Saturday, November 22, 2008

crescendo

up to now i have only written about people i have never seen. although i do hope to meet them someday, i am very thankful for the people i have the privilege to know.
friendship comes in different shapes, forms and colors. even more so, if it is a friendship between a boy and a girl, a man and a woman. thinking back, i’ve had some friends that were pretty important to me at the time; and i will write about these special people in the following weeks and months. but there is one person outside of any family bonds that i have known the longest.
summer of 1986. i had been in germany for a full year. 3rd grade was over, i was 8 years old. i had been in love before, believe it or not. in england, over a year earlier; but that is another story, another special person. my family, my father’s brother’s family, his sister-in-law’s sister’s family and a family friends to my father’s sister-in-law (ufa!) went to ile d’oleron, a small island in the atlantic ocean around two hours from bordeaux, france. the kids in those four families numbered ten: the three tscheuschners (mareike, tobias and benjamin), the two witzigs (marcus and sebastian), the three gonçalves (andré, me and leo) and the two pieschkas (michaela and susie). in fact, this was a special summer for me and a memorable one for all these kids, i would guess. but the most memorable thing about those three weeks was… a girl, of course. michaela was one year younger than me. and it seemed that every time we met, there was a definite sense of electricity in the air. we would do stuff together, like playing badminton or looking for stones on the beach, but we wouldn’t talk much. i’ve always been shy, and so was she. but i do remember us looking for each other’s presence, and appreciating it with a quiet feeling of bliss.
this was a strange situation for me. normally, before and after that summer, i would fall for complete strangers, girls i never even talked to. it took four full years (a lot for a young boy) for me to like a girl that i actually spoke to again. but here we were, spending some time together. quietly. with lots of smiles and timid looks.
the summer was over, and my family and me went back to northern germany. we lived in a big village (not big enough to be considered a little town) about an hour from hamburg. michi lived near ludwigsburg, in south germany, where my father’s family comes from. the 650 km distance was enough to damp the summer “affair”, but in some way, the memory was always brought back to life every time we went to visit the family in south germany. normally, the pieschkas would come over, and the kids would be reunited. and, as always in the very quiet, unofficial electricity-in-the-air manner, michi and me would feel connected. at least i felt connected to her, and i’m almost certain it went both ways.
by the time i left germany in the summer of 1993, we still weren’t friends. many things happened during my first full year in brazil, and i admit i had almost forgot about my “old non-friend” when i came back for vacation in the summer of 1994. towards the end of july, though, i was headed to ludwigsburg to visit my family, and in the car on the way to the south, i caught myself thinking of good ol’ michi. there is a big difference from being 8 years old to being 16. i was excited about seeing her again. how would it feel? how would it be?
i was a little surprised to see that it felt… good! really good. the air was still electric, i might even say more than ever. it was only a weekend, with “freibad” (public swimming pool), church and grand prix of hockenheim, but it took me by surprise. michaela had done it again, i found myself very interested in her, thinking about her.
but soon enough, the summer was over, and the distance this time was around 10,000 km. an attempt was made to create a friendship over letters (yep, no emails yet), but somehow things didn’t survive the distance at all. actually, it had changed things. next time we saw each other, in the summer of 1995, there was no electricity in the air for the first time since 1986. only a certain uneasiness. it was kind of sad.
it took another three years for me to visit germany again. my parents had now moved to brazil, and at age 20, i was now responsible for my own plane ticket… . once again, i headed back to south germany, and as it had been since i was eight, i knew that i was going to see michi. now 19 (her birthday is one day after mine), she had been dating a guy for a couple of years. of course this didn’t bother me, because i had no romantic interest in her any more. those interests had been special in the past, but short and far between. i just hoped to be able to have any kind of contact with her; she already was a truly special person to me. and, one day, the opportunity came. i was still shy at that time, but much less than in past years. nevertheless, i had to overcome some fear to approach her. first of all, you never know how things are, what the other person is thinking, if the is even thinking anything. if the history i had with her resembled in any way the history that she had with me. after all, we had never gotten to be friends, even if we had known each other for 12 years by then.
i don’t remember too much of our little talk, as i rarely do. but it is still one of the talks that are most memorable to me, i still can see her, the situation, the emotions. not romantic ones, this time, but really deep friendly ones – almost better than those old romantic ones. electricity in the air, definitely yes. talking to her that evening was very special, and i hoped that we could find a way to somehow remain friends. because, after so many years, that’s what it was seeming we were becoming – really good old friends, in a new friendship. once again, great feeling!
after that, economics (brazil’s and my own) made it impossible to visit germany for quite a while. but it was exactly at this time when michi and me became what we are today – really good and true friends, bound by a strong mutual feeling of wishing the other person well. i can now be glad to say that there is a total trust atmosphere between us, and i am just thankful that our long history has come to the place it is now. it took another three years after our talk in germany for us to really open up as friends do, it was before the summer of 2001, i was 23.
michi is a person that i was in love with when i was eight, that moved me romantically whenever i saw her until i was 16, and now has become one of my most loyal friends. she is very strong, determined, disciplined, caring, unselfish, christian. born in the former czechoslovakia, she is married for quite a few years now and still lives near ludwigsburg. i’ve had the pleasure to see her in my last visit to germany, in 2006. and i hope that i’ll see her every time i go back there. but even if i were never to see her again, i know that i have found an eternal friend in her. and she knows that i will always be there for her, too.
i’ve changed quite a lot over the years, and so has my perception of michaela pieschka. but the positive feelings i’ve always had towards her since the first time we met, they are bound to become stronger and stronger over the years; this is a friendship where time has not taken its toll. that’s why it’s obvious that michi is a very special person to me, and she will always have played a special role in my life.

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