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Archives for May 2010

Story of the month – murder?

May 27, 2010 by Susanne 1 Comment

(One of the writers I’m meeting with every month has written a murder mystery, and so her topic of choice for our last meeting was “murder”. I didn’t quite know what to write for that at first. I had a vague notion of doing something with cute talking animals like the white rabbit but then I found that I wanted to do something totally different:)

“I couldn’t harm a fly! What do you want from me?”

I was looking at her through the observation window, the window that was a mirror on the other side.

Her husband had been found by a neighbor coming over to borrow the dethatcher for his garden. The neighbor came in through the back, and found him sprawled on the kitchen floor. Nothing had been looking out of the ordinary, just a guy laying on the floor. There had been groceries sitting on the counter in a bag. He probably was about to put them away.

I was called to the house just before lunch break. There were police cars already there, and Gonzales my partner was already talking to the neighbor. A nice neighborhood, small houses, each with a lawn in front and a garage attached to it, neat mailboxes standing next to the sidewalk. A lot of people were standing in the street. They weren’t used to see police cars here.

Everything in the house was tidy and neat and clean. Just as you would expect in the house of a middle aged couple. There were only the two of them living there. No children apparently which was a bit unusual. Otherwise everything looked normal.

Somebody had knocked the deceased on the head. Just one blow, and that was it. There was no sign of struggle, no fingerprints, no nothing. Just a man on the floor. He looked as if he had just keeled over.

When the wife came home later she was shocked by the presence of police cars. When they told her about her husband she couldn’t believe it at first. Then she went numb. Of course we had to bring her in and question her. She was the person who could help us best with this, she would be the one knowing her husband. And of course she was also a suspect. They always were in cases like this.

Until now it had been Gonzales talking to her but we all thought it might be time for a little woman on woman chat. People assume that you’re nice and sympathetic because you’re female. Of course that’s bullshit. Gonzales is much nicer than me. Women working in the police don’t stay nice even if they start out that way. You either get hard or you quit. And if you quit you can have a nice little life in a nice little suburb with your nice little kids, just like that woman sitting there on a chair in a police station. Of course her life wasn’t that nice now, with her husband killed.

In TV series there’s often this moment when they tell somebody about the death of a person they love. There’s a very brief pause, and then there’s the wailing. It doesn’t really happen this way in real life. Usually people take much longer to understand what’s happened. Most people stay numb for quite some time. They act as if nothing had happened, they keep on doing the things they always do, and only later, quite a bit later does it hit them. And even that is not the time when the wailing starts. That comes later.

Except when someone is guilty. When somebody already knew that the person was dead. Then they often act as in TV. They don’t know better. That’s often a giveaway, people wailing like that. You want to watch out for that.

I go into the interrogation room, and sit down on a chair opposite her.

“Hello, Mrs. Harris.” I say, “I’m sorry to keep you but you’re the one who can help us to find your husband’s murderer.”

“So it was murder? But that’s ridiculous. Who would want him dead, he is perfectly harmless. And it’s Ms. Harris, not Mrs.” Then she remembered. “Was, I mean.” She played with the wedding band on her left hand, turning it round and round on her finger. “Your partner there, Mr. Gonzales, I think that he thinks that I did it.” Suddenly she sat up straight, looking me directly in the eye. “That’s ridiculous, I love him, and I never would have wished him harm.”

That made me smile a bit. “Never, eh? Not even when he didn’t screw the top of the toothpaste back on? Not even when he forgot your birthday? Never?”

“He didn’t do that. He’d never forget my birthday.” She paused, “Of course he never did any housework.” Twisting her ring, “Or picked up his clothes. I have told him over and over again, day in and day out to please put his clothes in the hamper but no, he always threw them on the floor. Every single day. And every day a clean shirt. Every single day, even on weekends. And I had to iron them. Pick them up from the floor, empty his pockets, put everything in the laundry, wash it, hang it up, iron it, fold it, put it away. Every single day. Oh, and his shoes. He never polished them, ever. But he needed a clean and polished pair every single day. Do you know how many pairs of black shoes this man owns?”

I tried to look sympathetic.

“Ten pairs. Ten pairs! Of black dress shoes. For work. And guess who has to polish them?”

“That would be you.”

“You’re right. And he never puts anything away, ever. Not even his tools. You know he has this workshop in the basement with all his tools. And every time he uses something he puts it on top of the workbench. He never puts anything away. The pile on that workbench just gets higher and higher. The other day I wanted some pliers to unscrew the faucet, and I couldn’t find anything in there. He does have this set of drawers for his tools, everything has a place, it could be beautiful, and easy to find everything but I had to dig through that pile on the workbench to find a measly pair of pliers. Mind you, when I straightened them all up he was mad at me.”

“Did you have a fight about that?”

“We don’t exactly fight. We’re always nice and polite to each other.” Twisting her ring again. “Though I think sometimes I’m nagging him a bit.”

I just leaned back and let her talk.

“I know, he is working much more than me. I should be able to do all the housework but it does seem a bit unfair that he never lifts a finger.”

“Mmh.”

“He could just, I don’t know, sometimes he could just put away the groceries or go shopping once in a while, or just pick up his damn socks from the floor.” Her voice had gotten louder and quite tense by now.

“Wait a minute. There are groceries in your kitchen right now.”

“Oh yes, I forgot all about them. I should have put them away.”

“Did you go grocery shopping earlier?”

“Yes, of course, I always do. I left them on the counter, and asked him to put them away for once because I had to get back to fetch some potatoes. – He doesn’t like pasta or rice so I always have to cook him potatoes. And I hadn’t gotten enough, and so I asked him to please at least put the milk in the fridge.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said I could do it. But I had to go back to the store before they were closing.”

“And then?”

“I said he could either put the groceries away or go to the store to get more potatoes.”

“And then?”

“And then he said that I could do both, and that it was my fault because I had forgotten the potatoes, and how muddle-headed I always was, and that it wasn’t his job to always help me out, and that made me really mad.” She looked down on her hands playing with her ring. “I got so mad at him, I could have killed him.”

Filed Under: story of the month, writing

Thinking about minimalist packing

May 24, 2010 by Susanne 1 Comment

There are two reasons I’m thinking about packing right now: 1) I’m about to visit my parents for ten days com Wednesday, 2) through the Unclutterer website I found an article on minimalist packing last week or so.

I like to travel light as much as the next person, and I’m always making fun of people like my mother who always takes about three times the clothes I do, and ends up bringing things home that she didn’t even wear on the trip. Of course, the secret to packing light is not to mind if you look the same every day, and to have comfortable shoes that you can wear day in and day out. (Sometimes I think wearing shoes like that might be one of the secrets of happiness but this is not about shoes.)

Still, when I’ll be getting out of the door to travel my luggage will be quite a bit heavier than the one described on the minimalist blog. Why is that so?

packing.jpg

Well, for one I’m not staying in a hotel so I will bring shampoo, and soap, and a hairdryer (a tiny one but still), I will bring an emergency travel towel (something that really comes in handy more often than you think), I will take a second cardigan, and contact lens solution, and my cell phone charger, my camera charger, my ipod charger, and my PDA charger.

Why do I need all these gadgets? Well, I won’t bring my laptop, and my PDA with its foldable keyboard is my means to get my 500 words a day in.

I will also bring more clothes than her because while I could wash my clothes while away I don’t like to do so when I’ll be only gone for a little more than a week so I’ll bring four tees, a cardigan, four pairs of socks, and four changes of underwear in addition to what I’m wearing the first day. Depending on the weather forecast I might also bring a pair of sandals in addition to my grey walking shoes, and I’m contemplating to add a pair of slippers since we will be spending quite a bit of time sitting around indoors.

I will bring a bathing suit because we plan to go swimming, I will bring a lace shawl or two, and I will bring a bottle of wine and some dark chocolate as presents for my parents.

I will bring a notebook for my morning pages, and another one for just general notes, I will bring my best pen, and a book to read, and I already bought three new books for my son to read, and I will bring a pack of Uno cards to play with my son. Last year I took three books for me but this year I decided to only take one paper book, and I have a couple more on my ipod. But I can think of a lot of situations where you don’t want to bring an electronic reading device, or where you can’t charge your ipod, or just imagine what if it falls to the ground and breaks, and then you’re stuck without a book to read.

We will have two eight hour train rides to fill, and a whole week’s worth of evenings sitting in our rented apartment while out son is already asleep.

I will also take a bottle of water or two, and sandwiches and cookies, as you do when you’re traveling with a child, and a husband who is lactose and fructose intolerant. We will also take tea, so that my mother doesn’t have to buy some that she’d never drink anyway.

And of course I will bring knitting. You didn’t think I would forget that, wouldn’t you? I already started a pair of socks who’ll come with me, and I will start another lace shawl, one that’s intriguing but not as complicated as the one I’m currently working on. I also will bring a spindle or two and 100 grams of fiber, and if everything goes according to plan I might have a nice pair of socks made from that fiber upon our return. If everything doesn’t go according to plan I will have lugged around 100 grams of fiber, a 15 gram spindle, and a set of double pointed needles.

I will also take some sheet music since my husband plans to bring both an electrical guitar and the violin with him, and since the guitar is already there I might finally get around to practice the songs I’ve been teaching my students lately. (That’s the “so you’ll have to play it this way, only much faster, and as you can see you have to look out to not make this mistake I just made”-school of teaching. In my defense I have to say that they are playing quite well.) So. Sheet music, picks, guitar tuner, and a capo.

And two yoga DVD’s. I’m not taking my running shoes though. See, I’m sensible. And I will exercise in my pajama bottoms.

And before you think I’m totally crazy I might have to add that when my husband and I went to Brazil for two months all the luggage we had were our two backpacks (one is about the size of a carry-on, the other is a bit bigger), and each of us had a second backpack in addition to that. We could easily carry all out stuff around. So, the clothes I take for ten days would be enough for any amount of time, I only would have to wash them.

backpack.jpg

We didn’t bring a guitar, though, we bought one there.

So I can never decide if I’m a light traveler or not. I try to be prepared (sunscreen, water, a hat, an umbrella, a pocket knife) but not overloaded. It’s a tricky balance. What about you? Do you travel light or not? How many pounds of knitting do you usually take? Or books?

Filed Under: life, lists, travel

so much to do – so little time

May 19, 2010 by Susanne 3 Comments

In my last post I entertained you with yet another one of my endless to-do-lists. Tini was kind enough to ask how far I had gotten that weekend. Well, I knew I’d not be able to do everything on that list, that was kind of the point of the whole thing. Faced with a tiny sliver of time I always make big plans to fill it. That list, last weekend’s list was big enough to make me think I’d maybe get through it by the end of this week. I would have been okay with that if it weren’t for the fact that life keeps on happening and now I have a new list that’s even bigger.

You know, there are people who do “100 things to do before I turn 40”-lists but really, I have a “100 things I absolutely have to do until next Tuesday”-list. It comes with an attached “list of things I wish to do with my life” that’s enough to keep me busy for the next two or three decades, and that has such nifty points as “write and record an album of original songs”, and “write a novel”, and “edit the first draft of a novel I have sitting in my file cabinet and get it ready to be read by other people”.

I have heard of people who are bored, I’m usually not one of them, unless you make me sit and listen to small talk for more than thirty minutes in a row. But even then I usual take out my knitting, and then I’m fine.

Back to the list:

  1. Sew a bag to hold my two new spindles: I solved this by buying two zippered pouches that are intended to keep bottles cool. They are neither beautiful nor particularly suited to the task but they are better than ziplocks and already assembled. I tested them on Sunday, and yes, they hold the spindles and fiber, the spindles didn’t break.
  2. Weave in ends, sew buttons on, and block every single piece of finished knitting that’s on the “knitting to be finished”-pile: I did sew the buttons on my new Tappan Zee cardigan. It took me all of five minutes. I didn’t want to show up at the spinning meeting with a cardigan lacking buttons.
  3. Darn socks, and other items of clothing: Very funny. I almost feel like my mother-in-law when she was getting rid of her old bedroom furniture in 1995 and there was a pair of jeans in need of mending in there that had fitted my husband some twenty years earlier. I have to say, though, that I cull the mending pile on a regular basis so that all clothes in there still fit someone in the house. Well, apart from the pair of corduroy pants that belong to me, and that are now two sizes too small. But I’m working on it.
  4. Clean the house including windows. Again, very funny. I did keep the kitchen in pristine condition throughout the weekend, though. I just didn’t cook.
  5. Sew a skirt. Nope.
  6. Finish knitting clues 4 to 7 of the Alhambra-Shawl. Knit eight rows of clue 4 on Monday morning. Haven’t touched the shawl ever since.
  7. Get enough sleep. Partial success, I did sleep enough one day, not nearly enough the next. I’m on a new, improved, and very strict “get ready for bed at 9.45 pm”-routine though. Already managed it once. (Pat on the back.)
  8. Go to spinning meeting on Sunday. And I did. And it was a lot of fun. And I spun, and spun, and talked, and spun.
  9. Bake a cake to take to spinning meeting. Did it. Just barely in time but it was a huge success, I didn’t take any of it home again even though there were only four of us.
  10. Exercise. Well, I took a long walk.
  11. Do something special with my son. We went to the toy store where he bought himself a new toy, and we went to the farmer’s market and got some greek food. We don’t eat that any more because my husband can’t have it. Since he was away it was the perfect treat for my son and me. After eating that he spent the rest of the weekend with my mother-in-law.
  12. Take pictures of all the finished knitted items. Again, very funny. The sun still has only been seen from afar in these parts.
  13. Write a story for the next writer’s group meeting. Still have to do this one, has to be finished by tomorrow. Fun.
  14. Finish doing taxes. And again, taxes are sitting here, mocking me.

All of this is not much of a problem. The problem are all the things that were on my to-do-list before, that have gotten on the list since then, and my brain going on overload because of all that.

One of my problems (and I told you about that, I know) is that every problem immediately creates a set of sub-problems and -tasks. Like my son got invited to a birthday party next week. There is:

  1. Talk to mother who invited him, tell her that he would love to go.
  2. Tell her that she can give my number to another boy’s mother so that only one of us has to make the half hour drive.
  3. Think that it might be nice to make a family outing of that. To go there by train, and spend the afternoon in a café while my son is at the party.
  4. Talk to my husband about that. He agrees.
  5. Think about the fact that we will have to bring birthday presents for the twins, think about when to get them, and what to get.
  6. While out doing errands today, go to toy store and buy presents (that was very efficient of me, most unusual).
  7. Make a note that presents will need to be wrapped but only after my son has seen them.
  8. Look up trains for getting to the party and back, and look up ticket options.
  9. Write a post-it note for my husband to put date into his calendar.
  10. Put date into my own calendar.
  11. Put date into family calendar.
  12. Hope that there is still suitable wrapping paper in attic.
  13. Make note to look for wrapping paper before going to the grocery store next time.
  14. Go and look for wrapping paper.
  15. Put wrapping paper on shopping list.
  16. Buy wrapping paper.
  17. Wrap presents.
  18. Get ticket.
  19. Get family to station on time.

And I’m sure I have forgotten something. Like telling my mother-in-law that we will be going there so that she doesn’t make plans for my son on that day.

One part that makes organizing this household such a big task is that every single thing has to be talked through with three other people. Often repeatedly. Everybody has to have every information. I should make hand-outs. Like the sheets of paper you get from the school. You know what, I think I just had a perfectly brilliant idea.

One part is that the flow of information heavily relies on a seven year old. He said to me that he needed some brown or green clothes to wear to a school event. Then he told me that he had already chosen the right clothes with the help of his grandmother. I didn’t ask her about it but just today when he was on his way to the event my husband found out that the particular pair of pants he had planned on wearing were not in his closet. That’s because they have been to small for more than a year. My husband didn’t know that. I’m the only one who has any idea what clothes my son owns, and I was busy teaching during this particular crisis.

And so it goes on and on. Tell somebody about an event, then remind that somebody about the event. The writing group I attend is organized through a yahoo group. We meet every second Thursday of the month, except when we don’t. Keeping track of dates seems to be really hard, so I’m using the group’s calendar to send out reminders for the meeting. Three days before, and one day before. But then there’s one member of the group who is not on the yahoo group so I try to remember to send her the dates through e-mail. And then there’s another one of us who sometimes doesn’t check her e-mail for ages, and so if I haven’t heard anything from her I text her.

I also talk about the meeting with my mother-in-law because I can only go if she’s free to take my son, and I talk about it to my husband, and I mark it on my calendar, and on the family calendar that’s hanging in the kitchen. I remind my husband about a week in advance, then again three days before the event, and on the same day. In between reminders he will forget all about it because he likes his head nice and uncluttered. Just like me.

And in all of this the thinking about the things I have to do takes more energy than the simple doing of the things would do, only you can’t do all the things at once, and so you have to think about them, and make lists and stuff.

I might be doing something wrong, though. What do you think? Are your lives and to-do-lists feeling as overwhelming as mine?

Filed Under: life, lists

Things I plan to do on the weekend

May 13, 2010 by Susanne 5 Comments

This weekend is very special because – my husband is visiting friends. He’ll be actually away for 2 1/2 days. This happens about once every two or three years, and so, of course, I have made special plans. Now, a few days before he’s traveling I still hope for a blissfully empty weekend where I’ll do everything exactly as I like. Experience tells me that usually I just sit around and wait for him to come back because I’m not used to this, and I can’t sleep when he’s not in the house. But for now: hope. So I made little list:

  1. Sew a bag to hold my two new spindles.
  2. Weave in ends, sew buttons on, and block every single piece of finished knitting that’s on the “knitting to be finished”-pile.
  3. Darn socks, and other items of clothing.
  4. Clean the house including windows.
  5. Sew a skirt.
  6. Finish knitting clues 4 to 7 of the Alhambra-Shawl.
  7. Get enough sleep.
  8. Go to spinning meeting on Sunday.
  9. Bake a cake to take to spinning meeting.
  10. Exercise.
  11. Do something special with my son.
  12. Take pictures of all the finished knitted items.
  13. Write a story for the next writer’s group meeting.
  14. Finish doing taxes.

That’s pretty do-able, don’t you think?

Filed Under: crafts, life, lists, projects

Clothes to make me happy – part 1

May 12, 2010 by Susanne Leave a Comment

As I said in my last “year of happiness”-update I’m planning to look through my clothes, see what still fits me, and then eventually buy new ones. Well, for several weeks in a row now, I haven’t been able to find the space and time to pull all my clothes out.

Today I went and bought myself some new shoes, and when I came back with not only one pair but two I suddenly realized that I have done the thing most women do when they have gained weight, and are unhappy with their clothes. They buy shoes because their feet haven’t gotten bigger, and so it’s easier to find something that fits and looks nice.

Only I have been buying a pair of running shoes, and a pair for hiking. After almost three months of running at least once a week, and after my knees started hurting because I’m running in an old pair of sneakers meant to be used for step aerobics I thought it was finally time to commit to real running shoes. (What do you mean you don’t own step aerobic shoes? Really?) The new shoes aren’t really pretty but very functional. And the hiking boots were on sale, and for years now I have wanted new ones. You know how it goes, you get pregnant and your feet grow bigger, and then every time you go to the Alps to hike you put on your boots, and you find that your toes hurt, and when you come back in the evening they feel like someone has repeatedly hit them with a hammer, and then you think that you really would like to have new boots, but then you think about the fact that you need three other pairs of shoes first (walking shoes, black Mary Janes, and sneakers for indoors), and that you only go hiking once or twice a year, and you don’t buy any, and this goes on for years and years.

And then you see hiking boots on sale just when you received the money from teaching one of your knitting classes. And somehow it feels very good to take the money from the knitting class and put it into athletic shoes. Those boots aren’t pretty either, so no pictures today. But I can’t wait to try them out. And I’ll go for a run outside tomorrow. Even if it’s raining.

On another note, I have been knitting things like crazy, and am still waiting for the sun to make a re-appearance to take pictures of those things. Right now it’s either light or I have time, never both.

And who knows, maybe I’ll tackle my closet this weekend. Stay tuned.

Filed Under: changing habits, year of happiness

Story of the month – The House

May 5, 2010 by Susanne 5 Comments

(Yet another writing group story. One of the other writers came up with the idea of writing about houses, and since we were meeting at my house that month I thought it would be appropriate to write about the house I’m living in. It isn’t really a story but you might like it nonetheless.)

This is an old house, a small house with creaking floorboards and a shingled roof. From afar it looks like a house a child might draw, pale yellow, the door in the middle, windows in rows of two above. The door is rounded at the top and made from oak. It has a round window set in the middle. The garden is huge by modern standards, and all around there’s a tall green hedge.

We moved into this house shortly after my father-in-law had died. First we had thought that my mother-in-law wanted to sell the house, get rid of that tiny old thing but then we found out that she only didn’t want to stay here alone. We were in love and wanted to move in together, and that’s what we did, move together into the suburbs.

When my husband’s paternal grandmother bought this house, back in 1938, this wasn’t a suburb. This was a very small town, and in this very street were three houses like this one, a nursery, and not much else. My husband tells tales of climbing the big pines in the garden, the ones that are no longer there, the ones that fell on a neighbor’s roof during a storm one day. He sat there, high in the tree and looked over the greenhouses, the rows of plants, and the few gardens that made the neighborhood.

When his grandmother bought the house – and that’s the right way to tell this story, it’s never ‘his grandparents bought the house’, it’s always his grandmother – back in 1938 it was brand-new. It was built by the man living next door in a house very similar but with only one apartment instead of two. There seems to be something weird about his house, he hanged himself in the cellar there, then there lived an old woman with a dog who was quite peculiar, and next the neighbor I met, somebody really strange who never ceased to change things at his house. He built, and tore down, and altered, and deepened the cellar, and changed the roof, and built an annex, and changed the garden, and changed the garage, and sawed part of our garage off because it was on his property. We didn’t know. They just built the new garage where the old one had been, in the seventies. Now we know that part of our garage is on our neighbor’s property, and part of our other neighbor’s garden is on ours.

You can still feel the war here in the house. Every time you want to hang up a picture you are reminded that this house was built at a time when building materials where scarce because of the war. You drill a tiny little hole, and your drill will either go in like butter without any resistance at all, or it will hit a pebble, and then you’re stuck. When you pull your drill out you will find that the hole has became large enough to swallow half your fist. So in this house pictures stay where they already are, and if you buy a new one you take care to use a hook that’s already there.

The cellar isn’t insulated at all. It’s damp and dark and moldy. When you put something organic on the floor there, like your winter shoes or potatoes, it will get moldy during the summer.

There are two apartments in this house. Each one has two rooms, a kitchen, and a tiny bathroom. Back when my husband’s family moved in that was considered to be enough for a family of four. His father was four when they moved here, his brother not yet born, and every day their father took the train to Munich to go to work. He was very proud of his work, and later, much later, after the war, he got a certificate because he had spent 50 years working in that same place. Of course, when his second son was born he wasn’t home much. He was in the war.

The town they lived in was a target at that time because out here in the woods there’s a facility where they kept fuel in big tanks for the military. Up to this day there’s a part of the wood where you can’t go, a part with barbed wire and signs to keep you out.

So there were bombs. Out here there were no shelters. My husband’s uncle tells tales of mattresses in the cellar, the cellar that’s moldy and damp, and how the Western side of the house was cracked because of a bomb. It didn’t fall down, that wall, it just had a crack from top to bottom.

My husband’s grandparents were living on the first floor with their two children, and at first his grandmother’s sister with her family lived upstairs. But that grandmother must have been a fierce and unpleasant woman, and soon enough she had one too many fight with her sister who moved out never to speak to her again. It was my husband’s father who later found her again. If it weren’t for him we wouldn’t know anyone from that side of the family.

Some time later, a few years after the war, a family of Silesian fugitives came to live in that apartment upstairs. A couple with their two teenage daughters. My husband’s grandmother looked down upon them, a family who had lost everything, forced to flee by the Russian army.

That family was my mother-in-law’s family. She, her parents, and her younger sister had finally found a new home here in this house. They too had only two rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. There were oil heaters in there, the rooms small and square, and two big chimneys going through the house.

When they all got a little older, the oldest son from downstairs and the oldest daughter from upstairs wanted to get married to each other. My mother-in-law never had another boyfriend but the one she met in the house she lived in.

She didn’t want to move ever again, and she persuaded her parents to look for a new apartment so she and her husband could stay in this house. The small apartment on the second floor became their home. Just on top of his parents who were fighting all the time. A few years later they had a son, my husband, and when he started school they had another one. The house was crowded at that time. The grandparents on the first floor, fighting and playing the violin, and listening to music, and the family with two small children on the second floor. And up under the roof there was a room that wasn’t even meant to be a room, and that’s where my husband’s uncle lived at that time. He is my husband’s godfather. Both of them tell stories of singing Christmas carols together up there under the roof.

Some time later that uncle moved away. He married and started working as a teacher, and so the family on the second floor could spread out upwards. In the late sixities two rooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom suddenly didn’t seem big enough for a family of four anymore. My father-in-law must have spent many a weekend turning that attic into two rooms for his sons, and some years later he even added a tiny bathroom. That must have been quite some time later because my husband still tells tales of having to resort to the garden when he had to use the toilet in the night because his father would lock the apartment door, and there wasn’t a bathroom accessible.

This house seems to grab at people, my mother-in-law never wants to move out again, and my husband came back to live here several times, the last one being when I moved here with him.

His grandfather has died of cancer here in this house, in our bedroom. We still don’t have a doorbell on our apartment door because my father-in-law deactivated it when his mother went cuckoo and started ringing it for no reason day and night. They had to send her to a nursing home eventually because they couldn’t keep an eye on her all the time.

Shortly after she died her son became ill as well. I only met him twice, and already he was only a shadow of the man he used to be. We didn’t get along at all. He resented that I’m not Bavarian, and he preferred the girlfriend my husband had had before me. He died the year I met my husband, in this house, in his bed on the second floor right above the spot where his father had died.

Three months later we moved in. It was a weird feeling for me, moving in with all that history. This is my husband’s grandmother’s kitchen sink, and the tiles she chose, and her bathroom. This is where they had to renew the floors because my mother-in-laws dishwasher broke and there was water all over. That is why the tiles in the bathroom, and the horrible floor in the kitchen don’t really match anything else. His grandparents are the reason we still have aluminum wiring in our apartment (but nowhere else).

We have her sink, and her kitchen cabinet. We have her old big table in the basement where they used to do the washing. I have her sewing basket and I use it often. We also have been living here for sixteen years now so we have made memories of our own. The kitchen bench we got for our wedding. The table that my brother-in-law gave us because it was too small for his growing family. The bed and closet that we bought from the money my mother-in-law’s father gave us. The shelves that my husband’s ex-girlfriend built, the other shelves I brought with me when I moved in, and finally the annex we had built so we could work from home.

It’s getting less crowded in this small house even though we have a child now. Shortly after he was born, all of a sudden I had the feeling there was somebody in the house. I couldn’t see anybody, it was eerie. I’d go down the hall and there’d be this presence. At first I thought it might be my husband’s grandmother, maybe she was unhappy with what we had done to the house. Her son had cut down all her fruit trees, and changed the garden into lawn and flowers. We had renovated the whole house, new windows, new paint, the annex, and finally a new roof (but that was later). But it wasn’t her. It was very strange.

I had the feeling there was somebody, and that somebody was related to us, and was attracted by the baby in the house. As if that somebody wanted to drink our life in, watch us, watch the baby. Then I knew it. It wasn’t my husband’s paternal grandmother, it was mine. Which was double strange since she was supposed to be still alive if quite muddled in the head. I told her to go away. I told her that we loved her, and that all was well with her great-grandchild but that she should leave us alone because she didn’t belong here.

Only a couple of months later my mother said, “And after your grandmother’s death…” and I said, “What? She died? Why haven’t you told me?” And my mother, “Haven’t I?” and it turned out that she had died just before I had felt her here, in this house.

Filed Under: story of the month, writing

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