My Parents

Mom and Dad (far right) with Mom's parents and a few of her siblings, 1980.






Dad grew up in Siberia, Mom in Kazakhstan. They spoke Russian in their USSR schools and workplaces, but at home they spoke their native language - Plautdietsch. Both of their families eventually moved to Estonia, where my parents met each other at an underground church.

That year thousands of Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) in the USSR were given permission to return to their homeland.

Five years later in West Germany...

My dad was visiting a new church when he saw my mom again. They were married on February 14, unaware that it was a holiday in the West.

Now they are in the US, doing Christian radio to Russia. (The head station is in California, of all places.)

When my parents are totally casual and unaware of themselves, they speak Plautdietsch with each other. The sound of it spoken gives me a deep feeling of familiarity, complete ease and warmth, because that is the feeling between my parents when they speak like that.


In the hospital this year