Children

 

Dear friends of piano music, 

I am late again. Last week was Mother's Day, which was introduced in Germany in the 1920s by the Association of Florists.

This is why not all mothers are so happy about this institution. Flowers from the husband are often enough an expression of a guilty conscience. So what are we to make of the often thoughtlessly bought flower arrangements placed on our doorstep to satisfy convention? Later, you can leave them at the nursing home, and then you hire the cemetery gardener. such children are, thank God, rare. And of course, there are also parents who you wouldn`t wish on a child. I have often met children at school who did not have it easy with their parents and who, contrary to expectations, nevertheless developed really well - resilience, as it is now called in psychology.

What it means to be a mother - at least that's how I felt - you only fully understand when you are already a mother. Before that, you are simply busy with too many other things to really deal with it mentally. It would have been enough to read the Bible a little more thoroughly or to look at Michelangelo's Pieta again. "Mater dolorosa" - Mary was the mother of God made man, the mother of Jesus crucified, and here we can understand what it means to be a mother: to see one's child suffer without being able to help him. By loving their children, parents are condemned to lifelong concern for their children's well-being. Now, fortunately, very few children are crucified, but that is how it often feels - already immediately after birth, when the little beings do not want to drink, when they get colic and scream heartbreakingly, children's illnesses with high fever, pseudo-croup etc.. Later they may be bullied at school, we are afraid they will become anorexic, have the wrong friends and take drugs, which as we all know are not easier to get anywhere than in a school playground. Yes, I know that both parents and teachers like to suppress this. Alcohol poisoning is also a serious problem in the long run, the so-called "binge drinking", which is very common among young people here and now, like so many things, is hardly talked about because everything is only talking about the pandemic. The worries grow with the children. One story really shocked me after I became a mother, and I had to fight tears for days. It happened in the 19th century on Baltrum, the smallest German island in the North Sea. A 20-year-old sailor wants to visit his parents at Christmas, but a colleague drops him off in the fog on supposedly safe ground - on a sandbank! The boy has something to write and a cigar box with him, and he writes a letter to his mother - she must be strong now, because when she reads this letter he will already have drowned, there can be no rescue for him. The people of Baltrum were in the church at this time, because it was the morning of Christmas Day. The cigar box was indeed found together with the letter and brought to the boy's mother. So that's what it means to be a mother - it was an incredible emotional shock for me, I don't know if you actually have to have children to understand that feeling. Why does one actually do this to oneself? Then there are the sleepless nights, the ruined figure, the - statistically sufficiently proven - heavy financial losses, the disastrously low market value in terms of a job - what employer would take on a mother of several small children if they had enough alternatives?

Right now I have to think of one of my favourite authors, Erich Kästner, who in view of his gloomy early work was often asked: "Where is the positive, Mr Kästner?" Here it comes: the list of positive aspects of having children far outweighs them, of course; nothing is more exciting and beautiful, you are loved and admired, at least while the children are small, for such sensational skills as blowing up balloons or tying shoes. You finally grow up yourself, because now at the latest you realise that you are not the centre of the universe and never have been, and you realise how beneficial it can be to look after others instead of always looking after yourself. The little catastrophes of everyday life, the head lice and worms that are constantly being brought in from daycare (yuck), the ketchup on the wallpaper, the month-old fish finger that you find behind the sofa - all this makes you calm, grounded, you feel a departure of incipient wisdom. Until you step on some of those nasty little Lego bricks again in the dark and barefoot.....But what really and completely convinced me was the name "Mountain of the Childless" for Mount Everest. How desperate, I thought, do you have to be to take on such inhuman hardships and climb such a high mountain without need? There is not even enough oxygen up there, not to mention the cold! Think of Reinhold Messner, how many toes froze off? Brrr, or even worse, fingers!!! Who writes piano pieces for pianists with seven and a half fingers? I'm glad I have children.

Kerstin