Picking up the trash

Watermelon rind
Swan feathers shed in passing
Early morning walk.

Days before summer vacation

It's a hot summer day, and the train compartment is stuffed with a swarm of teenagers on their way to the Baltic Sea. A day trip away from their sad, stuffy schoolroom, their teachers sitting in another compartment, their backpacks filled to the brim with every conceivable snack. More glittering wrappers than substance.

They squeeze into the compartment, girls sitting on each other's laps. Boys, still small and scrawny, sit four side by side where usually only two would fit. The girls act up, shrill screams of laughter, seemingly unstoppable, fuelled by whispered secrets and stolen glances at the boys. One girl laughs so hard her head flies back and hits the window. More explosive laughter ensues.

The boys' heads are together, watching a video on one guy's phone. They watch it over and over again, groaning at the same missed goal. They talk earnestly about the finer points of the football game, as if they have personally been privileged to hear the trainer talking to the players.

Outwardly, they seem oblivious to the girls' chatter and laughter. Yet eventually, they succumb to the continual onslaught of provocations. One of the boys pulls out three large boxes of Mon Chéri chocolates. He hands one to the group of girls, another to the guys sitting across from him, and the last to his best buddy beside him.

One of the group members leaves the compartment to make sure the teachers are not coming. 

Quickly, they puncture each chocolate, drain the horrible alcohol from its filling, and toss the rest into the small rubbish bins next to their seats. The girls begin to talk louder. Their antics become more uncontrolled. The boys are drawn into the merriment. Someone turns on head-bouncing music. A party is born.

A little girl sits in the corner seat with her older brother and mother. She stares at the teenagers with wide eyes and an iron-rod-straight back. Mesmerised, she cannot stop watching the girls. When the music starts playing, she begins to cry and pleads with her mother to leave.
Her mother asks her son to look after the luggage and takes her daughter into the corridor. 

They wander along, looking for a compartment that is less loud, less scary. There is none to be found.

Talking to her daughter, she tries to reassure her that it won't be long before they reach their stop.

She asks her dearest daughter what is bothering her. The noise? The loud laughter? The music? Sobbing, the little girl bursts out that she doesn't want to be a teenager. She wants to stay a little girl forever. She doesn't want to have to behave like those in their compartment.

Her mother scoops her into a warm embrace, saying that not all teenagers behave like that. No matter what happens, she can behave any way she wants when she's a teenager.

Something about the way her mother says this soothes the girl's fears. She wipes away her tears. Together, holding hands, the two return to where her brother sits reading his comic book, oblivious to the drama swirling around him.

A sad history of houseplants

There was a time when everyone filled their apartments with houseplants. For most of us, buying a new houseplant was a downward slide, showing us how little green our thumbs were. Some were better and managed to keep them alive. Claudia was one of those. 

Her apartment was a jungle of hanging pots with plants draped over them, vines crawling up and over bookshelves, and beasts of unruly rubber plants crowding the corners of her living room. Plants were her companions. They were not necessarily pretty or decorative, more a jumbled, overgrown mass of green.

Whereas, any plants I bought quickly went from store-bought lush to shrivelling victims of neglect in a very short breath of time. Their decline made me feel very inadequate. Those needing water thirsted. Those that didn't need watering drowned. Then there was always the one plant that grew and grew, with a twisting stem and a pathetic, small amount of leaves.

Claudia always bought me plants for my birthday. I could never figure out if she did this with a touch of wickedness, knowing my dread of plants, or if it was a case of hope springs eternal. She never gave up. Whenever I got a new plant, I'd throw away the most miserable one. And for some weeks, or months, the new plant would stand there boldly amongst the scruff.

Yet in the end, they all succumbed and ended up atop a compost heap.

Sometime after Claudia died, I got rid of all our houseplants. They were both victims and witnesses to my grief. I treasured the books she brought into my life, reading them with joyful sadness and feeling her loss, but I could not bear seeing one more plant die before my eyes. It took me seven years to buy a new houseplant.

I put it in the living room by itself and made a pact. I told myself that if I could keep it alive for one year, I'd find it some friends. Now, nearly two years down the line, four plants are residing in our living room, looking happy and healthy. 

I just might buy one more, as if it were a gift from Claudia, on my next birthday.

+++++++++++

Photo by Kate Darmody on Unsplash

Witnesses of silence

Books on my bookshelves
A collection of time spent
Not talking a word.

Looking out on cornfields

Prompt:

"The corn was head high, rustling its heavy, dusty leaves, and for a while anyway it had nothing to do with her."

Lila, by Marilynne Robinson

She hides in the attic amongst discarded pieces of broken furniture. Too precious to burn. No longer deemed worthy of fixing. Instead, they gather dust on their wooden surfaces, the grim and rust in their joints leave stains on her shirt and shorts as she crawls to the round window open at the gable of the roof. A cool breeze dries the pearls of sweat on her forehead. 

Sinking into cushions, she forms a makeshift fort, grasping the softest one, its floral pattern faded by sunlight, and hugging it close to her chest. Pushing down, trying to stave off the waves of disappointment and hurt building up inside of her. Her mother's categorical no still echoes in her ears. Her one chance of escape shattered.

  
Now there is nothing to do but wait and watch each day pass by in repetition of nothingness. She swallows the bitterness, choking. Tears begin to fall. 

History

I used to go to Würzburg to the Benedictine monastery to learn Tai Chi.

A Chinese Catholic priest from Barcelona came to teach. He told us the story of escaping China with Catholic missionaries when their lives were threatened by the Red Army.

Thirty years later, he returned to visit his sister, his only living relative. He said that, instead of recounting the details of their struggles, they sat together in silence, knowing that their suffering was too deep to put into words.