Berlin Remembers

 

Yesterday, as I was picking up my son from the Kita, I saw one of those red memorial candles on the ground beside the door. Someone had lit a candle and put some carnations in the plague that commemorated Rosa Luxemburg having lived in that building for a few years in the early 1900s.

It turns out that yesterday was the anniversary of her murder by paramilitaries in 1919.

So what does a Marxist killed 100 years ago have to do with anything? 

Nothing... And everything.

I don't think there's another city that goes out of its way to remember as much as Berlin does. The good bits and the bad, ugly bits. Rosa Luxemburg is just one of many brutal openers to the tragedies the city would experience. The Nazis. The War. The Holocaust. The Defeat. The Trials. The Wall. 

Guilt is a word that gets thrown around a lot in Germany. But, another accurate word is courage. It can't be easy for a country to reckon with its past the way Germany does. To openly remember its history, instead of revising it. 

It's both chilling and refreshing to walk along the streets of Berlin and see the golden stumbling stones that bear the names of Jewish deportees, along with their fate: liberation, escape, or death camp. 

You see these types of memorials everywhere. The small statue in the quiet square where the July 20 plotters were executed. The eerie stone monuments to the Soviet war dead. The concrete and steel foundation line that still runs along the path of the Berlin Wall.

In Berlin, and much of Germany, history is still a lesson you can learn from, instead of a myth that you believe in, an ideal you buy, or a grudge you nurse.

We live in a strange age where everyone lives on their own plains of reality, feeding on information that only confirms their biases. And the way things are going, that looks like it isn't going to change soon.

Being honest about our history is getting tougher. But it's good to see it's still happening in some places.

Staring into a Second Lockdown

 

Back in March, I was locked down with a 15-month-old still napping twice a day. With no daycare, we took shifts. I got the afternoon shift and took him out in the stroller to the neighbourhood park, and then into the nearby, quiet cemetery to make him sleep.

While the sick died for want of ventilators in the hallways of Milan’s hospitals, and while China introduced state surveillance that would make the heart of the Stasi go pitter patter, I watched winter turn into spring. Every day, I walked into the cemetery and saw a few more leaves on the trees, the birds' nests get a little bigger, and the days get longer and sunnier. It was so lovely that I forgot how rough other people had it. I just lacked the perspective, even as I strolled past graves everyday.

As we stare into the void of a second lockdown, it all feels the same, but different, and darker. The headlines scream about higher infection rates, the trees shed their leaves, the birds migrate south, and days get shorter, colder, and darker.

So, I was feeling a little down at the prospect of spending a winter indoors.

Until I had a call with my parents, who mentioned their weekly family Zoom call, in which my Opa said he wasn't going anywhere for Christmas because it wasn't worth the risk. He's in his 90s, and well into the risk group. When someone mentioned that it's Christmas, he pointed out that he missed four Christmases in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during the War. One Christmas isn't so bad.

That snapped me out of my self-centered, me-focused, life-is-so-hard-in-my-nice-home whine fest about a winter lockdown. I needed some perspective to remember that I don't have it that bad. In fact, most of us don't have it that bad when compared others who deal with the coronavirus, like patients, families of patients, doctors, nurses, grocery store employees, or your food delivery dude who are all a little closer to the horrors the coronavirus has created.

 

It's all about perspective. So, am I going to make this about myself? Or am I going to look around, look at the news, look at history, and see that it ain't so bad. Spring will be along soon enough, and the summer, and then we'll all be vaccinated and stuck in crowded trains, shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, all of us wishing we were locked down again.

A toddler? Or drunk?

Completely comfortable without pants.
Photo by Kata

What is a toddler other than a younger, cuter version of a guy at a party who's had too much to drink but doesn't know it?

Start with the coordination issues. He stumbles over his own feet. Walks into door frames. Slides off chairs. Am I talking about the toddler or the drunk who doesn't know he's drunk? They both fall face first, then get up, play it cool, and keep going towards whatever they were pursuing (usually food) like nothing happened.

You certainly can't tell them they've had too much of anything. Tell a toddler he's had enough cookies and you have a temper tantrum. And our drunk who doesn't know he's drunk? You tell him he's had enough, and you get a scoff that's way too slurred to take seriously and a "I'm cool, man," as tries to nonchalantly lean on something (and miss).

They're both sloppy eaters. Food flies everywhere, in all directions, like shrapnel in a blast zone. It's not just all over their faces. It's all over their clothes and in their hair (or beard). And they don't even know it, they're laughing and spraying bits of partially eaten crackers. Then you arrive and they come running to hug you, smearing apple sauce or Shwarma sauce (or a mixture of both) all over your clothes.

Both get easily carried away. A toddler will forget about the concept of self-preservation as he chases a ball under furniture, over the tops of tables, and around open ovens.

Our drunk will get carried away on the dance floor. Arms will flail in all directions, knocking over passers-by. He might even cut open his chin in a goth bar during a futile attempt at the Worm.

What else? There are the spilt drinks, and the tears from both over the spilt drinks. There is a wild enthusiasm when his song comes on. There’s the deep focus while they’re eating tacos. 

There's the babbly talk. A drunk that doesn't know he's drunk will slur on and on at you about the thing that's on his mind until he stops suddenly, because he forgot what he was talking about. A toddler, our cute drunk without the drink, will babble on in his own language about something, anything, but the conversation will go off the rails when a train comes into view.

A toddler loves his bicycle. Even when it's just a little too big for him and he tips over every time he tries to move a foot or two.

 

Our drunk who doesn't know he's drunk also doesn't know he's in no condition to ride his bicycle. But he'll walk it just out of sight of his concerned friends, then hop on and pedal away, laughing maniacally, before falling over.

The one difference between the toddler and the guy who doesn't he's drunk is the morning of the next day. The guy who doesn't know he was drunk awakes with the painful realization in his head and gut that he was indeed drunk and party is over.

The toddler wakes up the next morning as right as rain, has his diaper changes, and resumes the party, like it never stopped.