Lulu and Felix
It's eleven o'clock on a Tuesday morning. Or is it already Wednesday? Nobody seems to keep track of things like that here, not particularly. It's summer and the kids are on vacation. I'm done with breakfast, through with answering my mail and Felix and I are sitting on the couch in the living room, checking out pictures on the internet. Felix is four. He usually starts by asking to see pictures of dinosaurs. He loves dinosaurs he says, and intends to become a dinosaur researcher when he grows up. When he's tired of dinos we move on to other pictures, of dragons, of Roman soldiers, of funny cats, of tarantulas and of cockroaches.
Feli's mom, a scriptwriter, is upstairs, hard at work on a story she has to deliver to a national television network in the next day or two. A, is one of the most impressionable mothers I've come across. She isn't particular about the things which you would expect a "perfect mother" to be bothered about, but has something to offer which not every mother is able to. She is ready to lend a ear. When a kid, a friend, a colleague, the au pair, is in trouble, or anyone is sad or mad, when someone needs a shoulder to cry on, for whatever reason, A is ever willing to listen. When things genuinely go wrong and you need help A is never far away.
Feli's dad, a musician, is busy in his studio in Munich, about an
hour's drive away from the town of Prien where I'm stationed at the
moment. He should be back in a couple of days. T has a kind of
indeterminate routine. A lot of the time you find him banging or
hammering away at some piece of furniture, squinting at the room from
different angles to see if the new parquet flooring is up to the mark.
Apart from being a first rate guitarist and composer T is on a
permanent home improvement drive. He is quiet, occasionally gruff and
withdrawn, and always dependable. Feli's older sister Lilly is back from
boarding school in England and the younger sister Lulu is currently
working on a barn in the vicinity, looking after a bunch of horses for
the owner of the stable.
Felix and I are still oohing and aahing over giant spider pictures when footsteps sound outside the door and Tilmann enters the room. Tilmann is a friend of the family who has recently moved into the quarters downstairs, and has managed to find a place in everybody's heart with his ear to ear grin and his never ending willingness to help out with whatever needs to be done - shopping, cleaning, clearing the dishwasher.
This is a household where people come, people go. Some stay a few hours, others a few days and still others a few months or even a couple of years. It's like a throwback to the sixties. The days of the flower children. The era of community living. Here is the space and opportunity for friendship to grow and love to blossom. The giant ideals which shine through, coupled with our riotous imagination, take us to the farthest galaxies of the universe and back. Tidiness and order might be somewhat lacking but it's more than made up for by the warmth, caring and support which I have come to associate with this space in the last few years, especially in the four months I spent here last autumn and winter, recovering from a badly fractured ankle.
I think back to the cold, clammy nuclear families in which many of us live in the cities, so sparing with our time, space and energy, not to mention money and other resources. I think of all the parents who sit over the children's homework with an eagle eye, who exercise strict discipline, I think of homes where expectations hang like a cloud over everybody's head. Then I bask in the feeling that arises between individuals when those expectations are dropped and it becomes possible to just be the way you are.
During the day each of us ends up doing our own thing. It is a relief I know, for A, that I am not a run of the mill guest expecting to be entertained and shown around. Our paths cross a couple of times during the day when we meet for lunch or catch up on what's been happening over a cup of coffee in the afternoon. The best part of the day though, is after dinner when, kids having been packed off to bed we adults retire to the porch room with a bottle of wine, over which we share the ups and downs of the day. The wine invariably makes it easier to delve into matters of the heart. Questions surface which mostly get drowned in the noise of the everyday world. Questions about love, about what our lives are about. We talk about terrorism, we talk about the lack of empathy in the world. About what we would spend a million euros on, if we were to win a lottery ticket.
Sometimes we tread on each other's toes but then, we put our cards on the table and thrash things out, which is the best way I've found out, to deal with the friction which inevitably occurs between human beings who live with each other or work together. Most often the heart to heart chats help to clear up whatever anger or frustration has built up, leading us to that rare space between individuals, known as intimacy.
It is often late when we stagger off to bed, but the kind of tiredness with which I snuggle between the sheets feels good somehow. Drifting off to sleep, under a cosy quilt I get an inkling of the kind of world it might be possible for human beings to create for themselves if only they could let go of some of the things which make it impossible to live with each other. If they could let go of their pride, if they could let go of their defensiveness, their fear of upsetting other people, their false morals. And then I begin to sink into the fog with the delicious feeling that maybe, just maybe, some day far down the line, things will work out fine for us all.
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