The optician taught me how to read as we sat with Selma and Martin—who could already read—in the ice-cream parlor in the county seat. Alberto, the new owner of the parlor, had given his sundaes torrid names and maybe he had so few customers because people in the Westerwald would rather order “three assorted scoops” than Flaming Temptation or Hot Desire. “Secret Love sundae” was the first thing I learned to read. Soon after, I tried to decipher the horoscope on the sugar packet that came with Selma’s coffee, hesitantly at first, then ever more confidently. “Leo,” I read, “courageous, proud, open, vain, controlling.” The optician’s index finger moved under the words in pace with my reading and slowed at “controlling.” When I read my first sugar packet fluently, a small Secret Love with whipped cream was my reward.

The optician always ordered a medium Secret Love without whipped cream. “A large Secret Love would be too much for me,” he’d say, and glance at Selma out of the corner of his eye. But Selma had no feel for metaphors even when they were right in front of her, topped with a paper umbrella, on a table in an ice-cream parlor.

The optician was with us when Martin and I discovered a pop music show, which became the only thing we wanted to listen to from then on. We asked the optician to translate the lyrics for us even though we didn’t understand them any better in our own language. We were ten years old and didn’t know what burning desire or hot pain meant, whether in the ice-cream parlor or on the airwaves.

We huddled around the radio. The optician was concentrating hard. The radio was old and full of static and the singers sang very fast.

“Billie Jean is not my mistress,” the optician translated for us.

“But Billie Jean sounds like a man’s name,” Selma said.

“Billie Jean isn’t his lover, either,” the optician said indignantly.

“Quiet!” Martin and I ordered.

“What a feeling,” the optician translated, “take your ardor and make it happen.”

“Maybe it should be ‘your passion’?” Selma asked.

“Right,” the optician said. Since he couldn’t sit for long due to a herniated disk, we stretched out on a blanket on the floor next to the radio.

“… lifts us up where we belong,” he translated, “on a mountain high, where the eagles weep.”

“Maybe it should be ‘where the eagles cry’?” Selma asked.

“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” the optician said.

“Quiet!” we shouted, then my father walked in and said it was time to go to bed. “Just one more song. Please,” I begged. My father leaned against the doorframe.

“Words don’t come easy to me,” the optician translated, “how can I find a way to make you see I love you?”

“Seems to me he doesn’t have any trouble finding words,” Selma objected.