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The seasons are shifting here in Berlin. We’ve traded freezing, dry days for consistently warmer, wetter weather. It seems that the price for a daily average in the mid to high tens, though, is gale force wind. Walking to my German class, the day seems temperate and mild until my straight-leg jeans are turned skin-tight by a wind blowing somewhere over forty kilometres per hour. Erratic and frigid, the wind is hard to prepare for. In the middle of winter, when the daily high barely cracks zero degrees, I know exactly how to prepare myself. I hardly ever leave home without a beanie and I layer my fleeces accordingly. Nowadays, I don’t need to carefully consider my layers before braving the elements. I toss a winter jacket over my t-shirt and I’m ready to face the day. Then the wind makes a fool out of me. Even when I dress specifically to deter the wind, the wind breaks through my windbreaker. It occurred to me, after an hour and a half of intermittent shivering beside the soccer field where one of the children I au pair was training, that regardless of how well I prepare myself, I will never be totally protected from the wind. Sometimes the wind blows and I take no notice. Sometimes the wind blows right through me.
Two friends and I attended a concert in Dublin in early October 2022. That summer the three of us met while working at a summer camp in upstate New York, where I also met and fell in love with my now girlfriend. She and I spent some time touring the States together after our work wrapped up but after about a week, we had to go our separate ways—she back to Germany to start university, while I explored the UK and Ireland. Our in-person relationship was forced to become a long-distance one and the concert marked about three weeks of FaceTime dating. The indie/folk band we saw is one of my favourites, and I was practically giddy at the opportunity of seeing them perform live (an impossibility in my hometown). I beamed throughout their whole set, occasionally singing along when the music and crowd demanded it. The opening band closed their set with an unreleased song that they had written while on tour, about the things they steadily lost at each stop. I encourage you to listen to the whole song, these are the lyrics to the first chorus:
I left my coat in Amsterdam,
I left my keys in Rome.
My credit card’s in a Dublin bar,
Of course, we were in a bar in Dublin, so this triggered a roar of approval. Then came the last line of the chorus:
And I left my love at home
Those words blew right through me. There was absolutely nothing I could have done to defend myself from the emotional hurricane that followed. I sat on my stool in the balcony, my lukewarm beer shaking in my hands, eyes suddenly teary. This happens to me on occasion. It might be a song, it might be a movie or a book. Every page before the current one has stirred precious little emotion, but there is one line, one refrain, that breaks through my armour of apathy and triggers sensitivity. This moment of connection, even if it is accompanied by tears, is usually welcomed; those books, songs and movies go on to win a special place in my heart.
I quite enjoy it when the words of an author or an actor blow through me. Resist as I might, other words blow through me too. The unkind words that the children I au pair hurl at me like weapons when they are overwhelmed or angry. When the kids stumble upon one of my sensitivities, my difficulty building German fluency or facing how far away from home I am, I do my best to keep a straight face. I don’t want to betray how easily their words penetrate my emotional defences. I put on the same brave face when an innocent joke cracked by my girlfriend unexpectedly sneaks its way into my self-doubts and stirs up a mess. She sees through my mask better than the kids do, though. She begins to recognise, in my eyes, in the intimate details of my skin, that my smile is false and that her words have temporarily dismantled me. My dad is particularly good at looking right through that mask.
While spring is slowly usurping winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, my parents back home in Cape Town are experiencing winds of their own: the much-anticipated, cool breeze of autumn that tempers the scorching heat of the summer. Rather than an enemy combatant to defend oneself against, the wind, there, is welcomed like an old friend. It serves as a reminder that the energy-draining, high thirties of February will soon come to an end and give way to a cool, clear March. In the Februaries past my parents and I would open all of the windows in our house and leave the doors ajar in hopeful expectation of the relief the gentle wind brings.
Sometimes the emotions I am thrown into are welcomed with open arms (or windows). Sometimes I wish I could run away from them, turn them off, be unfeeling to the cold. I suppose, though, that one of the tricks of life is learning how to face the wind; when to enjoy the breezes or when to turn up a collar against the gales. What I want to learn is how to weather the wind with grace, whether the experience it brings is joyous or not. I’d hate to be closed off to the joy of a gentle breeze because of the bitter cold a gale can bring. I suppose I’ll have to figure it out one season at a time.
Little behind-the-scenes story for you: The band we went to see in Dublin is based in New York, so though all three of us were in their hometown for the American leg of their tour, we had to work. We caught the last show of their tour in Dublin after a week of exploring the gorgeous country. If you enjoyed this journal, please send it to someone you love.