1. Roots

 

Lilith was just making tea that morning, that greeted people with a clear sky and sunshine, when the bell sounded at the door indicating that someone had entered the shop. So he stood in the open doorway, as though he did not know whether he should really come in or not. So he stayed in indecision, while the cold air from outside did not stop.

“Good morning,” said Lilith, “Don’t you want come in?”

“Good morning,” the stranger replied, pulling the hat, rather out of habit than of real ambition, “I really only wanted to know what that meant. ‘What do you really need?’ I did not want more.”

“Come, sit down with me and we’ll have a cup of tea together,” Lilith suggested.

“But I just wanted to, and I must go right away, I think,” replied the man. Lilith eyed him. He was tall, with wide shoulders, a little bent forward, as if he were pulling himself together as if to keep himself together, as if he were afraid to lose. His brown eyes looked young and lively, curious and warm when he allowed it. They looked more disciplined than he really was. To the sixty estimated Lilith, and not just because of the gray hair. It does not have much to say.

“In fact, where are you in such a hurry?” Lilith asked as he closed the door and accepted not only the offered chair, but also a cup of tea.

“I do not know, but there’s a lot to do and I can not stay any longer,” he insisted.

“My name is Lilith,” Lilith said, “And I have a shop where you can not buy anything, and can get a lot.”

“Ruben, very pleased,” he replied, handing her his hand, “And what can you get? I admit it confuses me. Normally you go to a store, find out what, pay and go. Then there is a gap. It is filled and everything starts again from the front. It does not matter. It does not touch. Only a business. And then you give the things that basically do not mean anything to someone else and call it gift. One gives insignificance. Nothing remains. There is nothing to hold. It’s always over. “

“But what keeps then grounded?” Lilith asked interested.

“I do not know,” he admitted openly. “Maybe it does not exist, and we only form it because it would be too frightening to admit anything else.”

“What would it be?” Lilith continued.

“That is, there is no support, nothing prevents us from being blown over the earth like a loose leaf in the wind, always restless, always nameless, always driven until the wind passes and one digs in perpendicular line to rot” , replied Ruben, and Lilith said that he moved his shoulders a little more.

“Every one of us has a hold somewhere, has roots, because we all have an origin, a where,” said Lilith.

“Yes, maybe,” admitted Ruben hesitantly, “but if I really had something like roots, I lost them, then they were eventually rooted out. My where is no more. Everything has passed and gone. Everything has taken my life which could connect me with this where. Everything is gone. And everything is insignificance. There is nothing that could offer support or strengthen me. “

“Perhaps people have gone. Perhaps the memory fades. Perhaps the images that link you to this place have been lost,” said Lilith, in a seemingly secret understanding, to which you were passing,” But what this where gave to, what you carry within, are not images, not memories, and not necessarily people as themselves, but that is what has been shaping in you through this where. It is the view of the world. Recognizing the essence and accepting the insurance accepted as yourself. “

“And when I’m accepted, why did they leave me, all in turn. They were my roots, and then one after another died,” replied Ruben.

“Try to change your view. Not humans are roots, but they give them to you. The people who accepted you from the first hour, as you are, they gave you the roots. It is their gift to you. There is something important. It frees you from insignificance,” Lilith explained. And she realized that Ruben was trying to imagine that it was a gift, to imagine that this gift remained, even when people went. They did not take their gift back. Why ever it was necessary to separate, the gift could not pass away. For a moment, he closed his eyes. His shoulders relaxed visibly. His feet were firmly on the ground, as if he had just realized its meaning.

“It’s true,” he said finally, after opening his eyes again and looking at her, “They are here. Not her own, but all that together and the experience, and that what the shared experience made of me.”

“Then it’s time to let them go,” Lilith continued.

“What does that mean? Letting them go?”, Ruben asked, irritated, “They’re gone already.”

“No, they are not, for you hold on to them and you hold you in that holding them. You are driven to go further and further. But no matter whom you meet, no one will be them. With this you take the opportunity to say goodbye, and the people who meet you, the opportunity to be seen as yourself. You are looking for someone else in them and will always be disappointed. That is why you must always go. That’s why you can not stay. “

“I am wrong to the people,” Ruben said softly.

“You’re wrong to yourself, if you can not allow you”, Lilith replied. “It’s a crime on yourself, on you and on your life.”

“Now I understand,” Ruben suddenly said.

“What do you understand?” Lilith asked irritably.

“The sign above your door, ‘What do you really need?’. The shelves are empty, and just so full of the things you really need. It’s all in it, if you want to find it. Beyond the insignificance. A gift. A meaning. You showed me that the roots that I no longer feel are there, that I have a firm hold. Can I still have a cup of tea?” And for the first time, he smiled, a mischievous, boyish smile that pleased her. That was good to him.

“Do you not have to go any longer?” Lilith asked as she followed his request and refilled his cup.

“Of course, but not the same. I can stay a little longer”, he said gently.

 

And in the display a flowerpot with a seed was found, hidden deep in the darkness of the earth. Roots before the new life showed itself also outside the darkness. Roots, which made it possible to turn to the light.

 

 

 

2. The embrace

 

The door was cracked. She fell into the castle. Ruben and Lilith sat with a cup of tea. He had gone and returned. He stayed and he left. Maybe a little longer that day. It was good to go, because otherwise you can not return. To enjoy a familiarity that gives strength to discover the new, the unknown. Frightened both looked up. The girl, who was so wide-legged in the room, looked as wild as she had treated the door. The wide camouflage pants dangled around her legs. The hood of the sweater she had pulled over her head, so that only a few short strands of black hair barked at the top of her head. Her gaze was unsteady, and her lips clenched tightly, as if words were jamming behind them, which she could not possibly allow herself to get out of. Just as she also forbade her eyes to abandon the tears that had been gathering behind them for a long time.

 

“Hello! Nice to see you here,” Lilith said to the girl.” Sit down and have a cup of tea with us.”

“Is there nothing else?”, she asked cheeky, without replying the greeting.

“How about hot chocolate?” Lilith continued unflinching. Only Ruben seemed a bit irritated. This girl was snowing in here, helpless, and then she made demands. Absolutely no behavior. That was what he thought, as clearly as it was written on his forehead.

“I had thought of something harder, but if there is nothing else, even that,” she explained, struggling to maintain the snappy tone. But it was much more difficult for her.

“Would you like it with whipped cream?”, Lilith asked as she put the steaming cup on the table in front of the girl.

“Oh, yes, please,” she said, “so we used to drink it in the past.” And while Lilith piled a huge mount of whipped cream on her cocoa, the savage had not just disappeared from sight. Instead, a girl came out, who could be gentle and turned and loving. A girl who was so full of longing and touchability. But the longing, which remains unfulfilled, recedes into itself. Because it hurts less to deny them than to see them again and again unfulfilled. The touchability hides behind inviolability, if the touch does not occur.

“And so you know right away, I need nothing and no one. I get along very well on my own. So I’m really wrong”, she said. Lilith noticed that Ruben had also turned to her, that he was ready to ignore her behavior, for he recognized in her a girl without hold. A driven person recognizes the other.

“Of course not,” he said at last, “but that does not stop us from sitting here and talking to each other.

“Ok, if you want that,” she said, far less grumpy than she really wanted to say.

“Yes, I will,” said Ruben resolutely, “I am Ruben, by the way, and the nice lady who gave you the cocoa is Lilith.”

“Rebekka,” Rebekka replied briefly, and as she brushed the hood off her head, her brittle brush head cut, the sleeve slipped up a little on the left arm. Scars became visible. Self-inflicted wounds. When Rebekka noticed Lilith’s gaze, she quickly pulled the sleeve down again, up to the fingertips. She hid her injuries under long sleeves, the outer, and the inner in herself.

“I also like it that you are here,” explained Ruben on his part, “How old are you actually?”

“16,” came the quick response, “It’s been a long time since I’ve been drinking cocoa. Mama used to make it to me before, and then we cuddled in front of the fireplace and she read me, so when I was quite small. Later we talked. But that’s a long time ago, that does not matter.” With one sentence, Rebekka wanted to wipe not only the picture, but also the feeling of security from the table. She grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil, as if lost in thought, and began to scribble.

“Should not you be at school?” Ruben asked, frowning.

“There I lost nothing”, Rebekka explained, fully absorbed in her drawing.

“And work?”, Ruben remained stubborn.

“No one wants me, just as I am”, Rebekka said defiantly.

“And at home?”, Lilith interrupted.

“I do not want to be there”, Rebekka said, leaning even deeper over the sheet of paper.

“What happened?”, Lilith asked.

“Nothing at all. But it’s all so mendacious. It always says, Family, that is where they love one, but love, that depends on how you behave or how you look”, Rebekka said, “And if it does not fit, then you are criticized all the time. Then there was the new brother. Constantly I should be careful. Everything was all about him, and all I did was wrong. I was completely unsubscribed. They do not realize that I am no longer there. I can nothing. I am nothing. I have nothing.” Finally, Rebekka put away the pencil, which had conjured a bleeding heart on the paper. It was of an intensity and depth that Ruben and Lilith could only be astonished. And this girl claimed that she has no abilities?

“What would you want?”, Lilith asked softly.

“That she just takes me in her arms and likes me as I am”, Rebekka said as quietly, and now there was the longing and the sadness and pain. The gate had opened, for the words and for the tears. The words were the first. Then were the tears. And Lilith took her in her arms, like a child she actually was. Rebekka let it happen and leaned her head against Lilith’s shoulder.

 

Hot chocolate is good for the heart, also for the heart. But a hug, without ifs and buts, which means to me how I am, in my self-existence, but also in my loneliness and abandonment, in my doubts and in my fears, this is like a little piece of home that one conquers. Maintained, steady and secure, warm and snug. A hug is good for the heart, even for the heart. Let it happen without a word. Just be there. Do not judge, no longer qualify, but simply leave it there.

“You are, and as you are before me, it is good,” said Lilith.

It was time for Rebekka to go home and embrace her mother. She, too, would need someone to take her as she is.

 

And on that evening the drawing of the bleeding heart found itself in the display, which was connected with the embrace, so that the wound could heal. Embrace as the acceptance of the other, which becomes a you in it.

Go to part 2 here