Your experience in the garden does sound unusual, but I am glad for you that the feeling passed. I think with all that’s happening in the world right now, many people feel uneasy. It seems like everyone is watching everyone else to see what will happen.

My father and I will be returning to the United States for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We leave in eight days. We will spend the holidays with some of my cousins and aunts and uncles. My father has a brother and two sisters, and everyone is coming to my grandparents’ home in Montana for Christmas. We still have a home there too, but it is rented out, so we’ll be staying with relatives. I’ll see my mother’s mother too, who is still alive. She lives in Philadelphia.

If we don’t hear from each other again, have a great Christmas!

I wish I could see you before we go, but my father is so tied up with arrangements and things, and I have a lot of schoolwork to do in preparation for being gone too. Maybe when I get back. When do you leave for Switzerland? We will be back on the 11th of January.

Matthew

Lieber Matthew!

I’m afraid we won’t see one another after you get back to Germany—not soon at least. I will by then already be in Switzerland! I hope you get this card. I’m sending it to your address in Berlin.

I think it is wonderful that you are returning to America for a visit. I would like to see your country sometime. Papa and Mama have talked about our family going to England sometime, but now with things the way they are, I don’t know when or if that will happen.

This is too small, not even worth counting as a letter. But I mean what the card says, that I hope and pray God makes it a special Christmas season for you and your father!

And that you have an enjoyable stay in the United States!

Sabina

Dear Sabina,

Your Christmas card was forwarded to me here in Montana. I’m glad the mail is still going through OK. My father is not at all sure how things will be when we return to Berlin.

Our visit here is very busy with seeing people, relatives and old friends. The best of all is the pine forest just outside our town. Remember when I told you about the forests in Montana! This is where I grew up, so these woods and I are old friends. My mother and I were here while I was young and in school. My father traveled a lot and we would join him when I had school vacations.