Moving

Martina, my ex-girlfriend's mother, will soon be moving. Yesterday, I stopped by her apartment to drop off my dog. As I approached the apartment, I saw a cardboard box near the front door. There were several books inside the box. Of note was a book titled "How to Raise Children without Men." "The Miracle of Life" and an astrology book were also in the box. 

As I headed up the stairs of Martina's apartment building, I noticed that on the windowsill of the first-floor landing, there were other items Martina was giving away. I saw a box of IQ puzzles, a tote bag of Maya's that said "San Francisco" on it, a laptop bag that I may or may not have bought for Maya (I can't remember), and a few magazines. 

Inside Martina's apartment, she asked me if I might help her move when moving day arrived. I said yes, and she was glad. She told me that she had a pair of old shoes of mine and asked me to wait a second while she went to the basement to retrieve them. I had totally forgotten about these shoes. They were gray suede shoes, almost in the style of Converse All-Stars, and they were from Diesel. I had bought them, I think, in 2015. 

Swing

Walking along the lake, I just saw a man and woman pushing a tiny child on a swing. They were pushing him in a strange way. Instead of standing behind the child and pushing him, the man and the woman held onto the child as he sat on the swing and rocked him back and forward. They must have thought that the kid could not be trusted to hold onto the swing chains and were trying to keep him stable.

On closer inspection of the man and the woman, I noticed that they seemed just a tick too hold to be the child's parents and must have been his grandparents. I noticed the woman looking lovingly at the child after grandpa had taken him off the swing. I thought that the whole scene—the child, the woman, the grandfather, the swing, the sparkling lake in the background—looked idyllic. However, the spell was broken only a second or two later after, when the child, freshly placed back into his stroller, began screaming and crying. 

Pen Twirling

So the other day I was with a student of mine, sitting at the dining room table in his house, and I had just assigned him a small essay to write. Because I knew that the assignment was going to take him about 15 minutes, right after he put pen to paper, I searched my backpack for something to read. The only thing that I had with me was a German/English workbook. It wasn’t exactly fascinating reading, but I opened it anyway and began to skim the pages. Toward the back of the book, I noticed that there was a list of important English verbs and their German equivalents. I immediately zeroed in on the verb sich verlieben, which means, “to fall in love.” Was sich verlieben, I wondered, any different from verliebt sich or verliebt in dich or verliebt? Was it any different from the verb that she had said? 

That “she" was my ex-girlfriend. Verliebt sich, or a derivative of it, was a verb she used the last time I saw her. 

I had been at her apartment sitting at a small table in her kitchen and had said to her that based on how she had been acting, it seemed as though she were in love with someone else. 

“Das bin ich,” she responded. 

I couldn’t believe my ears. 

“Ich bin verliebt,” she said. 

That just can’t be, I had thought. And I still didn't understand. After all, h—

Thwack! My student's pen hits the paper in front of him. He had been intermittently twirling the thing as he was composing his essay and it had slipped out of his grip. 

“Sorry,” he said.  

The Rhythm of Truth

I call this the rhythm of truth. The rhythm of truth is very hard to emulate. Many people try. 

Question: Did you look at Instagram today?

The liar: No. 

Question: Did you look at Instagram today? 

The truth-teller: No. I mean, the notifications that are usually shown with the icon on my home screen aren’t there anymore. So it would seem as though I looked at Instagram, but I actually didn't. See today, I wanted to send someone a picture—I think I was sending it to my dad—and instead of clicking on the "WhatsApp" icon, I accidentally clicked on the "Instagram" icon. (You know how that is, right, when you click on “Share” or whatever and then you can choose from all those icons?) Anyway, I accidentally clicked on the "Instagram" icon, and even though I wound up not posting the picture to Instagram, having accidentally clicked on the "Instagram" icon removed those notification symbols that are usually present in the corner of the icon...which would make it look like I looked at Instagram, but I didn’t; I swear. 

Again...

Question: Did you look at Instagram today?

The liar: No. 

Question: Did you look at Instagram today? 

The truth-teller: No. I mean, the notifications that are usually shown with the icon on my home screen aren’t there anymore. So it would seem as though I looked at Instagram, but I actually didn't. See today, I wanted to send someone a picture—I think I was sending it to my dad—and instead of clicking on the "WhatsApp" icon, I accidentally clicked on the "Instagram" icon. (You know how that is, right, when you click on “Share” or whatever and then you can choose from all those icons?) Anyway, I accidentally clicked on the "Instagram" icon, and even though I wound up not posting the picture to Instagram, having accidentally clicked on the "Instagram" icon removed those notification symbols that are usually present in the corner of the icon...which would make it look like I looked at Instagram, but I didn’t; I swear. 

Deposit

Today 9 guys from my basketball club and I came together to play on an outdoor court in Hamburg. During a timeout that occurred in one of the games that we played, I noticed a fellow player looking at the surface of the court. Another player was also looking at the ground with him. I wondered what was going on, so I looked at the ground too. A bee or wasp was on the surface of the court, crawling, and both guys were working together to try and remove it from the playing field. 

Later, after basketball was finished, I was standing near an ice-cream shop, waiting to meet my girlfriend. Next to me, near my feet, stood two empty water bottles. I had placed the bottles there because I had been too lazy to return them to the recycling machine. Perhaps someone more ambitious would like the deposit, I thought. Eventually, a man came by and collected the two bottles. He had a plastic bag with him, and when I looked inside it, I saw bottles and cans. 

It Hit Me

My old friend Andrew once said something interesting. I had been talking with him about how my mother was coping with the death of her mother, and I had mentioned something I'd found noteworthy. Of particular interest to me, I explained, was how my mom hadn't cried on the night she received the news but did a few days later when she realized that she had forgotten to give my grandmother a birthday card that year.

"Yeah," Andrew said, "but that makes sense, right? That’s how it hit her."

In that moment, I totally understood what Andrew meant: sometimes we can’t fully grasp a thing until another thing drives home the point for us.

Such was the case for me recently when I found out that a friend of mine, Claudine Weber-Hof, had died. When I got the news, I was stunned. I can’t say that I was crippled or as sad as a relative might have been; I was more stunned. Still, there was one occasion when it "hit" me. 

I had been in Bamberg, a picturesque town in Bavaria, walking in a pedestrian zone when I saw a street musician, a violinist, gearing up for his next number. Like so many other street musicians do these days, he had a speaker with him, one that played a backing track. It was when that backing track began to play and I realized that the muscian was about to perform "Carnival of the Animals: The Swan" that it "hit" me. 

“Carnival of the Animals: The Swan” is very basic, just piano and violin, but the piece is so beautiful, so able to evoke sorrow and longing—so able to stop you in your tracks—that it just hit me. As I stood there, listening to the music and watching the violinist play, I realized that Claudine would never hear this or anything as beautiful ever again, and I felt sorrow and regret. 

Here is the song, Camille Saint-Saëns's "Carnival of the Animals: The Swan."

Italics

 Perfect use of italics, plus explanation. 

"Even if it’s their money they don’t come. Only if it’s their money."

What is meant: Company money is not enough to get the people to attend all the time. The only way to ensure that the people will always attend is if the money is coming directly out of the people's pockets. 

Claudine Weber-Hof

There was one aspect of Claudine Weber-Hof’s emails that always stood out to me. Claudine was my editor at Spotlight magazine, and in her electronic messages, I often noticed that her valedictions were very elaborate. 

For example, instead of just writing “Warm Regards” or “Sincerely,” she would sometimes write, “Best, and thanks a ton” or, “Best, and thanks again for the fine work.”

As a writer, I often wondered whether such elaborate sign-off lines were “allowed.” But since Claudine was a top editor and had spent her life in journalism, I always assumed she was correct. 

Unfortunately, I’ll never be able to ask Claudine about her proclivity for long valedictions because she died suddenly in January. 

It was only recently, though, that I found out. I was traveling in Munich, where Spotlight is based, and had sent an email to Claudine asking her if she wanted to meet for coffee. A few days later, Inez Sharp, Spotlight’s editor-in-chief, returned my email and told me to call her, which was how I got the tragic news. 

I first met Claudine in 2014, when I pitched an unsolicited story idea to Spotlight. Though she wasn’t able to accept this pitch of mine--and had to reject a few others that were to follow--she always said that she admired my “tenacity.” In 2015, Claudine was finally able to give me some work--just a few small articles for the opening pages of the magazine--but in 2018 there was a breakthrough. I had pitched Claudine with a column idea and the magazine accepted it. Getting the “English Explained” column in Spotlight was a huge coup for me at the time and an achievement I’m still proud of. 

I really will miss the chats I had with Claudine over the years in Germany. She was also an American and we would sometimes talk for 30-minute stretches about our experiences as expats and our love for dogs. Especially memorable was one of the last phone calls we had. In it, she said that she had really enjoyed reading a feature-length story I had written--my first for the magazine--and she looked forward to assigning me similar pieces in the future.

Anyway, it’s incredibly sad that Claudine and I will never be able to get that cup of coffee. It’s also sad that I’ll never hear her voice again, that we’ll never be able to work together again, and that we won’t be able to chat about all the hilarious differences between Germans and Americans ever again. 

You know, as I was writing this post, I actually looked up whether it truly is correct to use non-standard, longer valedictions. Turns out, it’s 100 percent correct. So in honor of Claudine, I’ll close this post with a sign-off line like one of hers.

Yours always in friendship and understanding (and thanks again for the fine work),   

Chad

Italics

 Perfect use of italics: 

--Do you have the book? 

--I have a book. 

Exercise

Just a small writing exercise...

Picture a Catholic church. Now picture people queuing up in front of that church because the church door is relatively narrow. What would you think you would see when you walked into the church? Stained-glass windows? Pews? Candles and a donation box? 

We saw all of those things when walked into a church in Augsburg this afternoon. 

Now, when you think of this church -- your church -- does something like St. Patrick’s Cathedral come to mind? Do you picture gothic architecture? Do you see flying buttresses, spires and trefoils? 

Well, the church we were in today was Catholic, but I wouldn’t say that it was a Gothic church. It didn’t look like St. Patrick’s. 

Now, this church today, it had an altar, of course, and we’re all used to imaging rows and rows of pews facing an altar. But in Augsburg today, the church also had pews that were perpendicular to the altar. So if you were sitting in these pews looking at the altar and the priest was behind it, facing the majority of the congregants, you would see the priest in profile. 

Now, I want you to imagine someone sitting in the pews I just described, the ones perpendicular to the altar. Do you see him there? If you were standing in the nave (the central aisle) facing the altar, he would be sitting in the benches off to the left. Can you see him there? 

Now, this man, he’s just sitting there, and because it’s corona time, he’s wearing a surgical mask. But the mask is hiked up really high on his face so that there is hardly any space between the top of the mask and his eyes. It’s like he’s trying to cover his entire face with a surgical mask, trying to hide his identity with the thing. How is that even possible? 

Anyway, this man looks mean. In fact, when you look at him, you wonder to yourself who he is and why he’s there. After all, no one is sitting near him, no family, no friends. He’s just sitting there, isolated from everyone and looking intently at all the people who enter the church and walk down the main aisle. 

And he looks super mean. His eyes have something of the Grinch to them and his gazed is a fixed one, and when you look at him and he doesn’t look away you can’t believe it. You think to yourself, Is he not looking away? No, no, I must be wrong. He must've looked away. No one would stare for that long. But no, he’s looking right at you -- still.

Anyway, point is, what would this man say to you? 

Would he (a) say something in Latin, something such as, “Nemo me impune lacessit delinquit,” which means, “No one offends me with impunity”? (b) Tell you that he is the caretaker of the church and it drives him crazy when visitors not only look at their mobile phones while in the church, but also play videos with the sound on? Or (c) say that he’s really a nice guy, but a few years back he had a stroke and ever since then, his face has been fixed in a grimace? 

Over the Hills and Far Away

 The other day I said that I thought that the fields that were spread out there before us reminded me of a quilt that had brown, green and dark green patches. I also said that I understood why you weren’t scared to drive fast on roads as windy as the ones we were on -- you used to live in a place that had hilly roads with plenty of curves. “Wow,” we would say, when we’d emerge from the forest-flanked roads to see vistas of rolling farmland, “this is really beautiful.” 

And then of course there were all the tree-lined streets and the shade and the shadows and the hills in the distance. And then I asked you, “How are mountains actually formed?” and you said, “I think it’s when the earth comes together,” and then I said, “Yeah, that I know, but I mean, those there” -- I was pointing at the hills -- “aren’t really mountains; they’re hills, actually. How do they get formed?” And then we talked about how we would love to redo high school because now, if we were to be taught things like “how hills are formed,” we would be paying full attention.