For Zeki, who’s going
It’s weird, sure.
You’ve mentioned the word, weird, two or three or maybe even even four times now. That it’s weird to be going. To board that train, to spend the next seven or eight hours headed away from your own family and towards another that you’ve never even met in person.
It’s weird, sure. How all of us met and talk to each other mostly. Through our computers and then our phones. Trading messages about tennis, about our racquets and string. About forehands and Federer. Now here we are, chatting about this.
It’s weird, sure. For you to go to Munich, to take two kids to a tennis tournament, when you’ve never even met the two kids in person — nor their parents.
But good is quiet — you told me this. And now, good is here, in you going. Just going. However weird, or whatever becomes of it.
—
Seven or eight hours, you said. That’s how long the journey should take. Or maybe nine or ten, given the delays of the German rail system, which I’ve come to know myself via my trips to see you and your family, And do you remember how we kept saying the word “weird” also when I came to visit you that first time? After that train debacle of mine, until finally I arrived several hours late, but then you met me there, on the platform, giving me a hug as well as a beer? I don’t even like beer (you didn’t know this then), and you don’t even drink yourself (I didn’t know this then), but you figured then that this was the proper way to welcome someone to Germany, after a long and delayed journey. I’ll never forget that beer, that moment. Because it was weird, surprising, different. So yes, weird is good too. I’ll add that now to our list:
Good is quiet.
And weird is good.
—
On the journey, all around you, there will be varied faces, murmurings, energies. There will be business types, and baggy jeans and sweatpants, and 80s and 90s and aughts.
There will be moms with daughers and maybe someone behind you going to Munich for a concert. Perhaps a family of three across the aisle will have their dog with them in a little carrier, sneaking it sips of water and snacks, en route to just visiting a new city, new sights. In front of you a girl’s head may rest on her boyfriend’s shoulder. Little whispers, kisses, holding hands. And none of this, none of this will be weird.
And then there will be you there, among them, traveling alone, with the book you want to finish so you can begin the one I sent. And no one will know your purpose, your destination, what’s happening inside. Only a train employee will come by at some point asking for your ticket and ID.
I’m still not sure if going is a good idea. Never really do long train rides, so I don’t know how taxing it is. Still do not feel fit, but maybe I can relax on the train.
— This, a recent message from you. And that’s right, you’re unwell also. The inner ear infection. Your own blood pressure issues lately. And now this, the oddity of going to meet this other family for the first time.
But still, you’re going.
You’re going because you’re you, because you can, because you offered, and because our friend’s wife who had to catch up and realize who we all even were, at first just these names and unanswered messages on his phone — you’re going because she eventually suggested it: yes, tennis was/is his passion, after all, she said. So she understands. And well, maybe you, Zeki, who offered to come, maybe you’d want to come and take the kids to the tennis tournament U. was planning on taking them to? The tournament they were all so excited to see. Because N. would like to do it, she said, but she can’t. Right now, with all that’s happening, she just can’t.
And tennis really is the connecting point here. Among us all. The good thing, the simple thing. Tennis is life for us. It’s health and rhythm. It’s meditation. For U., it’s his Wednesday group sessions and Fridays with his coach. It’s him passing the game on now to his kids, it’s happiness. It’s his normal. It’s all of our normal.
But now our friend U. just lies there, while we wait for updates. Yesterday, a healthy man, the tennis player. Today, the patient in a bed. With tubes, with wires, with beeps.
Signs of life now: today, he opened his eyes.
Signs of health now: today, he moved his fingers. Both hands!
Breathing more on his own. One mechanism traded for another.
Tests, infections, signs, scans.
This is what energy and life, what ‘normal’ can so easily become. With the snap of a finger or a text message unanswered. This is what just simply happened on a Wednesday.
Hemorrhage. Bleeding. Coma.
—
People on the periphery of a sudden storm, they say what they’ve always heard are the things to say:
I’m so sorry.
If there’s anything I can do…
Most people don’t do much. Don’t go in to the storm. And most people aren’t really asked, either, because those in the center of a storm also do what they’ve always known to be the things to do: Be Brave. Strong. Say it’s ok, but thank you.
But in the midst of this storm, Zeki, you really offered, and N. really asked for a bit of this help, this one gesture, and now you’re really going.
And as that train goes along, clitter-clatter, clitter-clatter, from Bremen to Munich, past fields and farms, past rivers and bits of towns you’ll see fly by the window, and amongst those businesspeople and tourists and that couple canoodling, amongst iPhones and Androids and iPads and Kindles, amongst lapdogs and laptops, among other books, other stories, there will be this one. With you there, the one going.
In spite of the weirdness. In spite of your illness. Going.
It’s weird, sure. All of it. But it’s good.
U. will appreciate it. N. will appreciate it. I know I do, and so does Jouke.
What happens next? When you get there, or after?
Who knows.
What matters now is the going. It takes something, in this life, to actually go. Not just to say it but to act. And is it weird? Some of this? Sure. Or maybe the weirder thing is actually the other thing, when people say something, but do little.
You told me one recent day that you read my last blog, that you really liked it especially in light of all that’s suddenly happening now with U., and I was so surprised, and you told me only then that you actually come to check this blog “at least every other day” to see if I’ve written, and I had to apologize for my utter lack of writing here in the last year.
Well, here is this one. Maybe you’ll find it on the way to Munich. Maybe you’ll find it sometime after.
What we know, what we’ve learned so far, is that we’re here for each other. And that good is quiet, and that weird is good, and that somewhere here among all of this, among the text messages on our phones, among the beeps and whirs of that hospital room you’re going towards, among our fighting friend and his wife and their two children, among our Wednesdays and Fridays and Tuesdays, here we all are, now. Here still. And you’re going. And this matters.
I took pictures of these tracks the last time I visited you and your family, awaiting my delayed train out of Bremen, back home. Zooming in on the flowers. Marveling then that such things could rise up and bloom there among rock and rail, beside the chaos of life whipping on by. And I just got your message, from that same station. Your train, twenty minutes late. Of course. Bon voyage.
