"HERON" © C. KIRSCH
Lakes of Pain
An abandoned house at a lake. A small stream running past one of its sides. I stand there, looking at the water. Then I follow the path that runs next to it. It leads to the place where the stream joins other streams. There is river grass swaying in the air, and beyond that, a bridge to cross the water.
This bridge, I have walked over it before, but it’s only when I cross it that I remember. And even though I was here once, I am still surprised by the vastness of the streams. They form almost a river. As I walk on, a bird glides over the water, past the lakeside. I see another house there, a house where people are arriving. I go there, too, step in, take a place next to others who sit there already. There is someone in front reading, while a handout is going through the room, in rounds. I take a look at it, then hand it to the person next to me, an old woman. She asks me whether I understood the handout. “It’s about levels,” I say. She nods, then says, “You might need a book from here to get the whole meaning.” Then she closes her eyes to concentrate. “I try to figure out which book fits you best,” she explains.
A good dream, smooth, but deeper, I think when I wake, wishing I had seen the book the woman wanted to give me. An hour later, the restlessness that haunted me the last days returns again. I try to brush it off, to ignore it. It takes until afternoon before I finally give in and go to the bird lakes. They aren’t even far, just a five-minute drive. On arriving, I try to remember the last time I came here. It’s too long ago. Somehow, I had almost forgotten about the lakes.
As I walk towards them, I notice a group of trees with huge nests inside. I stand and stare, but can’t figure out to which birds they belong. My curiosity wins this time, and I approach two walkers with binoculars who sit on one of the benches, and ask them about the birds. “Grey herons,” one of them tells me. “They are survivors.” Then they tell me the herons’ story, which is also the story of the lakes:
For years and years, the lake area was a test zone for a car company. They drove tanks here. Into the lakes. Through the meadows. Past the trees that held the nests of the grey herons. And it was those grey herons that made a difference. Bird-lovers came from far away to see them, as they nest only in a few places. Then one year, only four herons were left. Someone contacted the newspapers, and the articles put pressure on the majors of the region and caused bad press for the car company. So the area was turned into a wildlife reserve.
What a step, I think when I walk on. From tank test zone to a little wild haven. Maybe that is why I feel strangely comfortable here, walking on the ground that once was ripped by metal wheels, seeing the birds sitting in trees that are theirs now. And listening to the lakes, those lakes that have remained. That carry their own stories underneath the surface.
Just like we do. Back home, I phone Anna, and we come to talk about our mothers. And their mothers. The thing about Anna’s mother is that she didn’t really care about her, that she had a son once, whom she loved and lost in the war when he was still very young. “And some part of her soul died with this young boy,” Anna says. “Sometimes she sat there, and all she said was, ‘It isn’t my fault either, it isn’t my fault,’ and then went silent.”
“I know this feeling,” I say. My mother has this same notion of ending discussions with the painful words, “I can’t help it, I can’t talk about it, it’s . . .” Silence. It’s like there is something in her past, in her own childhood that she never was able to overcome. Maybe that is how life is for her in some respects: a string of pain. Like the rosenkranz—the rosary. This endless sing-song of guilt that turns in circles. Which makes me think of church Sundays. How I stood there, a child, praying with the others, having to repeat those words every week, “Through my guilt, through my guilt, through my heavy guilt.” And always wanting to protest, wanting to say: “But I haven’t done bad things, I have no heavy guilt.”
If only I were able to dive back to that time, or rather, able to dive under the surface, into my self, to see and feel the imprints those times have left. To understand the patterns of behaviour that rise, like strings of emotional nucleotide, from the fabric of those past times.
It’s those patterns that I need to understand. They might be the key to awareness, to an understanding of the shadows they still induce. And maybe even the key to shifting those shadows, to maybe turn them into words, or stories, to keep them from wrapping me up, from letting them tear through the now.
And strange, the parallel of noun and verb: a tear, to tear.
God. Or rather: Goddess. That’s the other sadness, that God is so eminently male in this region here.
Copyright © 2008 by Dorothee Lang
