The insomnia at this gorgeous AirBnB has been brutal, the piercing rush of traffic that cuts through the white noise on my phone, that plunges past ear plugs and spikes my heart rate when it's sirens. The wailing and shouting through the walls of a woman, and every so often a man. For several days I had hot hands and cold shivers, spring-loaded eyelids that wouldn't stay shut. I talked to Austin one night through dawn and texted Katie another. Promised myself I'd take zinc and magnesium, then flipped over and popped more melatonin. It's a certain kind of anxiety to know that sleep is the most important thing to heal and stay healthy, and then to count the hours that you can't.
Oma called on Saturday and told me she bought three bundles of white asparagus for us to eat on Easter. I was already giddy Sunday morning when I saw the stalks in the silver pot, but then she told me the Easter Bunny came. I flopped on the ground and started looking; I pretended not to see. Finally I pulled the basket out and awwed for a long while, then ripped open the dried Aprikosen. At the bottom of the basket was a tiny golden chocolate bunny, and Oma said she had a bigger one for me, too. She spent 15 minutes looking for it and kept asking, did it hop away?
In the kitchen, Oma pulled open drawer after drawer, looking for her potato masher, and then found it right where it should have been. She loaded the potato pot down with butter and milk and then pulled out an asparagus for me to try. I cut it on my plate with just my fork, and the tender strings separated but didn't fully break. Oma said it looked like a squished rainworm as I put the delicious juicy thing in my mouth and tried not to choke.
We cooked it a couple of minutes longer and then moved to the "kinderzimmer", the dining room where Oma swears she could fit a bed. We ate the asparagus with pungent pan-fried salmon that was meant for bread. The whole palette was a sophisticated spread of whites dotted with parsley-green, Hollandaise sauce that covered everything. I mmmmd the whole time, trying to balance my fork with all the incredible flavors.
Unprompted, Oma declared Ich habe keinen Hasen aufgegessen! She covered her mouth and started to cackle, because wouldn't it be a thing if she'd eaten the whole thing and didn't even remember? These kinds of things happen when you're older, she explained to me, that you get uglier and more forgetful.
For dessert, we split a cream-torte and strawberry-jello cake I'd picked up from the bakery the day before. I drank a cup of red tea from berries that, when touched raw, apparently itch: berries that Oma and her friends used to throw at what I assume were boys. I remember similar childhood wars: cardboard boxes full of sweet gum balls we'd keep in our garage, and how sticky our hands were after.
I sat in the sun and closed my eyes for a few seconds at a time as Oma told me she's been cleaning up some already around the apartment and she gets along just fine on her own. She asked me whether it was weird for me to live in my big house all alone, and I said sometimes, but I really love my house and each room serves its own purpose. I showed her a picture of the master that I've converted to a dance room, and she asked, and who watches you when you dance? I laughed and said no one, and then showed her videos of salsa dancing. She said dancing is something she would have liked to do, too, but Opa wasn't into it, and then she told me a story of her sister sneaking out when she was young in her mom's high heels.
We chatted until nearly 5 pm, when I walked home: the first time I've ever walked from Oma's. The sun was out and finally I felt the soulful flicker of spring, the tease of something temperate. There were specks of yellow in the sleepy winter grass and swollen tree buds trembling in the April breeze. I've walked several places now without my winter jacket and fantasize more and more about stuffing it away and sending it on home.
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