In writing my recent book, Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity, I tell the story of growing up within a culture and a race that was different to my own. Here’s an excerpt:

With Ruth, 1948

And so, I learned that no woman in the world, “not even the Queen of England,” was spared a situation that would continue for a few days and recur with regularity every month. “You might as well refer to it as your ‘happy days,’ or ‘the curse.’ Time will tell,” they added, referring to the appropriateness of the term. And so, my ‘happy days’ would not be addressed again for a decade. The mysteries of creation, conception, and birth remained well outside my earshot. Issues about sex and making love never figured among my youthful reveries, because I never saw, not between Vati and Mutti, or Ruth and Rudolf, a charged erotic look that could have made me blush at accidentally witnessing it.

Perhaps it was because they were so much older, that I did not notice how Mutti and Ruth actually had the attributes of sensuous women. Neither left her room in the morning without first placing a dab of perfume behind her ears. They had talcum powder, cologne, and perfume in delicate scents that were as distinct as their signature. The toiletries held in crystal vials and silver boxes on Mutti’s dresser, caught the morning sun, projecting rainbows on the walls filling her bedroom with enchantment. They did not wear the bright colors of flowers or floral prints, and favored the shades of the earth and the blues of the sky and the sea. Lace, chiffon, and shantung were not for them; they wore linen, cotton, and silk.

Read more: Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity (Kindle) or Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity.