Grandfather's myths
Fritz doesn't have his teeth in today. We only notice it when we press the bus station. No teeth in there, but as always with the ornate walking stick.
Fritz takes huge steps. He's not just very scared, that we miss the bus. He just has to go back as far as possible with the cane. In the future!
Most of Fritz’ Life is over and therefore past. This past something like this: Grew up on the farm, as the eldest of seven children, two died of diphtheria before the age of three. Joined the Rieter company while still on his father's farm, he is there until his retirement 1978 responsible for the maintenance of worsted yarn machines. Carry over from this time: a knee and hip damaged by osteoarthritis, Fingernails like calcareous beaks and a gold-framed diploma, that Fritz received from the Rieter company for his lifelong loyalty when he said goodbye. It hangs on the wallpaper in the hallway in Fritzen's cloakroom, a few centimeters from the golden hook, on which the walking stick also hangs, at least since he landed a single one in the umbrella stand. No exception proves the rule.
Although Fritz is a scared man, he's a great man. Especially in the fire department. He's on the front line, at least he is not absent from any exercise. Fritz meets his future wife during a chill festival, Maria, know. Maria is not a particularly beautiful or proud woman, but moral and clean. In case you don't know: these are the female virtues of that time, as it is called today: be straightforward and attractive. Of course, cleanliness also means literally: a woman, scrubbing the floor, polishing the parquet and tying the shoelaces for Fritz, especially from the day of his retirement.
You may think so, when a man does not tie his shoes himself, that speaks for a strange distribution of roles. A relic, passed a thousand years ago! But even, if she perhaps no longer attended a secondary school for daughters; look at your own, beautiful mother early on! she, the Fritz at “Probing” accidentally escaped. Two years later, little Lydia presses, curly blond and blue-eyed, all of Fritz, just put down the door handle to the parents' bedroom; Fritz's eagerness to experiment dissolves effortlessly in a second offspring. First name: Fritzli Junior, Middle name: He-never-laughs. Short childhood, grayed with thirty, severe tinnitus, Waiting for all settlements in Rohrschachhausen.
We have now passed through the most important points in Fritz's life: the tough peasant youth, the assembly of machine parts, including on assembly in Italy, a clean mistress, Wear process of the bones and claws, that never break. Oh yes, the children, “bullied” (Lydia, the United) and “embarrassed” , so in one “Moment of surprise” (He-never-laughs) conceived. Contemporaries, which in turn arise from the midst of the disciplinary society, and who object to it, that Fritz is jeopardizing his independence in such an unprecedented manner.
Have been on her father's ears for almost two decades, he should finally operate on his hip joint. After all, functionality is the top priority! But Fritz doesn't want to! For him, retirement still means retirement! Apart from that, an operation on your own body can also be unpredictable, take a dangerous exit. I already said yes, that Fritz is a shit. I do not know why, but tap on the following: The war just knocks on Fritzen's door, knocks and knocks, but does not enter his house. Fritz also followed 1945 nothing lost personally. Someone rings at his door, he still does not open it. Fritz has an enemy, who lives in the imagination.
With his retirement, Fritz's everyday life looks like this: Usually he sleeps restlessly and fetches the butter from the freezer around half past four. This is the only way for him and Maria to have a soft spread between half past ten and nine as a successful start to a day threatened by the future. Fritz spends the morning on his unrelated stool in the kitchen and looks out the window. To be there- and going out of the shopping women from the block next door and all around interests him. So he keeps Mrs. B from falling. stuck on the curb over the back wheel of their boogie in his diary. He also notes the exact weather conditions and the pain in his joints. Sometimes the two granddaughters come, from Fritz, Daughters of Lydia, visiting. Then it says in Fritzens appointment calendar: "Expect the beloved girls of my beloved daughter at 12 o'clock."
If the “beloved girls” then there are, Fritz is already sitting at the dining table and beaming from all four cheeks. Maria, who tied his bib around him, scoops two large spoons of apple sauce with horns into his plate. Fritz holds the spoon upright and leads it towards his mouth. As soon as he has devoured the contents of his plate, he pushes the empty plate far away into the middle of the dining table, looks over at his Maria and his blue eyes take on an enthusiastic glow. “Sali, mini Maria, my beloved Fraueli, my clean Wäggeli!” He pats her hand. And Maria's face covers a half angry one, half embarrassed blush: “Sali min Pappeli, put Schnäbeli! But you are one to me….” Knowingly, her index finger goes up in the air.
Fritz then has dessert served in the living room. While Maria stirs the Incarom coffee in the kitchen, Fritz tells his “beloved girls” vom Sex. It's his favorite subject and it's always the same record:
First comes the fiery communist, who pours a sedating poison into the cake itself, to make Fritz submissive in a legitimate way. Then all the women come out of the factory, Romanians, Italian women, Hungarians, who throw themselves at his neck. But be careful, racy and dissolute women die like flies from syphilis. Is, Fritz, was able to have them all. But for a lifetime only his faithfulness, only respectable and clean woman loved!
Even at Easter, Pentecost and Christmas, when the whole family is there, sex opens up Fritz, like a belch that is difficult to suppress: It may be, that someone here boasts of stories, which he never found the courage to do, and which he utters in an eternal return, solange, until he himself believes in the reverse of his lies? Is, he couldn't fight back! But he remained steadfast. Lydia, the “beloved daughter”, in any case, bottomlessly laughs at her father. “Just don't start again. Bahhhh! Don't start again!” They have, which is less tired from the journey from the Oberland to the Zurich Tösstal, than from the work week on the PTT, lies in the guest room and dozes.
One can be chased by unrealized dreams, to be tormented by worries about nothing. The retirement age is a huge stagnation in Fritz's existence. Every day brings a new future, filled with hard butters, threatening, third world wars and forgotten umbrellas at Horziont. You could almost think so, Fritz wishes, this future would always be over. That's probably why, why he cannot take his eyes off the golden pendulum of the cuckoo clock in the room, from his armchair. Paul, who never laughs, plagued to death by tinnitus, says: “come over, I'll take the old-fashioned furniture from you, father! You can have an alarm clock for this. Battery powered! And only shines in the night!”
But, the Classic: Fritz just doesn't want to, what his children want for him! Didn't you threaten him with the wheelchair too, if he doesn't operate before the eightieth? Appenzell car rides, instead of exercising his joints? White bread is bad with béchamel sausage, instead of rocket salad? “If you're a wreck then, then your walking stick will no longer help you either!”, prophesied Paul. But that was a false prophecy, a black painting, that thrived on Paul's own, deeply pessimistic crap. Fritz, the premature, is long past eighty, but also still the fastest as a Humpler, when it comes to, catching a bus early. What is meant by prematurely: ten minutes early!
It’s a future, which suddenly melts like the strawberry foot in midsummer. I mean, the moment, in which Fritz becomes aware of his mishap, he captured, that he doesn't have his teeth in there.
It works like this: It is a warm May day. And like every spring, once a year, we want to go to Lake Thun by ship today. This has become so common with the Auer storms, because Fritz and Maria, the two from Winterthur, know no other lake, only Lake Thun is blue, no other ship, only the “Blümlisalp” is white, the most beautiful steamer in the Bernese Oberland. Apart from that, the sky shines over the Sichleten and at Leissigen the Diessbach Falls roll out of the gneiss, like from a silver-plated siphon.
A faint breeze blows, plays around Maria's headscarf. Maria once had beautiful things, black wavy, Brushiges Hair! We are sitting in the second class in the rearmost part of the ship. Me and Sarah bend over the last little bit of ass, gives, where the Swiss flag flutters and stare into the water as if spellbound, where a foam carpet interweaves with the water continuously backwards as far as Faulensee. The steamer is gentle, but groans regularly. But then, as we enter the canal, we suddenly turn into a deep one, sliding plow. We have Interlaken, achieved our goal. The steaming horse bales penetrate our noses with relish, as we get into the carriage behind the train station. In the souvenir layouts, Matterhorn postcards and golden clocks trot past on horseback. A few minutes separate us from holy Schnipo, with which we crown our excursion every time in the Migros restaurant. No exception proves the rule.
“The, the! Neither does velpassen nor den Bus! And if we want to pass the bus, wants to fit the Intelcity Zülich-Beln Intelaken! And if we want to pass the Intelcity Züli-Beln-Inelaken, then we don't want to make it onto the ship! The, the!” Fritz’ Walking stick almost sticks in the air, over there, in this suddenly dwindling future. Sarah and I started snorting. “Jesses Maria! And, he can't even think of something himself!?” Marias throws a flabbergasted sideways glance at the sunken mouth of her handsome husband. Then she laughs too.
As I said, Generational marriages, Marriages in general, take weird turns. With Maria, for example, there is also schadenfreude, if she finds out, what mishaps happen to her Fritz. Fritz, this mysterious one, big man, proud rooster, who could not have had fun at his expense all his life, with the ice-blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones, the blonde hair and Greek snuffles, Fritz; beautiful, wie Paul Newman; this man no longer knows, where he puts his tooth glass.
And, is that not the moment, in which the power gap between Maria and her Fritz finally dissolves in Kukident, including the masculine legends entwined with Fritzen a Tell?
Maria, the apron-fruit and clean, Fritz's not-too-beautiful mistress ties his shoes, she ties Fritz's bib, she untangles his suspenders, Maria, she does everything, and then when it comes to that, that Fritz can no longer even hang his walking stick on the golden hook….. when he puts it everywhere, scattered, Lies across the floor, she drags him from behind under her arms and from bed to kitchen, the wailing Fritz ....
… she brings him to the home. Here Fritz mutates into baby very quickly, slips back into an unobtrusive, witty childlike feeling. Paul even laughs once. Fritz saw in him a crushed military beret. But that she brought him to the home, He holds that up to her again on her deathbed. To tell her, how cruel that act was; but he is waiting for one last one, equalize Moment.
I don't have to say, that Mary wept. Even if she was then somehow relieved. Then comes a phase, maybe four months after his death and only two years before her own, than she tells me: “You know, we had a good time together. We could do well with each other. But sometimes I don't know, if I really loved him. I often had the feeling, especially, when he was on Mondays for weeks; i know this man, I'm married to, Not.”
One can be chased by unrealized dreams. Then it is usually too late for the fulfillment.
“Hey grandfather! Now we have exactly two options, how we can proceed!” Sarah is probably the most robust of the Auer-Stürmchen line. Fritz is still there, as if the blow hits him. “So either we go back and play hurry-with-while all afternoon, and it will be a very boring one, fun afternoon! Or we can carry on like this now, how we started and are now going on the ship, stop without a bit! We reach the Intercity, this is not a problem!”
- "To travel, without teeth?“Fritz almost howls. “What do people think, when you see me like that? I must be ashamed of myself!” - “They can be the same to you.” Sarah. “You don't have to talk!“ – „a, but how am I supposed to eat schnitzel and french fries without my teeth?? No, it's not working!” - „Na, instead of Schnipo you can simply order an apple mousse, Poplar, nobody sees, whether you have your teeth in it or not ….” Now Maria is also active. Maria, the supporter of Fritz. Can grit your teeth. Has hair on his teeth before. (what else is more of a storm- instead of Auer line)
Ein Classic: She lived with him too long after all, found their meaning in him, to endure it alone. She soon followed him.
Sometimes we oracle: bad things will happen, those, that we fear most. And then it happens too. Fritz, for example, was always scared, one day he would get off the train on the wrong side of the platform. His walking stick and three suitcases stand between the tracks, next to him the slightly crooked Marili. This is what happened. Precisely because he shit so long before. Fritz and Maria on the way to the Oberland to see Lydia, dashing Hanno and the dearly beloved girls. There they are, trapped on the derogatory track, between two trains thundering past in the tiny Konolfingen station. Where there is only one platform. As ordered and not picked up. Hanno tells them, she his Tschumpelis. “Do you think so, we let ourselves stand at the train station, that you always press like this, father?! Has Hanno ever not picked you up at the dam on time?“ Lydia.
Those who stayed behind laugh at the Tschumpelis. But later, today, at the end of the future, they are also touched.
(28.6.18/26.3.2021, laborious and hardworking)