The Basics of Trust and Rain

It was summer. I held my bike with both of my hands, standing there. A farm on the left, a farm on the right. The sun was so bright, I could feel the warmth beneath my feet. I just stood there, listening to the wind touching the leaves on the trees. Suddenly the street turned dark at distance. I could see the darkness approaching me. It came closer and closer. I could smell the evaporating rain. This wonderful scent you would never forget, like fresh sunscreen on your skin. It rained so much. It was like the street turned into a river.

I looked up to the sky and it was ridiculously beautiful. The blue turned to white and at last to dark gray. With this amazing rainbow in between.

I wanted to understand how all of this works. I wanted to ask someone, read up in a book. But nobody was there. No library. Not even the Internet.

There was no Internet.

No mobile phone. No PC. No Laptop. Just a kitchen radio and that green dial pad phone next to the entrance door inside my grandparent´s farm.

My mother and father were already divorced by that time. I was two or three years old. I probably moved four times. I lived somewhere between the farm of my mother´s parents, the house of my father’s parents and the flat of my mother. As well as the apartment of my father in Munich.

So I came up with my own theory: I thought about the ponds and rivers outside the village. I knew the water must have gotten up to the sky somehow to then rain down upon me.

The sky, including the sun as well as the moon were a flat surface to me at that time. I very clearly remember the moment I realized the sun actually shines onto the moon. That it is an object by itself. Just like the sun. I was so stunned by the fact that the moon is no two dimensional shape that only changes its white and black pieces.

That is how the water drops must have gotten up there.

I got off my bike and walked into the rain. It was so warm and pure. I loved that. Every year whenever the first rainstorm would come I would go outside and just run through the rain, under the gutter and get back inside. I would collect leaves from the chestnut trees and be so amazed by the stunning colors. This intensely bright green in spring, this unbelievably warm and beautiful orange in autumn. Nature and I were very close.

I would go to the fields and help my grandparents work. More or less. I would get up early to be the first to drink fresh milk from our cows. With a piece of cake made by my grandmother. The milk would be warm still. You would only have to take the cake, dip it in the milk and eat it. I loved that taste. I loved that moment in the morning, listening to the radio and just do the same thing over and over. Drink milk and eat cake.

I would get to the attic to see all the cats that lived up there in our farm in the hay we collected last year on the fields.

I would call my best friend who lived half an hour by car away. At that time, it was on the other side of the world for both of us. I would have to wait for his mother or mine to drive me there to stay with him.

My parents were married for merely a year. I don’t remember clearly where I lived by that time. Before I went to Kindergarten I had probably lived in four or five different places to then go to two different Kindergartens. One in Munich and one where my mother used to work. These two Kindergartens couldn´t be any more different. One was full of kids I still remember. It had a garden, everyone would be able to play outside or inside. It was bright and warm. The one in the city had a garden, too. But it was cold. You had to sleep at a very specific time. You were not allowed to go outside during that time. There was no love. It was filled with distance and loneliness. I then spent the first class of primary school in two different cities. I knew many kids but few of them were real friends.

I remember my dreams. Two of them which would repeatedly come back to me for months. The first one was about my birthday. My grandparents prepared a wonderful scene in the yard next to the farm. All the kids I could remember where there. There were balloons, music, everyone was having a great time. I would stand in the basement and look through a mesh window. I wanted to scream. That someone would help me to get out of here. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t say a word. As much as I wanted to. I remained silent. Helpless and alone in that basement. That dream. It never changed.

In the second one I would be a king. I owned a gorgeous castle. It was huge and had a large wall around it. Many people would live inside. The scenery around impressed me every time I dreamed about it. Almost like the land of a book I really liked, the Rainbow Goblins by Ul de Rico.

As a king I had established only one rule: As soon as it gets dark, the guards have to close the gates. No matter who is still outside. I knew Vampires lived in the land and the last thing I wanted was for them to get inside my castle.

The last person to be outside: It was me. Every time I heard the gates started closing. Every time I would run. Sometimes it would be summer and the land dry. Sometimes it would rain, muddy and wet. Sometimes it would be winter and the snow would be so high that I could barely move. Every time the gates would close before I could reach them. Every time I know someone would be very close behind me to grab and kill me. I was so scared. The only thing I could do was to wake up.

These dreams haunted me. Weeks. Months. The birthday dream would eventually go away. I haven’t dreamed about it in weeks. But the gates wouldn’t stop to close and that Vampire behind me wouldn’t stop hunting me.

It occupied my mind during the days. I had started to come up with a solution to this situation. I wanted to be save, I wanted to be inside before the gates would close. I tried to tell myself: Get inside, get inside. Get inside. For days I prepared myself before I went to sleep. Remember, get inside. I couldn´t.

One night. It was after Christmas. I loved Christmas. My mother did such an amazing job preparing everything. I remember we stayed with her parents and that they had this golden bell. They rang it after dinner and I knew I would get my present. Not that we were a rich family. Not that I remember what I got. But I knew I could trust this. I knew I could trust something. And I wanted to trust someone. At that time to me it was very clear that the first person I had to trust was myself. And so I did.

I went to bed. And there I was. It was dark, cold. Snow everywhere. I started running because I knew I had to make it. I ran. As fast as I could. But I knew the Vampire had already caught up with me. He grabbed my right foot. In that very moment, the first time in my life, I would let myself fall. I just fell into the snow. I knew it would be good. I knew everything will be fine and that this is a good place.

The Vampire turned out to be a resident that had worked in the tunnels beneath my castle. He grabbed me, took me through the tunnels where I saw everyone else preparing for Christmas. It was the last time I ever had this dream.

It was good. Little did I know how important that golden christmas bell and the rain would be for me in the years ahead. Little did I know what was about to happen. Little did I know the darkness that approached me on the street could turn out to be fearsome, cold and cruel.