Traditions and where they find us
The Muse Letter No. 50
Lately I’ve been staring into flames a lot. Actual ones in my garden with a friend next to me and marshmallows at hand and memorized ones from years long gone, when my mother’s hands would still tuck me in and fasten my seatbelt and all six of us, my three older siblings and mum and dad would drive in our green Mitsubishi mini-bus to our friend’s house to celebrate the evening before easter Sunday and look at the easter fire in their garden.
I see myself with a pitchfork in hand, that is strangely long and hard to balance with my small hands, it’s heavy but I manage pitching it into the red gleaming coals and lifting them up, to create red sparkles in the air, flying up and glittering down. Repeating it again and again because that’s what you did when you were small and something made you feel joy. You repeated it endlessly, till it was enough or you were tired. Or your mum told you to stop and come get a Bratwurst.
In these memories I am somewhat ageless as they are tied together like a knot that started somewhere around 5 and ended in my late teens. One easter fire they burned a whole sofa (which is completely forbidden), another one there was a dog around where you needed to be careful, another one I mostly spend on a swing that was hung to a tree.