We get so wrapped up, don't we? In contemplations about the next step, or is it too late? Am I good enough? How do I stay true to myself in a world that's full of lies? And suddenly there's a chance to do this or that, and so we get up and go. Just do it, is what we think. Kick some serious ass. No guts no glory. Yes I can.
Can I really? Maybe not. Sure I can!
Yet we also talk of ego and being too eager and wanting too much and therefore learning to let go and flow and the glorious path of least resistance. Then why is everything so difficult, dammit? In comes the no-guts-no-glory thing all over again. And oh yes: it gets harder before it gets easier, doesn't it?
In fact, none of it makes any sense.
What does make sense is this: to have a 5-yr-old boy tell you that his friend drew something for him. He takes out a small oval-shaped piece of yellow paper. On it: two dots for eyes, one dot for a nose and a stripe as a smile. He says, "my friend made this for me so I can look at it and think of you and dad and then feel happy."
An hour later I hear that another friend of his has broken a finger. He takes immediate action and draws the biggest "most beautiful drawing ever" for that friend. He has only barely learned to write his own name. With admirable concentration he tries to write his friend's name. The other way around. He instructs me to add "how terrible that you broke your finger." And he signs it with grave earnesty and care.
Consider for a moment the last time you did something similar for a friend.
Don't dwell on this too long though. On with it: no pain no gain, remember?
There once was a little boy who turned into a man. It wasn't an effort, it wasn't a plan. It happened one day, just like that. He looked in the mirror and cried: who is that? His eyes told the story of who he is now, while the child he was remained hidden somehow.
Nervous and tense, afraid of the dark, he had roamed his way through life's park. Groping at help, his mother's hand; affection and peace, a holy command. And oh those nights, alone in his room, the realm of demons, the presence of doom.
Mother, dear mother, may I sleep with you? In the arms of your safety and your love so true?
No my son, you cannot I say. Nights are for rest, a salvage for day.
He wandered the corridors, night after night, fleeing the dreams, the weight of his fright. And still he wanders, every night, in thoughts of wisdom and visions of light. One day, is what he thinks, he'll have time to rest, life itself is simply a test. He tells his own son now to be strong! nights are short and never take long. Shorter still as years go by, enjoy them now, for your time will fly. Your fears will fade, as do the monsters you create. You will forget then forgive, believe me you will; so blossom and bloom, dance and fulfill!
But his son still cries and will not give up. Please, dear god, shut him up!
I need my sleep, don't you see? You foolish boy stop bothering me! Go back to your room, leave me alone, just build yourself a heart of stone.
An elderly lady opens the door to the house a younger lady once lived in. It is a big and stately house. The younger lady apologizes, she just wanted to pick something up.
"Do come in," says the older lady, "please?"
And so the young lady stands there, absorbing the memories of what once was and no longer is. Is she doing all right for herself? She doubts it, the very moment she steps into her past, she seriously doubts it.
The elderly lady looks even older than before. Her hair needs a cut and a colour, grey roots are visible. It needs a conditioner too. She has withered, it seems. Every part of her body turns inwards, towards her heart.
"So how are you?" She asks the younger lady.
"I'm doing okay," says the younger lady, "much better now thank you." She has no right to speak of loss. And when she asks after the older lady's well-being, she knows she is to take off her coat for a moment.
The older lady's son died recently. And she hasn't seen her grandchildren since the funeral.
"And it's best not to hope that I ever will, do I? What can one do?" Then she says, "nobody knows how it really is. We all understand it's awful to lose a son. But it's a million times worse, it really is. The same goes for divorce. Who knows? Who really knows what it's like? Everyone looks for who's to blame while there's only one truth: it's equally as painful for both inidviduals. Both suffer the same disillusions. When I divorced I felt failure. How was I not able to get this right?"
The younger woman plants a kiss on the older woman's cheek. She has to get to work. But she stays close to her for a moment, holds on to her briefly, before she leaves.
"Just a second!" hollers the baker's assistant from the back.
"Take your time," says the client.
The assistant emerges, she is fixing her apron.
"It's so bloody cold in here, I needed an extra sweater."
The client says, "you're right. It is cold in here," and "how are you otherwise?"
The assistant's cheeks are flushed.
"Fine," she says and doesn't seem to believe herself. "Fine. So what can I do for you this morning?"
"Two blueberry muffins please."
"All right then, two muffins."
There's a short silence after which the assistant asks, "and how are you?"
"Fine."
"It's easier that way isn't it?"
"It certainly is."
"So it's been a bad year for you too then?"
"Yes, yes it has been."
"Well I'm happy a new year is coming up soon, we can finally close off on this one."
"You'd hope so. But you know the saying, don't you? Things get worse before they get better."
"At least it's insightful."
"It is."
In the brief moment of silence after the assistant has put the muffins in a bag and on the counter, they finally look at each other and smile.
"Not anything related to health, I hope?" asks the client as she reaches out for the bag and therefore has an excuse to look away.
"Oh no, thank god no. A lot of friends have had health-issues though. We're at that age when things get serious."
"So it's true then, things could always be worse."
"Yes, count those blessings, right? Anything else for you today?"
"A carton of milk please.
"At least I have a job, these days you're lucky to have a job."
"At least you have a job. Well then, have a nice day."
"You too."
"You better not be lying," says a mother to her six-year-old who claims to have had only one cookie, "because if there's one thing I detest, and I mean absolutely hate, it's when people lie."
The six-year-old has already left the room. And so it's not the boy she's talking to, is it? It's the friend, who stands there feeling crucified. Granted, yes, maybe the friend did once claim she hated it when people were unfaithful. And truth be said, the friend hadn't been all too faithful. She had gone to Paris for a weekend with a different friend, but said she had gone with her brother. She didn't want to hurt any feelings. These things never remain secret though.
So all right, the friend thinks, I'll be truthful then.
"You're not telling him you hate lies are you? You're telling me," she asks.
The mother turns to her, abruptly and wide-eyed, "what? Oh no, no, no, don't be silly, not at all. Ha ha. You're funny. Always imagining things aren't you?"
The six-year-old returns. He is now really excited. He says "mummy, mummy come see! Santa bought me a skateboard. How did he know I wanted a skateboard?"
"I told you! Santa is a very wise man," says the mother, "he knows everything, he knows exactly who's been naughty. And you know what? Last night I heard Rudolph on our roof! Didn't you hear?"
"Wow," says the friend, "so Rudolph landed on your roof. You must have been very, very good."
The two girls run around the opera house on high heeled shoes that are too big for them. They wear black velvety and satin dresses, they fiddle with their hair, they put on pink lip-gloss.
As the dark engulfs us and the red curtain opens - the one the girls marveled at - I fell into the pitfalls of time.
There I sat, a little girl who watched men in blue leotards jump across the stage, studied the costumes and maidens in pastel colored dresses. I gasped when suddenly thousands of white tutus swirled across a misty stage and they looked like swans.
"We aren't supposed to have binoculars here so don't drop them," my father said. Which is exactly what I did. A woman far beneath me screamed and for a moment the commotion disturbed the ballet. She thought the ceiling was coming down. It lasted only a minute or so. During the break my father said I was to apologize to the traumatized lady. I didn't want to. But he made me tell her it slipped out of my hands, which wasn't true. He laughed, she laughed with him, and all was fine. For them.
The girls play with the bottle of apple juice they are sharing. They drop it. The bottle breaks on the floor and juice splashes all over suede shoes. "I'm so sorry," I tell the lady who's shoes are ruined, "it slipped out of my hands." And yet again all was fine. For them.
A sunny autumn day. A bench in the park. People squeeze together to sit on it.
A woman decides she may as well use this moment to read a book. Another woman already sits there, she uses the same moment to eat a bagel and to study the meadow.
"We speak the same language," she says to the book-woman, who sighs and closes her book. She may as well give in to it, she may as well socialize.
The bagel-woman is somewhat taken aback by the other woman's sudden interest, her questions, her intensity. What city in their country is she from? Is she on holiday? Work she says? So how long has she been there? And oh really! She has four kids!? She must miss her kids! Yes, she does, says the bagel-woman. But at the same time she enjoys having the opportunity to do this, and to be alone.
"To wake up and to own your own thoughts," says the book-woman nodding.
The bagel-woman is now excited, "yes, yes! Exactly that."
The book-woman explains how she used to feel the same about being alone for a couple of days, without her kids. But it's different now. Her divorce changed that. She is to wave her kids goodbye every weekend. Not seeing them for a few days is a must-do as opposed to can-do now.
The bagel-woman listens to how the book-woman separated and why. And that there's a new man in her life, and that she dares tell her but nobody else how she loves him more than she dared believe existed. But it wasn't him that caused it. She knows she hurt her ex-husband by doing this. He had hurt her too. The hurts were of a different nature maybe, but of equal value, weren't they? The world didn't view it that way though. She was to blame, she was to carry that blame.
The bagel-woman's face lights up. She has been in exactly the same situation, but with a different outcome. It almost ruined her marriage. Almost. Her husband is a very calm and collected man, a rational kind of guy. She has no idea how it happened, and looking back she wonders what insanity had taken a hold of her. How could she have fallen in love with her Kroatian colleague, who is so passionate yet entirely unpredictable? She had gone to a retreat and tortured herself over the question what she was to do. What if this, and that, and if she were to such and so then maybe, and so on. Eventually she decided to stop all of it. Deep down she knew the affair with the Kroatian guy wouldn't last, she simply knew.
There's a silence between the two ladies.
The book-lady says, "You knew for sure. Whereas I didn't know anything really."
"You followed your feelings then."
"Not even, I simply went with what was happening."
The bagel-woman doesn't ask the book-woman whether she is happier now. Neither does the book-woman ask the bagel-woman whether she is happier now.
The sun slips behind a tal building, They get up, shake hands and go their separate ways.
She always consults her pendulum. The stone is a roze quartz. She knows it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, of course she does. And so it's best not to ask questions that are important. Will she have a child? No, it says. It swings left to right.
Ten years later, she is still single. Her 45th birthday came as a relief. At least that issue was now settled: no children.
She was pregnant once. She aborted the child. She was sure it would otherwise die during labor.
Another time, she thought she might be having a heart-attack. Instead of calling the doctor she asked the pendulum. Is this a heart-attack?
No.
She puked her brains out that night. That burning sensation between her ribs? It must have been her gut.
Again, she has a question for the pendulum. She feels she has finally met her match. He loves her, she loves him. She has never been happier. She doesn't want to lose him. And so she asks the pendulum whether she will. She can't help herself.
Yes, it says. She cries because she knows it is true.
In bed that night she tries to calm herself. "I asked 'will I lose him'. You can lose someone in various ways can't you? He could die, I mean we all die. If I were to ask the pendulum if I was going to die, of course it would say yes." It could well take over thirty years before she loses him.
When she next sees her new love she asks him, "what's wrong?"
"Nothing," he says, "why do you ask?"
"Just," she says.
A few minutes later she asks, "are you sure everything's all right?"
"Yes, why?"
"Dunno, you seem kind of," she looks for the word, "different."
If only you'd known this morning, dear woman. If only.
You didn't. You simply decided it was time to get your act together. No more tears. You have an entire future ahead of you. Life begins at fourty, is what they say. So begin then. Right now!
You actually sit down to have breakfast with your kids. One is two years old. The other is three. Sure, there were times you questioned what you had gotten yourself into. You wanted to pursue your career, why not? So many women do after all. You could do this.
And yes, you could. But you woke up one day looking at the state of your skin and hair. Had you brushed your teeth today? You simply couldn't remember. Something overcame you, you still aren't quite sure what exactly. You felt -quite strongly- that you'd had enough. You stepped into your boss' office, perhaps you had stayed on so long simply because you liked him. All the women liked him. All the women worked hard.
He wasn't very nice now. He sighed and said, "they all do that don't they?"
"What?"
"Give up. Every woman I know does, sooner or later a woman who has children gives up."
It affects you, sure it does. You even tell yourself, "o I'll be back, just you wait and see." But as you walked out of the office you realized you hadn't felt better in your life.
So today, you're heading there with a smile on your face. You're going to pack your things and say cheery goodbyes to your colleagues. You should have done this a long time ago, is what you feel.
You put your two children in their car seats and make sure they're buckled up properly. They're more fun to be with than you can remember. Maybe you could go to the beach with them?
You park your car as close to the office building as you can, adjacent to the canal. You step out and take a moment to look up at the building where you wasted fifteen years of your life. You sigh of relief. But then, as you turn back to your car, you notice it is moving.
Fuck, you think in an instant, no hand-brake!
The car rolls and rolls, backwards, towards the canal. It seems slow and so you pull the door open and try to get your children out of the car.
Too fast. It's going to fast.
You slam the door shut and try to push the car back. But it has gained momentum. It is too heavy for you. The car plunges into the water.
You scream, "Help! My babies!" and dive into the canal after the car. Other people jump in too. You try to open the doors, break the windows with your fists. This isn't happening. Yes it is. It most certainly is.
How long did you try? Did you look at your children's faces as the water slowly filled their lungs? Did you make contact with them when you knew, because at one stage you knew didn't you? Or did you keep trying and trying to open that bloody door?
And by the time the medics came -which was fifteen minutes later- you no longer dared to look. But you made yourself look, didn't you? You made yourself look at your two dead children.
Because this is it, this has now become the first day of the rest of your life.
*Based on a true story in today's newspaper.
