Higher Ground Anke Stelling (great novels of all time .TXT) 📖

didn’t come up in the pictures that flashed through my mind when I thought of the word ‘family’. But I can’t say I was innocent either. After all, I grew up in a family, and it was definitely nothing like Lisa’s in Noisy Village.

I was the child, not the mother.

Is that the secret?

The good thing about having four children is that, as a rule, at least one of them seems happy at any given moment.

But then you start wondering if it’s real, or just necessary so that the system doesn’t collapse. And in truth, it’s the happy child who suffers most — subconsciously, from the pressure of having to keep up the harmony. That’s the child who will be horribly damaged in the long run.

Keeping the emotions of six people in check at the same time is impossible. And still, it’s my greatest wish.

At least Sven understands me, so well that he can tell me what not to do.

Mother to child: ‘You have to write your end-of-year letter to Kerstin. It’s due in by tomorrow.’

Child: ‘Not doing it, don’t feel like it.’

Mother: ‘It’s not about whether you feel like it. It’s homework.’

Child: ‘So? It’s bullshit homework.’

Mother: ‘If you don’t do it, you’ll get into trouble. Believe me, I know about these things. Better to do it quickly and forget it again just as quickly. Just pretend you don’t mind.’

Child (after a brief pause): ‘I’m not talking to you anymore.’

Mother: ‘What’s it got to do with me? I didn’t think it up as homework! Okay, I told you to do it, but only because I know how things work. You could write that you think it’s a stupid exercise.’

Child: ‘So I should just write “bullshit homework”?’

Mother: ‘Well, at least that’s honest. Write a real letter from person to person. From Kieran to Kerstin.’

Kieran: ‘I’m not talking to you anymore.’

Kieran presses his lips together. His eyes fill with tears, but he manages not to let any run down his cheeks. His lips are completely white.

Me: ‘What’s the matter? What did I do? Sven, say something!’

Sven: ‘Like hell I will. I’m staying out of it.’

Me: ‘Great. Leave me with the problem.’

Sven sighs. ‘Sorry.’

Me: ‘What are you sorry about?’

Sven: ‘You and your problems.’

Me: ‘I don’t have any problems!’

Sven: ‘Are you sure?’

Me: ‘My only problem is that Kieran isn’t talking to me anymore. I always get walked over!’

Sven: ‘Then stay out of it.’

Me: ‘And then what? Who’s going to make sure that Kieran doesn’t get into trouble?’

Sven: ‘It seems like he’s already in some.’

Me: ‘And it’ll only get worse!’

Sven doesn’t say anything.

Me: ‘Go on, say it!’

Sven: ‘No, I won’t! I’m not going be dragged into this! It’s enough that you’re being dragged into it!’

Me: ‘You make it sound like it’s a weakness! But it’s me who keeps this whole show on the road!’

Sven: ‘You keep yours on the road. Kieran keeps his. I keep mine, Jack his, Bea hers.’

Me: ‘And I’m the one who keeps everybody’s!’

Sven shakes his head.

I’ve been conned. I don’t know by whom, and I’m not blaming anybody.

What I do know is that I couldn’t have known. No one told me the truth about having children; how humiliating it is not to be a role model for them, the madness of family life, the prison of marriage, and the misery of being a parent.

I want my children to be happy. Is that too much to ask? Yes.

I make supper. It calms me down to think about going into my broom cupboard later when everyone’s in bed and writing all this down. I’ll scribble about how it feels to slice an entire loaf of bread, how my arm nearly falls off and I wonder why I didn’t buy sliced bread in the first place. It wouldn’t go stale — everything gets gobbled up here in an instant. I’m clearly in denial about the obvious: I have four children who need feeding. And not with just any old food! So why is there nothing but saturated fat to put on their sandwiches? Everybody knows it’s unhealthy, that ninety per cent of peanut butter is palm oil, which is made by cutting down rainforests, which are supposed to make the oxygen we’ll breathe in the future. Do I want to suffocate my children? It doesn’t matter if they like peanut butter — you’re not supposed to give it to them. Just like liverwurst, which is made with the waste from mass factory farming and is contaminated with antibiotics and artificial preservatives. What the hell am I doing?

I make sandwiches, secure in the knowledge that I’ll be back in my broom cupboard in a couple of hours, transformed into the Resi who can find words for this madness and sort it out or get even more entangled, get it under control or blow it apart. The Resi who is most herself.

Not everybody knows that

As for my birth, I’ve no idea what it was like. Natural, of course! My mother and father were married, and, being the second child, I was definitely wanted. A modern hospital with modern neonatal care; the criminal story about the formula only came out much later. And even when my mother, Marianne, eventually told me about it, the message wasn’t that she’d been duped by Nestlé’s greed for profits, but that not being breastfed hadn’t done me any harm. She was trying to produce certainty, and the name of the game was ‘Making Children Strong’. I was the focus of most of her stories and, as far as my birth went, there wasn’t much besides being wanted, conceived, born, and healthy.

Renate shakes her head indignantly. To her, I sound ungrateful. What’s that supposed to mean? Would I have preferred a more tragic fate?

No.

But my perspective on my birth is a bit limited. What about the others? What worries and desires, hopes and concerns did my parents, sister, relatives, friends, and fellow citizens have? I never found out. I wasn’t told about them. Until I had children myself, I had no idea