Tag Archives: Children

Germany

A Sweet Start

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Over the weekend I had the opportunity to participate in the wonderful German tradition of the Schuleinführung, the beginning of school for children entering grade one. Also known as Schulanfang, this is the point at which a child becomes a schoolchild. This is a long-awaited moment and the celebration when it finally arrives is a testament to that. Endlich Schulkind! proclaimed decorations, cards, and an invitation we received.

Part of Alles Gute zum ersten Schultag, or wishing a child well on the first day of school, comes the tradition of presenting the child with a Zuckertüte, or cone filled with sweets, gifts, and perhaps school supplies. The cones are often made of highly decorated cardboard, but can also be rather fancier and made of fabric with the name of the child embroidered. Some are as tall as 85 centimetres, out of which quite a few goodies are excitedly unpacked. However, as my German teacher pointed out, a Zuckertüte is also a way to sweeten the serious responsibilities that are about to begin.

On the Saturday before school starts, the soon-to-be grade one children and their parents attend a ceremony at school in which names are called and the Zuckertüten, lovingly prepared by the families in advance, are presented. In the afternoon, the parties begin. Amidst Kaffee und Kuchen and later dinner, guests greet the child, who has been trained to give handshakes and say thank you, and present more gifts and supplies to help a child enter their new phase in life. On this particular swelteringly hot Saturday, plastic pools and children running around in various states of undress were a feature of both parties we attended, as were tables of adult relatives and friends enjoying a range of beverages.

After some time at the first party located in the village firehouse, we remained at the second until after midnight, leaving long after the fireworks that were allowed only because rules in villages are relatively relaxed. At that late hour, some children were still occupied with various painting pursuits and one couple managed a few dances until laughter got the better of them. As is custom in Germany, we said goodbye to each table on our way out, having done just the opposite upon arrival. Everyone is greeted, regardless of whether you know one another or not.

This element of community is something I really enjoy about social events here in Germany, and it was absolutely lovely to be a part of a Zuckertütenfest, the celebration of a child moving forward in the world. For the first of what will be many moments, children get a hint of what is to come, of how they would be expected to comport themselves. This is a big change, an exciting one, and that is indeed something to celebrate.

Zuckertüten have a long history in Germany, and there are regional differences along former East-West lines, as well. (Interesting reading in German here and English here.)

Weimar – July 2021
On My Mind

Swingset

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At the end of the forest, or at the beginning depending on where you start, is a lovely little playground. It was empty when we arrived a few nights ago, a weekday shortly after suppertime. We stopped our bikes and looked at the swings.

“I’m just going to go on the swings for a minute.”
“Me, too. That’s why I stopped here.”

It’s easy to fly in a swing and I laughed when I reached the point where, twenty years ago, I would have jumped off when the school bell rang. Jumped, dusted myself off, and run across the yard.

“Jump off?”
“Not anymore!”
“Yeah, I think I’d break.”

Laughing, kicking heels in the woodchips to slow the swing and then spinning, first one way and then the other as the chains unwound and wound again.

“Whoa.”
“I know. I didn’t used to feel dizzy.”

Head tipped all the way back.

“To think I used to do flips on the swings.”
“Try it!”
“No way!”

We watched the trees, looking up at canopies of leaves. Watched the sky, slowly darkening.

“Nice to know that all the school games were the same.”
“I was just thinking that.”

We got back on our bikes, left the forest. The air had changed, growing cooler. Summer ending and fall beginning. We’re often in the forest (“Want to go hug some trees?”) and the swings are not far away.

Lovely to know, indeed.

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. – George Bernard Shaw

On My Mind

Back When We Had Souls

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I’m not sure if souls exist. I used to know for sure, I know I did, but now I don’t think I believe in souls anymore. As we all do, I’ve drifted from the pretty imagery of childhood stories into a world in which souls do not make rational sense.

And yet.

And yet.

I met a person who, if souls do exist, I would have to say has a soul. The word came into my head one day, suddenly and unbidden, but I knew it was right. I looked at this person across the room and sensed a soul. I knew this in the way that we know it’s going to rain when the sky grows dark and the wind changes. It was immediate and obvious and it frightened me. 

As adults, we live by routines and patterns, by socially accepted and endorsed ways of interacting with one another. We go to work, to meetings, out for drinks, out for meals. We entertain ourselves and each other. We pass the time. We have ‘responsibilities’.

But once upon a time, before all of that, we were children. We laughed and played and made up stories. We turned sticks into airplanes and we flew. We put on wigs and became witches. The sandbox became quicksand and the neighbor’s dog was a predatory dinosaur. In our fantasies, our younger siblings were the pets and our parents came from a different planet. We threw balls of fire and some of us got burned, but still we kept throwing. We claimed the swings as our boundaries and let our friends claim the tree line as theirs. Jumping from the roof with an umbrella was faith that, just like Mary Poppins, we could fly.

As children, we believed in magic. We believed that what we wished for could be, and we dared to make it so. In the eyes of a child, the child that I was, souls were possible because everything was possible.

It is in adulthood that we forget about magic. Instead we have practical, everyday worries. We laugh less often and we forget how to play. We’re too important and busy for that. We’re too concerned with the things we have learned that ‘matter’. We make sure to meet all our basic needs, to pursue and court relationships that allow us to belong to different groups, and to elevate our status to the levels that we believe we are entitled to.

We know that we have to get promoted before we can afford the mortgage on the house, and we have to do it soon because there are already three wedding invitations and one birth announcement on the fridge. Everyone else is ‘moving forward’, so what are we waiting for?

And so, magic is left behind. We forget the spells and potions, we forget the carefully delineated safe zones of tag, and we forget the glee of tearing barefoot across the grass yelling as loudly as we can. We increasingly channel our time to the pursuit of ‘personal progress’ and leave behind that was once so pure and central to who we were. We stop playing, and we stop being.

It is here, I think, that we lose the idea of souls.

As adults, we stop pretending and stop believing in things we cannot see. Looking beyond our adult boundaries into the joyfully cultivated worlds of children is a chore. And so souls, which are intangible, cease to exist.

Such a transformation, one which takes the imagination and supplants it with the material goals brought to us by ‘logic’ and ‘reason’, robs us not only of the existence of souls but of all those other beliefs that children are made of. Words which carried hopes and dreams are now said out of habit, if at all.

And so the progression through life’s journey continues and the price is the loss of the soul that made us who we were.

But such is the way of tacit acceptance of change. We do not recognise that this is what we are doing. We don’t notice the gradual shifts and how these lead us away from one world and into another.  

Once, we were pirates searching for buried treasure that we knew we would never find. The joy then was in the adventure of solving the clues. 

But as time passed, we imperceptibly became preoccupied with the treasure; the joy of adventure got lost and our souls vanished.

But what if?  

What if souls do not disappear, but are simply masked by the habits we develop, by the actions we mimic, by the words we pull together to intellectualise our actions? What if we suspend who we have become, if only for a little while, and simply look? And what if another was to do the same?

I looked across that room and without warning, without reason, I remembered. 

Once upon a time I was a child and I believed in magic. Back when we played pretend. Back when we trusted in our newest inventions. Back when finding all the pieces to build the perfect snowman was as much fun as playing in the snow.

Once upon a time I was a child and I knew we each had a soul. 

And it frightened me that I had forgotten.

Milford Sound, New Zealand – January 2019