Being a Scharetg, Part 2

After visiting the garden in Luxembourg last summer, we motored south across the Alsatian countryside and through (literally by immense tunnels) the Alps to Switzerland. My mom and sister had an important place to show me. It was a location they had traveled to some years earlier with my dad, a spot remote enough that it can only be reached by car. Together we recreated the journey to a town represented cartographically as a microscopic dot—you have to hold the map at just the right angle for it to appear. They took me to a place called Paspels, a place that by equal parts rumor, legend, and historical fact is home to the elusive, mysterious, and scarcely seen species known as the Scharetg’s.

They warned me that when we arrived in Paspels I needed to be alert. One heavy blink could shade the village from view, they cautioned me. Driving on the single road that meanders through the village, you pass the last home in town as quickly as the first. There is one post office, one store, one school, one firehouse, one chapel, one castle, and one crumbly watchtower. It is after brunch before any of these structures feel the sunlight of morning—the Alps are so close and so impossibly large they cast a shadow over the village until nearly midday. But when the sun does summit the peak, it flashes a warm sheet over a place so perfect and pristine that it can’t possibly be alive. You’ve read of it in story books and you’ve seen it in films, but never imagined it was a living, breathing place. Just having your feet on the ground is a spiritual experience. The sound of cow bells rising from emerald hills and echoing through mountain air is a sound that acquaints you to the wisdom of the creator that made beauty possible.

Perplexed (yet eternally grateful) that any person could leave this place for another life, we set out to learn if anyone still in Paspels could pronounce our name. An Ellis Island registry that had surfaced in the nineties listed Paspels as my Great Great Grandfather’s place of origin. We knew that if there were any hope for uncovering the mystery of our family history, this was the place. Hoping our enthusiasm would compensate for our lack of German speaking skills, we built the courage to go knocking on doors. We thought the post office would be a good place to start. My always clever sister had scribbled eight big letters on scratch paper—SCHARETG. When a woman opened the locked door of the post office, I thrust the paper into her hand. All three of us watched in shock when she gave one quick glance to the letters on the note and our name rolled flawlessly off her tongue. Her eyes got big, she pointed to a cluster of homes over our shoulder, and unloaded a story in German that for all we knew was the answer to our lifelong questions.

We thanked her in our best accents and practically ran down the road to the homes at which she had waved her finger. It was with only one more knock that we found two women with the same name. Judith and Lisbeth, two Swiss Scharetg’s, live in the flesh. The only thing that made this dream more exciting was that the younger of the two spoke wonderful English. We spent one blissful hour with this daughter and mother duo, explaining in great detail who we were and what had brought us to their village. We told them what we knew of my Great Great Grandfather, that he had gone to America to give birth to Otto, who fathered Edward, who raised Kevin, who brought my sister and me to existence. Judith, a beautiful young woman with eyes bluer than the alpine sky, listened to our tale with childlike glee. She furiously translated our words to her mother, who more reserved and guarding of her wisdom, listened carefully and slowly nodded her head. She was visibly wary of these foreigners that had knocked on her door. She seemed to know something that she wasn’t prepared to share. A quiet truth lied behind her slightly furrowed brow. We left Paspels that day with hugs and kisses, but it would take one more year and another pilgrimage to the village to fully realize the circumstances that allowed this chance meeting between oddly familiar strangers.