The Thing and Candles
This morning of all Saints Day, I sold my car, a VW 181 (“The Thing”). It was my first car and I bought it, when I got my driver’s license. Believe me - it is the best car ever! Mostly, because it IS a car – no interior lining, no shining polish, no engineered sounds, no electronic intermediaries. Just the engine, the body, the road (and the draft coming in from the windows – if you should ever be so fortunate to buy one, get a set of mittens, hat, and scarf to come with it, and a thermos). For about ten years, it has been sitting in my parents’ garage forcing my dad to squeeze to get into his own car that was parking beside it; it has been taking away the space for a wheel-barrow; and it served as the storage place for the deckchair pillows. My mom regularly asked me, whether I was thinking about selling it. My dad may have entertained similar thoughts, but liking cars himself could connected to my love for it and usually said that it was up to me. And I always answered: “Just wait. When I am returning home and earn some money, I’ll fix it up, first thing.” And that was enough of a reason for my parents to keep it in their garage and to squeeze and to find the most fantastic spots to store the wheel-barrow.
But now, I am going to study and most likely stay in the States for a while and need some money, too. Thus, time to acknowledge the reality that the reasonable thing to do with the Thing is to sell it. There were several people who were interested, but who did not qualify to be the new owners – they just did not understand a Thing. But than a young woman, Leonie (the picture shows Leonie and her support crew, my father to the right, and me), came, who wanted to buy it as a special treat for graduating from her studies of “automobile economy and technology” studies. She, her brother, and her boyfriend are members of a Beetle-club, they all had that joyful twinkle in their eyes looking at the Thing, she had completed an internship at Volkswagen, and her father had the Tellington-touch for cars and, moreover, had driven a Thing when in the military in the 1970s. Prime candidates! They will take him apart piece by piece, will handle every piece lovingly, inspect it, clean it, replace what is broken, and put it once more all together to give it a new life on the road and the fields. Leonie told me that she will send me pictures of the day that The Thing will get its technical inspection and go for its first ride in the spring. When they came to pick it up, today, we had some coffee together and later my mom said: “Now you are really breaking up your tents.” And I was thinking of a poem by Hermann Hesse “Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne…” (In all Beginnings dwells a Magic Force…)
In the evening of All Saints Day the darkness on the graveyards is lit with hundreds and thousands of candles in red or white lanterns. Ever since I can remember, my mom and dad took me and my sister Verena to the graves of my baby sister and brother Carmen and Stephan, who died long before I was born.
After about fifty years, my brother’s and sister’s graves are gone, one re-claimed by the wilderness (the image shows my dad lighting a candle there), the other invisible underneath the lawn at the tall birch tree (the image shows my parents standing close to the birch), whose roots had always embraced it. But we visit anyway bringing candles and matches. On our way through the dark, we met many families standing together, small children whispering excitedly, older ones looking thoughtfully. And as all of us walked about, it were the candles of the people who had no one to go with and who therefore came before evening fell, that lit our paths between graves, over cobblestones and marshy lawns.
In Germany, graves are like little gardens. Walking between them this night, I thought I felt for a moment the love that they so freely and openly express and share. And I wondered about the words that were never spoken and how they show themselves in those roses, candles, boxwood bushes or in abandonment.
My mother said quietly: “It is always so nice to come here with you children.” And after we lit Stephan’s candle my father ushered us off to check if Carmen’s light was still burning brightly – as my parents have
always done.

Print This

Email This