me.

     “Well hello, hello,” a man says as I wait at the crosswalk, his eyes running up and down my body. Since I’ve arrived in Germany, the constant male attention has been both surprising and exhausting. Back home, I’m now irrelevant because of my wrinkles, my cellulite, my jadedness. For a while, the change had been depressing, a sign of my waning appeal, but it has since become a reprieve, an open-armed welcoming to my own definition of beauty. Over the last few years, I had forgotten how frightening that attention can be and what a reminder of vulnerability it represents. I don’t make eye contact with the man. Instead, I stare at the café across the road, where lights showcase a baker proofing bread. I could be there in just a few moments. I could bang on the door. I could scream for a fire.

     The man whistles as he passes and disappears down the other side of the street.

     I retrace my steps, peek into the bright lobby. Dad stands the moment he sees me, concern etched into his forehead. A father's fear never really dissipates. The need for a father never does, either.

     “Want to come with me after all, Dad? We can grab the luggage on our way back through.”

     He appears instantly at my side, knees crackling, cane in one hand, elbow linked in mine, and together, we walk.