I slept terribly Wednesday night before the trip, tossing and turning, my mind racing with the anxiety of leaving for Germany nearly a month ahead of schedule: of visiting someone who could possibly be dying, and quickly. I dozed on the plane, jerking myself awake every few minutes, heart racing, feeling again like I needed to sneeze. The ibuprofen helped my head but still I felt heavy. When my sister, her husband and I got to the AirBnB, I tested myself for COVID. Within a few minutes, a faint pink line turned into a thicker red, so I tested again. Another positive. Contagious. I found Danielle and Daniel a last-minute AirBnB and they left within the hour. I curled up under two feather comforters and all my clothes and fell into a feverish sleep, occasionally waking for water.
The rest of Friday and Saturday passed in blocks of time; the moon didn't matter and neither did the sun. I slept whenever I could, occasionally waking to the neon blue light of the bathroom through the glass door, the pale yellow of the streetlight backlighting the blinds. Danielle and Daniel bought duplicate honey and butters and jams and delivered them through my window as they stood on stairs slick with sleet and cold rain. We laughed; Danielle FaceTimed Oma by my window and she said Ach, die arme Missy. I dumped a big can of chicken soup into a pot and ate it with fresh bread, a thin film of chicken fat coating my chapped lips. I felt like a basement rat: greasy and unwashed, nibbling on whatever I could find. Kinderschokolade and Gummibaerchen: foods that heal with nostalgia and form, with smooth dips and soft edges.
Between snacks and sleep I wrote little things I remembered from the past several years: sandstone and the things people said. Quarantine and how it was. A few hours of writing one day, twelve the next. Indulging in the unplanned writer's retreat and the moments that made me pause: Danielle FaceTiming me from the hospital, turning the phone to Opa who waved forever-long and smiled. His hair was uncombed, his face unshaven. His voice weak with the pain from his broken hip, cancer-eaten and cracked. The doctors were still discussing his options, but there only seemed to be two: undergo a high-risk hip replacement surgery, rare for a man almost 90, or let the cancer overtake him and die a slow death. He wavered with his decision until it was too late to do on Tuesday, the day they'd originally planned. Now he had to lie another week in his hospital bed. The thought overwhelmed me: I put on my snow boots and for the first time since landing went for a short walk, holding my jacket closed, the one with the broken zipper: the down one I just bought. I looked at the petite cars that lined the narrow road and thought about the value of grass, of having your own space.
When I showered, I discovered the shower was cold, a kind of cold that still steams up the room. I washed in steps, soaping and then rinsing only a little skin at a time. Gritting my teeth and wondering how else Germany could reject me as one of its own.
That evening, a man knocked on my apartment door while I was laying in bed, catching up with Austin, a boy from back home. Someone who made the past few months magical. I heard hello, hello? and then realized a stranger was coming in, that I couldn't pretend I hadn't heard. Hello? he said again, and I answered Ja ich bin hier. Ein moment. I panic hung-up the phone and wrapped myself in the feather comforter and met him at the door, a tall man in a nice coat, letting in the winter air. I thought he was the AirBnB host (who I hadn't met); he thought I was, too. Despite him speaking English, I spoke German back. I told him he was in my apartment and he didn't quite understand. I switched to English when he asked if I could call the office for him, because he didn't speak German. I said no, because I didn't have a German SIM card, a half-assed answer we both knew was an excuse. I apologized and waited for him to leave the space so I could close and lock the door. The whole thing felt like something you could cartoon, a comic strip in grey.
I stayed inside until Wednesday, still getting sister deliveries of fresh bread and meat and cheese. I took my second walk that morning, and said Guten Tag to the man who spoke English, the one I didn't help. He didn't hear, didn't care or didn't understand: he kept smoking his cigarette as I slid into the basement door. Danielle and Daniel moved in later that day; Danielle and I went for a walk to get water. Wednesday was International Women's Day, so everything except gas stations was closed. I peered through the windows of the dark Edeka, a nice grocery chain here like Publix; I'd been in Germany since Friday but only knew the Ferien Wohnung, the stale bunker where I slept. I thought how easy it would be to pass the time in a foreign country like I had for so long in quarantine: staring at walls and the screen, waiting for something to happen. Learning you have to make space for it, and then it will.
On Thursday I finally saw Opa. I took my first bus and learned you can walk into any of the three doors. The bus drivers never ask for your monthly pass, the one that cost more than $100. The only people who pay up front or validate their tickets are older; everyone else downloads the ticket on their phone, or maybe rides for free.
The first floor of the hospital had a winding brick floor--there were green spaces throughout and doors to get to them. On the third floor, Opa held my hand for a long while and gripped it strong. I stood across the room to sip an Apfelschorle and watched him watch us. He smiled when he could but was mostly in pain. I could see Mom's face in him, something about his eyes. A doctor came in to ask Opa if he wanted what was essentially an epidural to help numb the pain without narcotics, and he said yes. It was strange knowing he could be dying when he seemed mostly "there". It was strange seeing him in bed when even my recent memories are of him being more active than me: push-ups, bike rides, du muss dich bewegen. Lectures about how to live healthy and how to live long.
At Oma's after, we ate whatever Danielle helped Oma cook: rice and tomato sauce and ground turkey, something simple that stretched. Oma said it schmeckt gut and that she'd try and make it again. I ate alone in the dining room after all of them had eaten; an extra precaution since I was still masked. As I ate I thought about eleven years earlier, when I would sit at that table and call home. When Mom would speak English to me and then German to her parents, explaining all the little things I wasn't sure how to say. Everything felt different now, the way home feels when someone leaves: when you have to reassess and reorient around all the objects that now seem in the way, that mean next to nothing.
On Friday, I slept in as Danielle and Daniel left early to explore the city. It was freezing and raining and a perfect day to write. After lunch, I walked. I thought about the drizzling cold and the way it pricks your skin, my red hands heavy with grocery. I thought about how everything here you carry and balance: efficiency and cost, measured by your distance home, the kilometers you ride or walk; the things you weigh when you're considering waste.
I watched a young woman drive by with a baby seat in the back and wondered what my life would have been like if Mom had raised me here. I don't really like the "what if" scenarios in the past, since they can't be changed: but it's tempting to wonder what parts of ourselves lie dormant based on circumstance alone, on place and opportunity.
We moved AirBnBs on Saturday; we ordered an Uber and waited in flurries, hovering our cloth bags over the ground, everything we'd already collected from being somewhere new. We moved into Oma's apartment for the day and promised her only one suitcase would stay, the big one I used to get here. She lifted one of our backpacks and wondered how we do what we do, how we carry so many heavy things. I wondered the same: she told me later that life has hardened her, that she still gets sad but doesn't often cry; that you'll make yourself sick if you choose to succumb to grief: Wir können nichts andern.
We journeyed to the hospital on two buses, with minutes spent in-between, cursing the cold grey. Opa was trembling when we got there, his body still getting used to the epidural. He told us he was going to get his whole hip replaced the next day; we told him three or four times that it was only Saturday, and he had several more days to wait: news he didn't want to hear or didn't understand, and that we didn't want to deliver. How boring it must be to sit in that bed all day, we empathized, but he said he'd been sleeping well. When we asked him if he'd been eating, he nodded to his still-full lunch tray-- food catered every day from somewhere different-- and told us du kannst alles aufessen. We told him he needed to eat to get strength; he puffed and looked off to the side.
Oma rode the bus home alone as Danielle, Daniel and I journeyed to our new AirBnB to get the key. The home is just past the "B" zone of Berlin in the city of Falkensee. Marcella, the hostess, led us through her beautiful yard to the vacation home in the back, a charming and colorful cottage with three rooms and an oak breakfast nook. A clothesline in the back. A closet that fits a bed: mine. We oohed and ahhed and then walked to the nearest bus stop and rode 45 min back to Oma's, a place that's technically less than three miles away.
I made chicken pesto; Oma stood in kitchen and held the pesto jars up to the light; I told her not to worry about scraping. At the table, Oma said Opa hasn't been eating right, that he always tries to pawn off his food to her; she tells him I'm not coming all the way to the hospital to eat up your food. In the living room after, Oma said she wonders where the cancer came from, how it all happens the way it does. Maybe it had to do with handling grenade shards as kids, Oma said, remembering how they'd trade pieces, big and small. But then what about Mom, she wondered? She looked over at the dresser, where a picture of young Mom with a heart-shaped haircut rested near her memorial photo. Who can say where cancer really comes from, and why?
On Sunday and Monday, Opa seemed in better spirits. He ate a strawberry Twinkie in front of us after we declined. He laughed a lot and took both our hands and thanked us both very much for coming to visit. I told him I hope he gets better so that he and I can do things together; that I will be here for several months. He said yes we'll see what happens, but he thinks he can make it through.
On the other side of the room, without a divider, lay a tall man, probably in his 20s. His eyes were closed until he shuffled to the bathroom where he stayed for thirty minutes; his mom sat on the chair by the bed, distraught and occasionally crying. The nurse waited and waited and then left and came back, unhooking his IV. I wondered why he was there, and if he and his mom were both thinking how unfair it is that some people live until they're 90.
On Monday, we took buses and Ubahn's to the city to visit the studio of one of Danielle's favorite artist-duos: Zozoville. On the Ubahn, a 70-year-old lady motioned for Daniel to sit down after he'd let Danielle, me and her sit, and she said it was nice to see a man pass auf seine Damen: that the youth these days just stare at their phones. Her accent was different than Danielle and I are used to; Daniel thought she may have been Italian. She talked at us for about 15 minutes, mainly focused on Danielle, who dutifully responded with Sie haben Recht und ja, dass Stimmt; I could hardly hear her or understand much. When she wished us a good day, I asked Danielle what the heck she was saying and Danielle said essentially that the world is ending. I'd understood that much, from tone and certain words and familiarity: how Germans have a way of meckering, of pointing out what is wrong.
The journey to Zozoville was an hour there, an hour back; the cold wind smacked our bags full of whimsical monster prints and Danielle and I laughed about how this whole trip to Germany has been comically miserable, so different from the memories we both have, the warm summers we spent in Deutschland with Mom, licking Eis and bicycling everywhere with Opa, through both fields and cities. I wonder how everything will feel when it warms up, if it will start to feel like home: if it's possible to acclimate without feeling like I'm just passing through.
Yesterday, we shopped for a new suitcase for Danielle and Daniel to bring home. In the morning there was sun for the first time since being in Berlin: we even took off our layers. I bought a bright sweater and a pair of sunglasses but then ate a plate of Currywurst and Bratkartoffeln under a dreary sky. By the time we left for Oma's later that day, we walked in wind and snow. We bought water bottles on the way home and a box of Unicorn Froot Loops: my favorite cereal in America, except without the artificial colors here. A treasure I need to consume before I move again on Monday. Again and again I'm reminded of consequence: the burden of carrying and then discarding in the right bin.
Danielle and Daniel left to go back home this morning around 6 am. I slept until 8:30 and then wrote. I walked two miles to Edeka and cashed in all the empty bottles I've collected except for two. With the five Euros, I bought a small container of milk for my Froot Loops and some bread, which I smeared with leberwurst and honig, the gold creamy kind that sludges from the spoon. I rode the bus most of the way home; I tried to nap when I came back. It didn't work. My body is feeling anxious again, almost sickly: tired and afraid of getting Oma sick; nervous about what it means if Opa doesn't survive the surgery, or the recovery. We've tried to talk to her about what could happen, but she says they've lived nice and long and most of their friends are dead. We'll just have to see, she says, her brow and mouth wrinkled, as she looks off to the side, or down. I haven't been able to imagine her without him, but she's already sleeping alone and still, so often, smiling.
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