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

in the morning, no snacks, us all drinking from bottles, and a mother who slept in.

I wonder if it gave her a guilty conscience?

I breathe on the mirror so that I don’t have to see myself in it anymore.

Sometimes, in the middle of the week, Marianne got up before anybody else and went to the baker and laid the table for breakfast. No one had the time or energy to sit down and enjoy it, but on those days, I had a sandwich for recess. Better still, I had a fresh bread roll.

I’m sure that’s how she pacified her conscience. Defended herself in front of an invisible jury against the charge of being lazy. I thought it was normal that my mother slept in. Who likes getting up at half past six?

But that’s not acceptable behaviour, as I now know; and Marianne must have known it back then.

She took liberties and flouted the rules.

Only to be regularly shocked, feel ashamed, and try to correct her self-image in a fit of maternal care.

‘Ate way too much again.’

She claimed it was our fault that she was fat. She divided her appearance in two: ‘before the children’ and ‘after the children’. I didn’t mind or try to get to the bottom of this ploy, even though other mothers I knew didn’t have a spare tyre after giving birth. In fact, this was the case with nearly all other mothers, at least later on at school. But what did I know? They also wore make-up, did exercise, and some had even had ‘work’ done. Or they were better at sticking to diets than Marianne.

I didn’t know anything. I still don’t know anything, and Raimund can’t remember — he just shrugs when I ask. He doesn’t even remember giving us rusks for breakfast.

Classifying your own social background still seems forbidden: we weren’t poor, we weren’t victims. If anything, it was our own fault — see how brilliantly neoliberal brainwashing still works? Even now, I can’t admit that Marianne belonged to a different social class than Ulf’s or Friederike’s mothers: a class in which mothers get fat and watch TV, and lug Lidl bags home instead of doing ski-conditioning workouts.

It’s not the way I want to see Marianne — she was clever!

Listen, Bea, because this is important: having children doesn’t automatically make you fat. You’ll put on weight during pregnancy, and you’ll put on a lot of weight if you’ve always starved yourself before to look the way you thought you should. You’ll be told to make sure you lose it all afterwards; you’ll be told that breastfeeding helps. You’ll see models in underwear four weeks after giving birth as if it was nothing, but it’s all just propaganda. Exercise. Torture. C-section in the eighth month. Perhaps you’ll never look like you did before, and you might think it’s a shame, or very beautiful, or unimportant. Perhaps you won’t be fatter after having children but thinner than ever instead; however, that shouldn’t be a reason to get pregnant, though, just as you shouldn’t get cancer to lose weight like your grandma did. Perhaps you’ll get really fat for the first time after having children, and perhaps having children will be to blame, or more likely, being a mother. Because suddenly you’re at home a lot, bored, and all you do is shop, cook, eat, and crave things. And eating makes you fatter, especially the kind of eating you do when you’re bored and crave things. So, you might get fat from having children just because you lead a life you think you have to because you have children, and you can’t come up with any ideas of your own or another kind of life, and this isn’t your fault, and certainly not your children’s fault. Ask yourself who stands to gain from this situation, Bea; it’s essential, especially in this case.

Most importantly, ask yourself where these ideas come from. And where the ideas of other people — who aren’t full of craving and boredom — come from. Is there something that makes it easier for them to have ideas? Or helps them try their ideas out?

Most importantly, don’t starve yourself. Ask who stands to gain if you punish and deny yourself the last bit of fun: food. Or you might not deny yourself food, but feel ashamed after you eat. You might feel ashamed of your behaviour, eating habits, appearance, big thighs, fat hips, wobbly upper arms, and stomach. And of your vulva — yes, another terrible word, I know. You’re ashamed of your vulva, its name, and everything that comes out of it. I know, it’s just really awful.

But shame makes you small and dumb, a mouthless Miffy. So please, Bea, ask why. And then try as hard as you can to resist.

I have to stop being afraid of the autumn holidays and of my own children.

I’m being hysterical. What can happen? My picture of a successful family life might not be fulfilled? And where does this picture come from, for fuck’s sake? I’m worse than all of K23. I’m terrified of admitting I’m not in control and might make a mistake.

I rush into my broom cupboard and turn on my laptop. It takes a while to boot so that I can finally write down what feels like a revelation.

1. It’s not wrong to have children. What’s wrong is to believe that certain things have to follow. For example, we established long ago that parents don’t have to marry just because they’re having a baby. We could equally think it’s fine not to invite friends over to play Pass the Parcel on our kid’s birthday.

2. I can’t bear parents who act like animal trainers, getting their kids to behave in a certain way by using a carrot and a stick. As if their kids were unpredictable, wild animals. In the same vein, I should stop being afraid that my kids will ‘be spoilt’, ‘flip out’, ‘waste away’, or ‘be failures’ as soon as my back