Once more, with feeling…
Posted on | August 16, 2010 | 5 Comments
Out of the habit
We used to visit every other year or so, strategically taking advantage of the Christmas break or summer holidays. Germany was magical. The Gummi bears perched on my pillow in the guest room when I arrived and a never-ending supply of Brötchen at breakfast kept my mouth busy, but left my eyes wide.
I didn’t speak German fluently until college. My childhood visits allowed me to disappear almost completely beneath the barricade of language and the cigarette haze of mostly adult company. Invisible, I busied myself exploring the neighborhood, never out of the range of my mother’s call, but with more freedom than I was allowed at home.
Ever so often in New York, a spot on the sidewalk, or the stairwell of an old building, or the back of a dusty book shop possesses a confluence of smells that is somehow inexplicably, yet absolutely Germany. My Germany.
Coffee, cigarettes, hot chocolate with whipped cream.
The ink from tabloid newspapers.
Stale seltzer water.
Bread.
There are more, but they pass out of the realm of words and being, therefore, all the more sacred, cannot be subjected to my efforts to write them down. I grasp at the empty air, wanting badly to possess the smells that do more to awaken the long-buried feelings in my soul than good music, better novels, or the well-intentioned religious fervor of my youth ever could.
I haven’t been back since 2004.
Where the buck stops. Here.
It should never have been such a strong connection perhaps. We visited Oma and family. The thread of lineage stretched across an ocean from Nürnberg to Houston and we held on until the day it snapped.
Now it feels like an odd drifting sensation. Like sitting in a boat you thought was safely moored, only to find you’ve been carried out to sea.
Picking up stitches
When knitting, sometimes a stitch slips off the needles unnoticed. Many rows later, a hole shapes itself against tidy rows and gapes deformed. Progress halts. Steady and careful hands trace back through the rows to find the lost sheep, and slowly, carefully weave it back into the fold.
Homeless
An unidentified craving for something, I couldn’t have told you I missed Germany until I saw someone else’s pictures on Flickr. Christkindlesmarkt, the Christmas market, with twinkle-lights strung up over the square and be-mittened hands cupping mugs of steaming Glühwein. Rosy cheeks, smiles and fachwerk Häusern in the background.
I’m afraid of what I miss. I can’t tell if it’s the loss of place or the loss of people. If I miss the smells and memories and invisibility of some of my favorite childhood memories or if I actually miss the country, and the sense of roots there. I think I miss home. Home, that mythical place where everything is safe, warm, smells faintly of vanilla and you are perfectly loved.
I get the sense that the pattern is destined to have holes in it.
Where the heart is
What my memory constructs, I am rational enough to admit never fully existed. There are too many holes. Too many wounds. The bits and pieces point to something that never manifested. It doesn’t change the longing, or its intensity, but home, as in the most possible full sense of the word imaginable, has yet to exist for me.
The other side of my brain offers that it’s possible all the holes and wounds are necessary to shaping good people. People with boundaries and a sense of conscience. People who love well.
I read that somewhere last week… that in the end, it’s about how well we love.
Going home
It’s what I fear least about death. Despite my many questions and the unquestionable awfulness that is grieving, I believe in an afterlife.
I’m going to do everything I can to get myself back to Germany in the next year or two, but I’m preparing myself for the change. I don’t know that it will feel the same.
It probably won’t. And in the end, probably shouldn’t.
Time moves us all forward, all the time.
No one knits a sweater by pulling out all the stitches and re-rolling the skein.
Me? I’m knitting an anchor and tow line, so I can always find my way back.
Liebe Grüße,
Sam
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5 Responses to “Once more, with feeling…”
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August 16th, 2010 @ 1:28 pm
Oh man tell me about it. Swap out “Germany” for “Latvia” and I’d start to think you’ve been spending time in my brain. This is a beautiful, beautiful post.
August 16th, 2010 @ 1:32 pm
Thanks Zan. From you, kudos on writing are worth double.
August 16th, 2010 @ 3:08 pm
Absolutely beautiful.
August 16th, 2010 @ 8:57 pm
Love this, Sam. Beautiful is right- thanks for sharing.
August 17th, 2010 @ 11:03 pm
Isn’t nostalgia strange and wonderful and terrifying? I sometimes get it for things I never even had, and don’t understand. I guess Proust already covered it, and so did CS Lewis in “Surprised by Joy.”
I always fear that whatever it is, is lost forever…