Tomorrow is Elke's birthday, and I'm wishing her a happy one.
Elke has been my friend since 2002, when she posted a feisty comment on my former website, http://needahand.com/, under the name "German Mama". That website was more or less devoted to the works of John Irving, a favorite novelist that Elke and I shared... (and, if you click on that URL now, it will just forward to this blog). Her comments on that site led to us becoming email cyber-friends from then until present, and our emails have gotten way beyond talking about what books we're reading. We have gotten to know each other better in many ways better than friends that we see every day.
The emails led to us visiting Elke in Germany a couple times now (her husband Peter, who speaks no English, is still mystified and nervous that Elke has this male friend in the U.S. that she got to know through the internet), and I'd like to get back over there in the next year or two to see her again if I can.
Elke has had a couple of books published (no English translation of them yet), and, if she writes in German half as beautifully as she writes in English, I know they are good. Her emails are sometimes masterful.
It's going to be 18 September in Germany seven or eight hours earlier that it arrives here, so I want this to be there when she checks the blog in the morning -- HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ELKE! xoxo!
2 comments:
Einen guten Tag haben. Viel spaß zum geburtstag. Tut mir leid, wenn meine Grammatik ist nicht gut.
Howard, I think this was THE answer to my emailed wish that I'd like the people I love to fuss a little more about me than they actually seem to do. Thank you so much. What you did was more fuss than I can bear and I think it will last for at least one year of my earthenly existence, let's say until Armageddon next year, ok ? ( See you in Southern France, au pic de Bugarach, for a survival party?)
And Ruthie: Thank you also. You can speak German? WOW!
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