When I think back to my childhood, I think of the Beginian Grove. This is a small park in front of the Geiersberg Forest, very close to Baustetten, a place in the south of Franconia.
Baustetten is not particularly big, a medium-sized village with about 1000 inhabitants, two inns, a small supermarket and several small shops. There is one main street and two side streets, the rest is pedestrianized. This is not like that because the inhabitants of Baustetten are particularly car-hostile or quiet-loving, but simply because there is nothing of concern that could stop travelers. Only very rarely do visitors, hikers or strollers get lost in the "Green Market" and in the Church of St. George.
The green market is, so to speak, the real center of village life. It's an oval, cobblestone square with old half-timbered houses and a fountain in the middle. The fountain represents a little angel with a bow and arrow - called the "Baustettener Amor".On the tiptoe of his right foot, his left leg stretched back and with the childlike, chubby face facing east, he stands - carved from white sandstone - on a round column made of the same material in the middle of a circular basin in which clear, drinkable water flows splashes from two taps anchored in the column. On the east side of the Green Market, in view of Cupid, is St. George, with its white and yellow facade and the large, dark walnut door. There are two stained glass windows that appear dark gray on the outside, but spread warm light inside ... at least in the afternoon when the sun shines through. Above the gate there is a small rose window that has been carved unglazed through the stone - the sun's eye. Anyone wondering why weddings always take place in the afternoon around three o'clock, as well as baptisms, priestly ordinations or the like, must have a look at such a festivity.If you have the right time planning, the sunlight shines through the sun's eye like a spotlight on the bride and groom, the priest or the baptized child. An American tourist - also one of the few lost people - who had experienced this effect at a baptism, spoke afterwards of "The spotlight of God" and the people from Baustetten, who are otherwise anything but international, have kept this anecdote and it is - of course translated into German - to this day it has remained as "God's Spotlight".
But even during the week, the Green Market is the center of activities, if there are any. Bigger festivals are celebrated there, the weekly market - which gives it its name - is of course also there and some of the lovers come here to kiss and dream at Cupid's fountain.
I say one part, because the other part goes - and here we come back to the actual beginning of my story - in the Beginienhain, to "stroll" there, as our village poet - the butcher Liebmann - after a few glasses of red Franconian wine in the " Damhirsch "- one of the two mentioned restaurants - mentioned in one of his popular poet's speeches, which often end alternately in lyrical ecstasy or deepest melancholy.The Beginienhain is at first just a normal light forest ... a semi-cultivated park, as it is often found in Germany, especially in the south, but it is something special, because just as Hallstadt is a suburb of Bamberg, the Beginienhain is one Kind of "Vorwald" to the Geiersberger Wald. The Geiersberger Wald is ... or was ... one of the old, untouched mixed forests that only exist in Franconia. There are no paved paths there, at most a couple of footpaths, which always run differently as the old ones are overgrown and new ones are trodden on. When I was a child, my mother used to tell me stories in the evenings about goblins, gnomes and fairies who were supposed to live there. In general, my mother told me a lot of stories and she also played with me a lot. Maybe she did that because I was different from most kids and I didn't have any friends. Or maybe I was different because my mother cared about me so much. I don't know, it's like the hen and the egg. The fact is that I was always different from the other children my age and that my mother was always very important to me.And since I couldn't play in the alleys and on the green market (because that was the territory of the other children), the Beginienhain developed into my private playground. I built little huts and tents out of twigs and leaves, let bark boats swim in the Ammerbach, which flows down from the Geierberg and crosses building stalls, and my mother sat in the grass, read to me, sang and braided necklaces and hairbands out of grass and daisies. Such a wreath still hangs on my window knob. The grass is gray and the silvery petals so dry that the light shines through them and projects their image onto my floor. Strange, these blossoms of light on the dark parquet ... the way everything is strange here ... but that's another story that I'll tell later.
Surrounded by fairy tales, daisies and bark boats, I lived in half a dream world until I was six years old. Then two things happened that put an abrupt end to my happy life.First, my father died. That was strange for me, because I had really noticed nice that I had a father. My mother and I - that was a well-rehearsed team that was connected like bad luck and that only needed each other and nothing else - at least I thought. But when my father was hit by a truck and died on the way home from the city, where he works as a secretary for a company, I realized that this intimate togetherness only applied to me. My mother, as I was surprised to see, had also had another life, of which I had not suspected anything until now. Of course, looking back it is now clear to me that a grown woman could not only fill her life with flowers and a little boy who laughed with a bright child's voice and ran through the high grass and had adventures in a harmless, sunny wood. No, in the evening, when I was in bed and my father came home, then another section of your day began, a section that I can make up, but cannot imagine.I guess I saw little of my father. Most of the time he was gone when I got up and didn't come home until I was asleep. Only in the weekends do I occasionally meet him, like a strange being from another world that was at the same time strange and familiar to my young child's soul. But mostly I spent the weekends with my mother. We went on long hikes in the vicinity of Baustetten, in which my father rarely took part. Only sometimes would he get up from the chair he usually sat in - a book in his lap - and then he would get in the car and drive us somewhere ... to mountains or to zoos. But he mostly only acted as a chauffeur, because as soon as we got there, I claimed my mother for myself. Today I sometimes ask myself how my father must have felt when my mother and I were running or playing together singing or playing and he was watching alone or afterwards. Maybe it made him sad, maybe he was happy to watch, and maybe he didn't care.I never learned much about him from my mother, but sometimes, when I asked her "How was father", she looked past me with her blue eyes, which had been so sad since his death, to an unknown place in hers Remembering and muttering, "He was smart your father, and good. He had so many thoughts ... so many wonderful thoughts."
But she rarely did so, because after my father was dead and buried - strangely enough, I missed him terribly - my mother had changed. Her face became paler because she rarely went outside, she seemed to be aging by twenty years and I never heard her sing again ... except for one time and I'll tell you about that later. Although she was there for me, looked after me and was good to me, it sometimes seemed to me as if she no longer noticed me. I sometimes saw her look out the window for hours, especially in the late afternoon, as if she were expecting to see his figure turn the corner at any moment.She never cried - not even at the funeral, but I saw her once at night when I hurried down the dark hallway to the toilet and looked through the open living room door as she was sitting with a large book in her lap it looked down, leafed through and although I'm not sure and it was a long time ago, I thought I saw a single tear glint on her white cheek.
I once looked in secret to see which book she was reading. It was an old photo album that was on the top of the shelf - I had to stand on a chair to reach it - and on the first page I saw a photo of my parents at their engagement. They were sitting next to each other on a sofa, my mother had her head on her fiancé's shoulder and her hands were entwined.
Suddenly I was ashamed that I was rummaging through my mother's memories as if I had done something sacred and forbidden, even though she never literally forbade me to take the book.I put it back again, but she probably noticed that I had it in my hand, because the next day it was gone and I've never seen it again since then, not even after her death.
Now that my mother had almost become a stranger to me, my dreaming children's games ended. Once, on one of her good days, I persuaded her to go to the Beginienhain with me and at first it even seemed as if she was blossoming a little again until we came to a bench where we had often sat. There she suddenly turned pale again and for the rest of the time just sat there and unconsciously stroked the green poop at a certain point with her hand and she was so absent that in me soon every play instinct, which first in me through the well-known Environment was awakened (I got over the grief for my father very quickly) died and I just sat sadly at her feet and leaned my head against her knee. She hardly noticed it because she didn't react and at some point got up and walked back to the village like a sleepwalker.I ran after her crying silently the whole time.
But there was another reason why I didn't play as much as I used to and that was the second big change. Because three months after my father's death I started primary school.