News from the Greenhouse

My dad was always there and never there. Absent and yet present. He
hovered above my life like a cloud and I never knew what kind of
weather I was in for.
My mum was my weather satellite. She sensed him, like an oncoming
depression.

There were fair days, when her skies were blue. Those were the days
when he came to see us, or when he called regularly or when he wrote to
us.
There were grey November days, my mum frozen in waiting, when he took
his presence away from us to some other part of his universe.

I was like a seed waiting in the soil for rain and sun, everything I
needed for growing.
My mum was my soil. Solid, sound, nurturing me with her steady stream
of food, love and attention.

We had our life. Ploughing steadfastly through the fields of time.
Getting up early in the morning, like farmers. My mum going to work, me
to day care - always the first child to arrive there. We went there
singing. I insisted on singing all the way to kindergarten, chasing
away the fear of another long day amidst other small seedlings fighting
for the light they needed for growing. I grew quicker than the rest. My
green was brighter, worth looking after. There was something promising
a good harvest there. If the sun didn't shine on me on its own account,
I would make it, developing a silver skin over my green body to draw
and reflect every bit of light that would come my way. That was when I
learned to talk, not just babble, but use words as a reflector, drawing
people's light to me and giving some warmth back.
It worked out fine. At least I had more than one sun shining on
me.

Still I always had to have an eye on the sky. Home's weather front was
important. I never knew if I was in for hail or a period of warm summer
winds or a disastrous drought. Dad was unpredictable. Pouring his love
and attention on us like warm summer rain, showering us with money and
time when he felt like it. But giving us periods of utter cold, too,
when his sun was shining on someone else. No money, no calls, no mail,
no visits left us frozen in waiting, stopped every growth and gave
severe frostbites.
No pagan ritual, no rain dance, would make him come. He did as he
pleased and no use blaming the weather.
Endurance was called for, and the skill to create a weather of one's
own.
But when he finally came, there was nothing else to do but get out the
deckchairs, get the barbecue ready and head for a big time. We never
knew how long the nice spell would last.

My mum, the weather prophet, prepared herself for him before he came.
Her lawn was mowed, her fields were already ploughed, lying wide open
for his seeds to fall into her soft soil.
The little seedling had to learn quickly how to fight for space there.
It had to be bigger than it actually was, looking more promising than
ever, to make the sun shine on it.

My father loved words. They were the structure to his universe. The
vegetation of real people around him did not really capture his
attention. Thoughts did, words of mostly dead people, poets and
philosophers. They were the physical laws he worked by.
The warmest moments he could give me where the mornings I spent in bed
with him and he read to me. No children's books, but a selection of the
most famous German poets. I always had a choice of Heine, Goethe or
Schiller, and being a child I opted for the ballads, stories full of
blood and horror or magical moments, always in verse. Listening was not
enough to bind my dad to me, to make him stay longer than just for a
few minutes, before his thoughts would wander away again, to something
more important than the child next to him fighting for his love.
I had to be witty and creative, to re-write those ballads, to turn them
into something new, to give them a funny ending or at least paint an
impressive picture of one of them. I had to become a story- teller
myself to impress him. Words made my silver skin shine to catch his
light and bind him to me. Till the weather would turn again and he
would disappear.

But the words and the images stayed on. They became my substitute for
sun and rain. They were the greenhouse which made me independent of the
weather. The pictures and thoughts in my head and mind fertilized my
heart, so that it would not die of cold or thirst. I learned to go a
long way on a small word, a little utterance, seemingly unimportant for
the person who made it.

A tiny event, a bit of real time, was enough for me to live by for
weeks. I replayed the scene time and again in my head, re-wrote it,
changed it. I created my own events, my own dialogues and my own
world.
I tried to get close to absent people, feeling their feelings, thinking
their thoughts, snuggling up to their hearts and minds, looking for
warmth.

I grew that way. A somehow exotic plant, different from others. And old
habits die hard. Till today I live in my greenhouse and fertilize my
soul with events from my life. I don't so much analyse situations as
much more distil them, turning them into the nourishment I need to keep
growing, making me independent of life's weather and getting me through
the spells when my suns don't shine.