Berlin

(Written between Sunday May 30th and Friday June 5th)

These few days in Berlin went by in a flash.


When we arrived at Berlin Hauptbahnhof on Wednesday - a daylight flooded Glass structure that criss crosses train tracks of various kinds on about 4 different levels - and the train came to a halt... there were Anina and Alicia, accompanied by a third girl, exactly in front of our door outside the window.

A time for many emotions.

Tears rolled down Nini's cheeks on that platform. And again five days later at the moment of saying good bye. I had not expected this. I had lost touch with the sensitive, warmhearted girl she was before puberty pulled her into a fog of an expressionless distance and one syllable answers.

Tears also flowed when Iris thought of her dad on Saturday. It was the 30th of May - his death day, and she still misses him a lot 14 years later. She is my cousin, and Jimmy and I sat in her kitchen eating scrambled eggs with tomatoes when she told us the story of how he had died after his battle with throat cancer. I had never heard the details of her experience. She was surprised she didn't have to cry then. But later, after we had left her to go to the museum, she did.

My own tears almost flowed Friday night after we had gone to bed. I had asked Jimmy how the day had been for him and he voiced his discontent, his irritation over how I keep him out of the loop, don't include him in the decisions on how we were spending our time, how he felt separate and unimportant. I couldn't even see myself in his description of me, as if he was talking about another person, and instantly got irritated in return. But more than that I felt the suffocating pain to be the cause of such emotions. Justified or not. Those are the hardest to bear. For me.

The fear to disappoint.

The first morning in Berlin Jimmy and I took off with Anina to go to the museum. When we left, both of Ally's friends, who had stayed overnight, also departed, and all of a sudden Ally was the only one to be left behind. When I realized this, and asked if she wanted to come with us, she brushed the possibility aside: no... she wasn't even dressed... but then... yes she would like to meet us later... we could call her from the road.

By the time we sat in the subway, Nini and I deducted that in the morning mix of assumptions and foggy communication nobody had properly asked her if she had wanted to join us. And I started to feel BAD. As time elapsed and we advanced through the subway system, I began to try to call her from Papi's ancient cell phone to set things straight and clear up a possible misunderstanding that we didn't want her to come along. Ah, and as the infinite universe wanted it that day, I just wasn't able to get through. The number was not known. The number was not connecting. The directory information service didn't provide a solution either. In whatever infinite ways I tried to reach her, her mother, or her brother... nothing succeeded. Fascinating to watch yourself in a progression such as this one, fascinating how in the end one emotion wins out. In my case it was the one of needing to make sure I had not disappointed Ally. The overbearing need to make sure she felt included.

Nothing else mattered any more, not that we would have to wait to do what we supposedly rushed out of the house for: the museum visit... not that we had to take three subways back to her house and travel through Berlin for an extra 1.5 hours... nor that we had to separate and leave Jimmy behind, because he was hungry and needed to eat something...

So that's what we did. Nini and I made our way back and found a flabergasted Ally still in her pajamas at home. ...And we ended up having a good second part of the day with Ally along.

Yes... I will do pretty much anything not to disappoint, hurt or exclude someone I love or care for. This awareness is not new... but it was another clear experience how much this fear sits in my bones... still. How hard it is to tell myself in such a moment that everything is perfect as it is. If life doesn't make mistakes, is it possible that it wants me to just let Ally sit all alone at home when she possibly really wanted to come with us? In that moment life feels excruciatingly unperfect. And the best I can do is bring into my awareness that this experience has come up for liberation, that I am playing out some old emotional script.

When such fear of disappointing is met by an actual accusation from Jimmy as it landed in my gut on Friday night... no wonder it rattles me to the core, each time.

After a longish discussion that didn't immediately resolve anything, it helped me to remember that this not about who is right or wrong, but to notice how much we each are caught in our old games, and how Jimmy's fear of not being included fits so smugly with my fear of not doing enough for others. Perfect match.

And finally: waiting.
Another juicy subject.

On Sunday we concluded our time in Berlin with a visit to the Botanical garden. My re-germanized stomach had been happy with a slice of dark grain bread and honey for breakfast, but that didn't satisfy Jimmy's American wired digestive system and he longed for proteins - as in eggs, preferably with vegetables. Having failed to find something of that nature on our walk over there, we thought he could get a bite to eat inside the gardens, but once we found the cafe, we noticed that the line was both long and slow moving and that the menu didn't really offer anything that exciting worth waiting for. Right outside the entrance we had passed a bakery, and so the decision was made for Jimmy to go back out to grab a bite and come back to meet me in front of the tropical greenhouse.

So, when I heard Jimmy say:" I'll go and get something to eat there, I should be back here in 15 to 20 min." I thought, oh, he just doesn't remember how close this bakery is, he'll be back in much less time, in fact it might only be 5 to 7 minutes. I didn't say anything though, because I didn't want to openly correct him on his erroneous perception of time or distance.

In order not to miss him or make him wait, I therefor took a short stroll past the water lily pools and weaved my way back to the glass green houses pretty soon. No Jimmy.

I started reading the Latin names of the South African cactus plants assembled along the outside of the glass structure... then the Mexican ones... then the South American... I wondered if someone from one of these areas would have a feeling of home standing in front of their native plants, and not the others, while to me they looked like randomly similar indistinctive assortments of prickly shapes sticking out of the ground... No Jimmy.

I wandered down the straight alley toward the entrance. That would be a safe departure form our meeting spot: I would run right into him... No Jimmy in sight.

I veered off to the right to kill some time looking at the circular beds of native moss gardens. All strangely covered in green mesh. More randomness. So many same little splotches of fuzzy green bedded in dry soil. Were they under construction? No, they seemed healthy enough. The name tags were in place too. Then I spotted a sign: during the time of nest building the moss gardens are protected against the birds - robbing botanical property for their own home improvements. ...Oh... How long had I not watched the alley just beyond the bushes? Back on the wide path, looking up and down... still no Jimmy.

Maybe he had passed me and was looking for me back at the greenhouses? Close enough to walk back to check. No, no Jimmy in sight up there either.

Now I was starting to wonder where the heck he was. I had no watch on me, but this must have been at least 15 minutes by now! What could he be doing for so long? Could he get lost on this small straight stretch of the garden? Could there be such a long line in the bakery now? It had been totally empty when we walked by earlier.

Back to the cactuses, but now they didn't inspire my imagination any longer. All right, why didn't I make the best of this and just did what I came here to do and looked at more plants? There were the water plants further down toward the entrance, past the moss patches. I just had to be careful not to loose sight of the big path.

The old water garden was totally overgrown. A sign there indicated that this had happened on purpose to provide habitat for certain wild animals. The new water garden wasn't so new any more. Not much blooming here. The main attraction was an arrangement of three squarish granite boulders, shoulder high, that were spouting a fine mist of water into the air. Hmmm, nice effect. There was a wooden foot bridge over the swamp plant section featuring thin grasses with white fluff at the ends, which took me back to the entrance alley... Still no Jimmy.

This was really starting to be an odd experience. I thought the purpose of leaving the park had been to save time, and now this seemed to have taken longer that he would have ever waited in the cafe. There wasn't much more to look at on this now elongated meeting stretch. This here was just a beach tree forest. From a large sign I learned that a certain beetle had befallen the old beach trees, fungus would follow and before long they would die. Therefore steps had been taken to introduce new, younger trees into the mix while cutting down some old ones before their time, to ensure a more gradual transition into a new healthy forest. Were the young trees immune against the beetles?

Oh my God, were was Jimmy??? Had he not liked the bakery after all and gone on a trek for a better food source? What was he wearing again, his light yellow shirt, right? Oh, no! Now I remembered it was the black one. And all this time I had been scanning the crowds for the wrong colored shirt, black is so much harder to notice, maybe I HAD missed him? Back to the cafe, fast!

No. No black-wearing Jimmy either.

Should I just take off into the parts of the park that really interested me and ignore that he would have to wait for me here? Once he got here? No, I wouldn't be able to enjoy that. Why didn't I just surrender and sat down on the bench in front of the African cactuses and... waited and... felt what was here to be felt and... looked if there was something for me to discover in this odd experience. So I sat.

It was then that it hit me how much I hate to wait. How much I do to avoid waiting. How excruciating it has always been to be at the waiting end. So much so I assume it is the same for other people. So much so I will do something I really loathe in order not to make someone else wait. Hmmm. Interesting. Should I do a Journey on this? Right here?

But alas, now my wait was coming to an end... there was Jimmy strolling happily back up the alley.

When I asked WHAT happened? He said he ate. Ate?? Yes, ate right there at the bakery, like he had told me, had a nice egg something after all... no, he hadn't told me he'd come back with the food, he had meant to eat it there... what? You had waited? Oh, so sorry honey!


So many emotions. Strings of love and fear pulling us alternately.

Four days later it would be my father shedding a few tears on the day of his first return appointment at the UKE for fear of what would happen with his kidney, now that it had been hurting again for the past 10 days. And his voice cracking just a bit saying his sweet words of good bye into our hug, when the taxi pulled up in front of the house to take us to the airport.