Welcome to my journal! It echoes my thoughts and feelings as I journey through life. I hope you connect with what you read. If you enjoy this journal, please subscribe.
I am notorious amongst my family and friends for telling long, winding stories featuring what my mom calls ‘unneccesary details’. This will be one of those stories.
The Christmas season arrived one month after my contract began. Working as an au-pair, I had figured out by then, can be a tricky balancing act at times. Aside from picking kids up from soccer practice and packing lunchboxes, there is a whole facet to my work that requires me to read between the lines: if a child is being disciplined, do I leave the room or stay? If Mama or Papa come back from a work trip and celebrate a mini family reunion, do I accompany the family to the train station to help take care of the kids, or do I give them a private moment? I live in a room in my au-pair family’s house, so I effectively share a home with my bosses. In the beginning of my tenure, I even found it difficult to go and make myself a cup of coffee if I could hear the parents chatting through the kitchen door (though I think that one can be chocked up to nerves). Four mere weeks after staring my new job (and moving in), I found myself questioning what the German employer-employee-present-giving culture was. Would I be expected to buy gifts for the three children I look after? The idea shook me, especially considering that my girlfriend and I, as the youngest, least well-paid members of her family, had made some home made gifts to be distributed. Glasses of raspberry jam and baking mixes found their way into the hands of sisters, aunts and grandpas. Eventually, I settled on making a glass of jam for my au-pair family, too, and left it on the dining room table on my last work day of the year. Satisfied with my small, but hopefully appreciated token and convinced that the children would still receive a mountain of presents despite my not contributing, I headed out the door to catch my train.
My Christmas was wonderful. I ate more than I should have but not nearly as much as I wanted to. We sang carols and saw family and played board games. Somewhere in the middle of my adventures, I received a text message from the mother of my au-pair family, thanking me for the jam, and insisting that they hadn’t forgotten about me. My palms began sweating immediately. They had something for me? What could it be? I began imagining returning home to a wrapped present waiting for me on my desk. When my foot entered the room two weeks later, my desk was empty. My head swivelled to my bed. Also empty. Hoping that this was simply a case of oversight, I went to sleep. The next day I did, indeed, receive a gift—but a rather unexpected one.
Some weeks before, I had commented that we were running low on olive oil, and promptly added it to the shopping list. This was relatively hard to believe, given that we had a four litre can of Italian olive oil standing on the kitchen island. The tin was tall and slender, white with gold trimmings, and the font was particularly eye catching. I said that it seemed a shame to throw such a beautiful tin away, and suggested that we use it as a vase or something else vaguely useful. The parents agreed with me, although without much gusto, that it was a very good looking can. I successfully rescued it from the bin, but it stood in the kitchen, instead, serving only in a decorative capacity. Until it became my Christmas present. The parents thought that it could be used as something: a flower pot. Accompanying the empty can was the first yield of compost created by the earthworm farm we keep hidden in the staircase next to the fire escape. This bit of news was presented to me with the pride and giddy joy of a child—they were very excited about the worms’s work. My used olive oil tin and pile of dirt didn’t make an excellent first impression as a gift, and I was grateful for the training my parents had given me as a child to smile and say thank you whenever I received a present, regardless of its entertainment value.
The more I sat with it, though, the more I relished the thought of my gift. I had mentioned in the first weeks of my work that I would love to plant a tree in the courtyard, and I began considering which trees I was capable of rearing. I settled on an apple, and instead of buying a fully germinated seedling, I started with seeds. I fell in love with the idea of planting a seed and watching it grow each year until it became taller than me. I imagined future generations picking the apples, having far too many, and giving them away to strangers. I tasted the crumbles, cakes, sauces and ciders that my apples would make. I saw the children playing pirates in its treehouse and sitting down to tea parties in its shade. It was with this image etched on my heart that I went about collecting the seeds, and preparing them for planting. Once the seeds began sprouting and as the days turned warmer, I buried them in soil. The first two seeds broke through the earth, but I did not water them attentively enough, and they died. My second attempt was even less successful. After weeks of patiently waiting and watering, there was still no sign of life. Until two little leaves broke through the dirt, into daylight.
That was in April. Eager not to under-water my plant again, I religiously maintained it. It grew tall, and the leaves became larger and a darker shade of green. Two weeks ago I was forced to repot it because it had outgrown the olive oil tin, now rusted in places from the habitual watering. As I was repotting, I saw small budding flowers and my heart soared. I dreamt of the day that I would plant my apple tree in its permanent location in the ground. I continued watering it with a full heart. With that same full heart, I inspected my apple flowers last Monday. One flower—the largest one—was gone. A bell pepper was growing in its place.
My heart shattered. My dreams shattered. No crumble, no cake, no sauce, no cider. My treehouse cracked and thundered to the ground. The sound of children playing in my apple tree disappeared. I wouldn’t get the chance to watch this plant grow into a tall tree. It would never grow into a tree at all. In those weeks I was patiently watering, my au-pair family were also getting their hands dirty. Several tomatoes, peppers, flowers and herbs were planted. Our pumpkin takes up about a third of the balcony, now. My apple seeds must have died, like the ones before them, and a rogue pepper seed must have fallen in with my soil. To have hoped and waited for so long only to see the wrong fruit, punctured some part of me. Deflated, I slunk back inside. After having watered it almost daily for four months, I have yet to water my apple tree since it became a bell pepper. I wonder if I will ever bring myself to water it again.
My life is awfully, horribly, totally busy at the moment. Alongside the usual au-pair workload, I am also studying for a very important German exam and applying for jobs (my au-pair contract will end in three months). And in a week’s time, I’ll go on a summer break with my girlfriend. In light of all this, today’s journal will be the last one until the twenty-fourth of August. See you then!
Silly as it sounds, I really am feeling emotional about this development. I know this journal is a little different to the usual, but if you enjoyed anyway, please send it to someone you love.