„Le‘Chajim“- Here's to life!
She turns the car around, which causes the maximum volume GPS voice to vibrate through the window and loudly corrects the route towards the freeway. "As spirited as the car owner, so is the driving style”, is the thought that goes through my head. I smile as I close the door and think back on the last 2 days, when Guia and Matthias stepped through the door loaded up with bags, slippers, gifts from our former neighbor Nina and a fresh pineapple.
Friday
Similar to the inspection of her small garden in Velten years ago, which I observed quietly behind my curtains, Guia is now walking through my new home in the north of Germany. She circles the kitchen table, casts an examining glance into the garden and repeats her traditional greeting:”Ugh, Anja…” A few minutes later the three of us are sitting at the coffee table and I'm looking a little closer at my visitors.
My friend Matthias still wears his hair in a ponytail and is so slender that my professional nurse eye immediately wants to prescribe him a high calorie diet. A t-shirt with a print of the Pythagorean Theorem peeks out from under his cardigan, a beloved souvenir from a Greek vacation long ago. Guia, the little Brazilian hurricane, is wearing elegant white pants, a comfy pink pullover and has her wild long hair alternately down or tied loosely into a knot. We talk about the kids, our neighbors in the Botag community and eventually about the omnipresent Ukraine war, which exposes any care or worry of ours as mundane. What does it matter what daily cares we battle when the peace in Europe is threatened and a megalomaniac Russian president has made it his goal to go down in history at any cost?
Pushing aside these dark thoughts, Guia is letting me partake in her very own crisis management:”Anja, you know what helps me when I'm not doing well?” Not waiting for my answer, she explains giggling,”Online shopping! I fill the carrrt up to the brrrim but don't submit the orderrr. When I feel betterrr again, I delete it all!” While she's talking, she's impressively wagging her finger in the air and says with an eye to her husband,”Rrright, darrrling?”I have to laugh, since this gesture is so familiar and all my friend’s talks are filled with special effects. The next day over breakfast Guia tells me,”It's such beautiful weatherrrr, Matthias and I arrre going to hike 10 to 20 kilometers. Rrrright, darrrling? Anja, you don’t have to come!”
Somewhat taken aback at her rigorous advance, I reply,”But Guia, if you're visiting once in 6 years, I won't let you hike by yourselves for 4 hours!” Said and done! Half an hour later we're walking through the most glorious sunshine along the North-Baltic Sea Canal and look at huge freight ships. Matthias stomps kilometer after kilometer with an admirable perseverance while Guia talks about the pilgrimage on the Jacob’s Trail, sings Portuguese tunes, talks to her family in Brazil on the phone and in a pinch converts a small stick into a hair pin. After roughly 10 days of storms and rain I'm literally soaking up the rays which permeate to my insides and dispel the melancholy resting on my soul. At the banks of the canal there are men passionate about fishing, sitting or standing spaced apart, some with hats, some without, some silent and some calling out encouragement to each other.
All of the state of Schleswig Holstein seems to be out and about today wanting to enjoy the sun. I observe gallivanting couples, young married folks pushing strollers and joggers who wind their way past us. Our hiking talks keep getting interrupted by impatient cyclists racing along the edge of the canal, who in minute intervals garner attention by ringing their bells, causing us to jump aside startled. After a small excursion on the ferry we sit down at the terrace of a cafe overlooking the canal and order cocoa for Matthias and orange juice for ourselves. What undeserved gift in these unsettling times!
On the way back I already feel a slight pulling in my feet which intensifies with every home bound step. With some effort I drag myself over the last few hills on the asphalt street towards Bünsdorf; my left foot now hurting with each step. At last now I realize that winter shoes definitely aren't meant for long distances. Unlike me, Matthias prances light-footed in his sneakers up and down the Hüttener Hills. There's no sign of pain and fatigue in him. Back at Aukamp, I finally exchange my winter shoes for my ergonomically shaped slippers and preventatively take some painkillers. Guia’s feet also show first signs of lesions which isn't astonishing considering the 17 kilometer hike. Tired she takes a soothing foot bath in our guest room and later crawls exhausted under the warm covers. Soon afterwards, in the waning daylight, we're taking our dinner in the living room warmed by the fireplace. With melancholy we remember episodes of our neighborhood and toast each other with white wine according to Jewish custom “L-Chaim”-”To Life!”
For a moment the shocking images from Ukraine appear again before my mind’s eye. I can't push them aside, nor do want to. They admonish us to a turnabout after 2 years of distance training, toward our suffering brothers and sisters. Still, gratitude fills me at the end of this day for the 20 years of Brazilian-German friendship and the toast that the Jewish people always made to each other even during the darkest of times seems appropriate to me like never before. I think of the countless aid convoys to Ukraine, Russians demonstrating and having to fear considerable consequences, and the Ukrainian president Vlodymyr Zelensky, who implored his Russian neighbors in Russian to stand against war and violence.
My thoughts travel to the protesters at the Brandenburg Gate who sang „Dona Nobis Pacem“, “Give us your peace”, and to the little Ukrainian girl in an air raid shelter, who touched our hearts with her song “Let It Go” from Frozen. They say, ,”Right before the sun comes up it is the darkest.” I want to trust in that. Le‘Chajim - life triumphs.
Translation: Karin Allison