Gathering of the Clan, 2007

From Friday to this morning Papa, Mama, T., Gi., Ge., J. and I were in Mama's hometown Kevelaer, near the Dutch border, for a compound celebration. Uncle W. and Aunt E. had a wedding anniversary and their son T. had a birthday to mark, and friends as well as family were invited. The invitations, which had come weeks earlier, were enigmatically phrased in the Mafia terminology, and featured a dramatic photo of the Alte Weezer Straße family in suits and sunglasses, posed in front of two big cars, with a cello case and a puddle in the foreground, in an underground parking lot. (The event itself proved agreeably non-violent.)

So, on Friday morning we travelled to Kevelaer. Mama and Ge. went per train, the rest of us by car. I was in a gloomy mood and T. and J. in a gigglesome one and Gi. in his usual quiet one. We arrived at Opa's house in Kevelaer in the late afternoon, visited Uncle M.'s bookshop (formerly our grandmother's) in the shadow of the basilica, and made ourselves at temporary home in the "Halle" behind Opa's house. Then, before we went to sleep, we dropped by the Alte Weezer Straße. As we walked back through the basilica square, we heard singing, which apparently came from some of the Tamil Christian and Hindu pilgrims who filled the square with pleasant confusion on the next day. All of the rows of golden candles at the Kerzenkapelle (candle chapel) were lit.

The true Alte Weezer festivities began on Saturday at 3:00. There were tables and benches with glasses and drinks set out on the patio and the garden in the back; soon the shallow well-pond was filled with cool water and pressed into service as a refrigerator for the beer; and an assortment of edibles was laid out in delicious profusion in the garage. The garden is quite small, but flourishing with chestnuts, conifers, black elderberries, and other plants; there is a swing and a swinging rope and a merry-go-round, a little red house, a habitation for the typically plump, black-spotted white bunny, and a former sandbox in which turtles now roam. So the atmosphere was very nice.

The guests numbered about eighty, but they dispersed themselves over the yard, so the crowd didn't strike terror into one's soul. Nevertheless, T. and J. and I soon beat a retreat to a table in the garden, and stayed at that vantage point for the rest of the evening. Mama and Papa were usually perched on the edge of the ex-sandbox, where they first went to smoke an unusually long cigarillo in Mama's case and a normal cigar in Papa's case. A large table beside us was occupied by W.'s and E.'s children and their friends, the smaller fry were usually playing on the swings and elsewhere beyond us, and many of the guests clustered on the patio and in front of the garage -- including Opa, who had come out despite his doubts and cheerfully occupied a chair at the centre of everything. So we didn't feel unnecessarily shy or distant.

Throughout the afternoon a cousin of Mama (who turned out to be a teacher), two friends of E., and our uncles and their wives and partners all dropped by at our table, and we spoke German with them as well as we could. The conversation tended to be one-sided, since we are bad at finding things to talk about and since we tend to give one-sentence answers to questions, but we liked listening and we did thaw out quite well. Besides the usual topics like school, university, Canada (especially versus Germany), and Berlin, we talked about less immediate subjects like sharks and films too. Intermittently we went to the garage to fill our plates.

In the dusk the keg of beer was broken open (with minor excitement: the spigot broke off the keg, and when an auger was produced and applied, a trickle of foamy beer bubbled out of it and spiked the well) and cocktails came out. Gi. and Ge. were our guinea-pigs; Gi. tried the beer as well as the lime and strawberry cocktails, and Ge. only tried the cocktails, and they agreed that the strawberry shots were better. (I had a sip of the lime drink too.) When it became dark, tealights were put on the tables and dancing began in the living room. I was tempted to go and dance too, but not very much, because I do it terribly. So we simply heard the music (mostly the beat, really) in the background as we talked in the darkness under the stars. At 11:30 or later we went back to the Halle, and dropped off to sleep.