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The Surprising Sweetness of Stone Soup

Memories of my father

By Martin S.Published 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 24 min read
Runner-Up in Dads Are No Joke Challenge
3
Once upon a time in the 80s – Michael, me, and Stefan in a photo taken by my father.

THE BOY deeply inhaled the loamy, sandy smell of the vineyard soil warmed by the sun. Home! After filling his lungs with air, the boy held his breath and closed his eyes. So he sat there for a while, his tousled dark blond hair making him look like a runaway convent student practicing the art of immersion. Individual rays of the sun, already high above the vineyards, fell through the canopy of the old beech tree and tickled the tip of the boy's nose, who smiled in response and wrinkled his nose a few times in delight. After about a minute, the boy inhaled audibly and opened his eyes. He then eyed the ground around him and reached for a reddish stone. He examined the stone with a critical eye before putting it in his pants pocket. Then he turned back to the ground.

"What are you doing?"

The boy was so absorbed in his world of stone collecting that he didn't hear the words at first. After critically examining another stone, the boy nodded and put it in his by-now bulging pants pocket.

"Hello, my little one!" the voice sounded again.

The boy looked up and saw an older couple—she in a fashionable yellow petticoat dress with a floral pattern, he in beige pants, dark blue shirt, and hat—looking at him expectantly.

"Well, are you playing nicely?" the woman wanted to know.

"Playing?" the boy asked in surprise. Then he said with conviction and a fair amount of pride, "I'm working!"

"You are working?" the man asked in surprise.

"Oh, yes! I collect rocks."

"And what do you collect the rocks for?"

As if the boy had been waiting for it, he said in a tone that could not be surpassed in matter-of-factness:

"Well, for stone soup!"

"For stone soup?" the woman asked, looking questioningly at her husband, who raised his eyebrows in amazement and shrugged his shoulders.

The boy nodded happily. "We always have stone soup on Mondays. I collect rocks for that." The boy rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a rock. "This red one, for example, gives a nice color. And this one." Now he held up a shiny silver stone, "this one has a nice salty taste. And if you're lucky, you can find one with moss on it," he rummaged in his pocket. "Like this one. It gives the broth that certain something..."

The older lady looked at the boy and then at her husband in dismay. "Say," she asked the boy, "you're kidding, right?"

The boy's look revealed a mixture of confusion and offense. Then, as if all at once he understood the reason for the woman's question, he lowered his gaze and repeated meekly:

"We have stone soup on Mondays."

"Um..." the man cleared his throat. "Well, I'm sure it's delicious, isn't it, honey?" he said in a placating, put-upon tone and bumped his wife's upper arm a few times with his elbow.

The boy looked up sheepishly.

The woman shook her head. "Stone soup..." she muttered, "I've never heard anything like it!" Her words sounded incredulous, almost angry. As if she had had a sudden inspiration, the woman, who had been standing there slightly hunched over before, as if trying to adjust her posture to the crooked cherry trees along the path, straightened up bolt upright and said in an emphatic voice, "You don't have to boil down any stones today!" Then she rummaged in her purse and pulled out her wallet. "Here," the woman said after removing a coin from her purse.

"Go to Keller's butcher shop and get some meat and bones."

The boy stared at the coin in disbelief—a whole Deutschmark.

"Go ahead, take it!" the woman said.

The boy looked skeptically over at the man. He just nodded in understanding.

"Thank you!" said the boy as he jumped up and snatched the coin from the woman's hand in a flash. Then he gathered up the stones he had presented earlier and hastily stuffed them back into his pants pocket.

"But the stones," the woman said in confusion, "you don't need them anymore."

The boy was already on the dirt road when he turned back to the two again. "It's meat and bones today ..." he called out, suddenly grinning like a Cheshire cat. He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a stone, and held it up demonstratively "...in stone soup!"

Then he turned and disappeared among the vines.

The boy is my father. Born in 1946 and raised in post-war Germany, the child of a refugee family, in a life of rubble, deprivation, and the severe physical and psychological aftermath of war, amid a traumatized society. It was a world too often marked by shame and poverty, where cunning and craftiness could pay off. A world where humor, wit, and the gift of storytelling could sometimes make the difference between hopelessness and hope, unemployment and work, or starving and eating.

And that boy is me, a good 30 years later and 100 kilometers further south, in the vineyards of the Bergstrasse, as I bring my father's stone soup tale to life in a reenactment. It's a game—and it's far more than that. Despite the humble circumstances in which my parents grew up, I was already born into a life of plenty. The shame of the defeated, life on the run, food shortages, the resentment of locals for whom the many (inner-German) refugees were often a thorn in the side, as they potentially only made scarce labor and scarce food even scarcer, the general struggle for survival ... I never had to experience any of that firsthand. I never had to go hungry, let alone gather stones for soup. Despite the "better world" I was born into, my father's experiences shaped me, as they influenced his behavior until his death. Even though my father probably never had to collect stones for soup and the stone soup tale is fictional, it was one of the stories we repeatedly told in our family—to each other at the dinner table or to perplexed passersby while shopping. I didn't realize it as a child, but I may have known intuitively how important stories are to us and the formation of our identity. Who we are, where we come from, who we want to be? We answer all these questions through the stories we tell others and, above all, ourselves. It may be evolutionary that by reliving Stone Soup and other tales of my father, I subconsciously sorted the building blocks of my origins and arranged them in the great mosaic of the self.

"Dads are great at telling stories ..."

My father was a storyteller through and through. Seemingly without effort and by the grace of a natural gift, he could deliver stories off the cuff and keep his listeners engaged—sometimes for hours. Given his talent, I find it astonishing in retrospect that he didn't pursue a career as a professional storyteller, say, as a cabaret performer or comedian. He was probably too torn and neither free nor ambitious enough to pursue such a path. Possibly he did not attach the appropriate importance to this line of work or feared a significant financial risk on this path.

"... Now tell the story of your dad!"

The more I think about my father, the more fascinated I am by his versatility and contradictions. I can't possibly find a simple answer to the question, "Who was your dad?" During his life, he took on so many roles: he was a soldier, a car mechanic, a driving instructor, a kitchen salesman, a handyman, and an insurance salesman ... to list just a few stages of his professional career. However, all these roles say little about the person behind them. In terms of Dad's aspirations and many talents, the potential careers are at least as relevant as the paths taken. Career paths he didn't take and roles he nevertheless slipped into again and again: photographer, actor, inventor, engineer, Samaritan ...

Dad was torn and, God knows, not an easy man. Marked by a father severely traumatized by the Second World War and a problematic relationship with his mother, he found it challenging to forget wounds inflicted during his childhood. Some, I think, never really healed. Thus, throughout his life, he grew a hard shell that was sometimes difficult to penetrate. The spontaneous signs of affection were all the more surprising: Actions marked by great attention, sensitivity, and love. They became more and more evident just towards the end of his life.

I think they were two sides of the same coin. Precisely because my father could be so hurtful—spiteful, condescending, in rare cases even violent— he had a strong urge to help. Helping was his language of love. By helping others, he could rise above himself to overcome old traumas and violence inflicted on him, at least temporarily.

In light of the many contradictions that shaped my father and his relationship with me, this text is not meant to be a song of praise or lament. Instead, it attempts to help me understand my father better and keep his memory alive in the way he loved: through storytelling. In doing so, I would like to remind the reader of the person he could be and show sides of him that he could not always reveal with ease but which lay dormant in him and held great potential.

Once upon a time, in 1985

The homey stench of old cigarette smoke hung in the apartment's air and mingled with the smell of lunch to create a strangely inviting mixture. Live Is Life by Opus was playing on the radio. I was in good spirits as I walked in the door; after all, I was looking back on a feat. I had freed my best friend Patrick from the clutches of the enemy gang with the dreaded whirlwind punch. In my mind, I kept replaying the scene of me throwing myself death-defyingly into the middle of the circle of the opposing gang (consisting of other preschoolers, the "bad guys"), stretching my arms horizontally away from me and beginning to spin around on my axis like a tornado, pushing my "enemies" back until Patrick, my best friend, was freed.

"Did you have a good day at kindergarten?" Mom wanted to know, standing at the stove cooking Königsberger Klopse, one of Dad's favorite dishes. (I only learned years later—long after my parents' divorce and Dad's death— that she didn't like this food.) I nodded, but inside I thought, "I had a heroic day!" Mom wafted me through my hair and kissed me lovingly on the forehead. She pointed to the dining room table, where there was a folded sheet of paper. "Dad put this down for you."

"What is it?" I wanted to know.

"Some contest."

"A contest?"

"Yes, a drawing contest, I think."

My eyes sparkled with curiosity.

"What kind of drawing contest?"

"It's a surprise." Mom winked lovingly at me. "Dad said you should wait until he gets home, then he'll explain it to you."

What could it possibly be? Now I was bursting with impatience.

"When is Dad coming home?"

"Should be here any minute. Go ahead and wash your hands. As soon as Dad gets back, we'll eat."

As I returned from the bathroom, I heard the gate to our driveway squeak open. A moment later, the front door opened, and my big brother Stefan came in, followed by Dad. They were talking something about cars—again!

Shortly after, we were sitting at the dining room table.

I wanted to ask Dad about the competition, but he and Stefan were still talking about cars. Stefan was only nine, but he already had an insatiable thirst for knowledge—especially when it came to technical things. I listened attentively, not because I was interested in cars, but because I was waiting for my chance to ask Dad about the painting competition.

"You can help me change spark plugs later," Dad said.

Stefan nodded eagerly.

"Can I change one myself?" he wanted to know.

Dad smiled mischievously. "Do you think we'll have to change more than one spark plug?"

Stefan pondered.

"How many spark plugs does the engine have?" dad wanted to know as he shoveled a portion of Königsberger Meatballs into his mouth with relish.

Stefan rubbed his chin. "I'm not sure," he said. "Two?"

"How many cylinders does the engine have?"

"Four!" said Stefan quickly, smiling confidently.

Dad nodded. "Right. And that's exactly how many spark plugs the car has!"

"Four, then." Stefan beamed. "Then I can change three myself."

Dad laughed. "Sure. We'll take them all out. You can definitely give me a hand with that!"

Stefan smacked his lips contentedly on his meatballs.

"Dad?" I said carefully, pointing to the folded paper. "Can I look at this now?"

"Ah!" said Dad with a full mouth, "I almost forgot!"

Stefan looked at Dad and raised his index finger pompously, " At 30 grams, it's a full mouth."

Mom laughed, and Dad nodded in confirmation.

"For meatballs, the special rule is 50 grams," he said and winked at Stefan. "But only for adults." Then he looked at me.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Don't you like to see what it's all about?" He pointed to the folded paper in front of me.

I didn't have to be told twice and quickly unfolded the paper.

I couldn't read what it was about precisely, but I immediately recognized the logo and the toy figures: a big "He-Man" was written next to a "Masters of the Universe" logo. Something else was written underneath, but I couldn't make it out. My thoughts were racing. Mom had said it was a drawing contest. And there was "He-Man" in big letters on the page. Sy-Klone, my favorite character whose torso could be spun like a whirlwind thanks to a little wheel on his back (the inspiration for my whirlwind punch!), was also on it, along with a few other characters. So it had to be a "Masters of the Universe" drawing contest after all!

Dad took me onto his lap. As if he had read my mind, he said, "Look, it says: "Design your own Masters of the Universe toy figure!"

I looked at him in disbelief. My own He-Man toy? I was speechless with joy.

He read on:

"Enter our big design contest for a chance to win great prizes. Best of all, the winning entry will be made into a real toy!"

I looked at Dad with sparkling eyes. "Does that mean I'll get my own He-Fan character if I win?"

Dad nodded.

"Can I buy them from Faludy then?"

Dad laughed. "Not only at Faludy's. You can buy them in toy stores all over Germany, heck, all over the world."

"Even in America?" Stefan wanted to know.

"Especially in America," said Dad, at which point Stefan nodded in satisfaction and gave me a raised thumb.

"Well, what do you say?" Dad asked. "Shall we design a game figure together when I get home from work tonight?"

I nodded wildly. I was five years old and a huge fan of He-Man and his Masters of the Universe. It did not get any better than this!

As I pondered this story, I wondered if I could trust my memory. Had this design contest actually taken place? If so, there must be something about it on the Internet. I decided to search for it, even though I was secretly afraid of bursting the colorful bubble of this fond childhood memory by doing a reality check. But my worry was unfounded. Indeed, Mattel—the manufacturer of the toy figures—had announced a design contest for a new toy figure in 1985.

Finally, the evening arrived.

There are no longer clear images, rather flickering snippets of memory that come together to create a mood carried by images and emotions: How Dad and I sat in the kitchen under that big, metal lampshade letting our imaginations run wild together while we jotted down our ideas on fanfold paper (that paper perforated on the sides that was used in the earlier dot matrix printers). I remember that I wanted our hero to be able to fly. So we painted wings under his arms that made him look like a cross between a human bat and a jet. Dad, I think, had the idea that our hero could become invisible once he was in the clouds. Or could he make clouds form around him and thus become invisible? And what was the name of our hero? Did it have something to do with invisibility? Was his name possibly "Invisibilitor"?

I don't remember. It may be because the moment happened more than 35 years ago, or it may be because this is a dormant story that has not been passed down in our family until now. It is not a great story, with a roaring finale or a powerful punch line, except that for me it represents the father that every child probably longs for: a father who devotes his time and attention to you, who encourages that for which you burn. And what better thing to nurture than your own child's imagination and creativity?

A season of farewells

It was a hot and humid day and another summer thunderstorm was in the air. I had just gotten over one of my dizzy spells and sat down at my desk, slightly dazed, when Dominic handed me the phone. "It's for you."

It was Brigitte, my father's wife. She sounded muffled, at a loss for words. Something wasn't right.

"Is everything all right?" I asked.

"That's for Dad to tell you." Even through the phone, I could tell she was fighting tears.

Dad picked up the phone and got right to the point:

"Hello Martin. I didn't really want to call, but Brigitte insisted."

"I see" I said "what is this about?" In the background Brigitte began to cry.

"Well, boy, it's like this: I have cancer."

Dad could be like that: For all his love of storytelling, he could get right to the heart of the matter—even in situations where a bit of preliminary banter might have been in order. No beating around the bush, out with it! There I was, sitting in the office, on some random day in the European heatwave summer of 2015, being informed by phone that Dad had cancer. In the months to come, he himself would repeatedly affirm that it had certainly not hit the wrong person and that his illness and impending death were not tragic. An acquaintance of mine had lost his only ten-year-old son in an accident shortly before. "That," Dad insisted, "was tragic." He had smoked all his life, at times two or three packs a day. So it was only right, he said, that he now had lung cancer. Nevertheless, I remember sitting there speechless at that moment. I must have looked shocked, because Alex, Dominic and the other colleagues immediately rushed over to ask what was going on.

It was a difficult time when I felt like life was testing me. Looking back, this phase was a lesson in the art of letting go. Within a few months, I was confronted with the subject of loss several times. When Dad's cancer diagnosis came, I struggled with severe heartbreak for the first time in my life (and was surprised at how much it threw me off track). A short time later, a colleague relapsed and slipped back into a heroin addiction that he had kept from us until that point. Again, a few weeks later, one of our support staff was found dead in her apartment .... and so it went on.

During that time, I was glad to have the structure of a permanent job. At the same time I threw myself into distractions; dated a lot, worked out, went boxing, swimming, and started taking salsa classes. The common sport and especially salsa dancing were a lifeline for me back then. Through dancing, I rediscovered an old love that had lain dormant for decades and I realized how magical it can be to share that moment in movement and music with another person. Likewise, during this phase I particularly spurred myself on to creative productivity and blamed myself when I failed to live up to my own standards. In the heat of the moment, I didn't notice that my body had already shown me several red flags: shortness of breath, heartburn, dizziness, cardiac arrhythmias, panic attack... I ignored these warning signs and was about to race full steam into a burnout. Then Dad decided against another cancer therapy and the pace of my life slowed down from one day to the next.

Dad, Brigitte, Stefan and I were sitting at the table when Dad told us his decision. " I will not do another therapy" he said. "What good would it do me? A few more months?"

It hurt to hear those words, but it was good that he had made the decision. It was his life at stake, after all. To be or not to be ...

Dad's greatest fear was the loss of his autonomy during a long course of illness that would slowly wear him away and bring great suffering to all of us. Fortunately, he and we were largely spared this fate. In February 2016, Dad's condition had deteriorated to the point where the doctor told us that it would now be "just a matter of a few weeks, maybe just a few days..." Dad wanted to die at home, so we had taken appropriate measures, including getting a hospital bed that was now in the living room right next to the window. This way he could keep an eye on the garden, which he loved so much, as well as on the television, which he hardly used anymore in the last weeks.

It was the weekend that was to be our last together and I had taken over the night watch on Saturday. I had spent the afternoon in Karlsruhe to meet Laura and see her diploma exhibition. It was the first time I had met Laura since our separation a year and a half ago, and I secretly expected to be nervous. On the way home, however, I realized that meeting Laura had stirred me much less than I had anticipated. At that moment, I had no idea how important our meeting would be and how much this day would stick in my mind.

When I got home, Dad was sitting on the sofa. His eyelids were heavy but not completely closed. He blinked slowly every now and then, movements that seemed as if someone had throttled the flow of time. His upper body was slightly bent forward and he was breathing heavily. His gaze was dazed. I couldn't tell for sure if it was from the effort of breathing, the lack of oxygen, the morphine, or a combination of all these factors. I sat down next to him, hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. As if in slow motion, he turned his head toward me and looked into my eyes. When he recognized me, a smile formed on his face. We sat wordlessly next to each other for a while. Each breath was accompanied by a terrible rattling sound and must have been straining him terribly. At that moment I wished for nothing more than that his suffering would come to an end and that he would find salvation.

"I met Laura in Karlsruhe today" I said after a while.

His eyes widened in astonishment. All of a sudden his gaze seemed clear and attentive. He looked at me curiously.

"How was it for you?" He whispered the words very softly, so that I could barely understand them.

"Familiar," I told him. "Strangely familiar. Very much as if we had never parted."

At that I was silent for a moment and the next moment I started to cry. Dad looked at me understandingly. He also had tears in his eyes. Then he did something that I will probably never forget as long as I am alive and lucid: he lifted his hand very thoughtfully and lovingly wiped the tears from my face. Then he stroked my head. He, the terminally ill, the dying, mustered what little strength he had left to comfort me. In spite of his illness, in spite of the approaching death, at that moment he could once again be the father who is there for his son. I embraced him crying. So we sat for a while, father and son in an embrace that we both suspected would be our last.

Around midnight, Brigitte came downstairs to relieve me. Dad refused to get into bed at first. He wanted to stay on the couch. Brigitte, however, insisted that he sleep in bed, fearing that Dad might fall off the couch. Given Dad's condition, surely not an unfounded concern. After a while, Dad agreed and let me carry him to bed. I was shocked at how easy it was for me to lift him from a kneeling position. He was really just skin and bones.

Brigitte lay down on the couch next to him and I said goodbye for the night.

A short time later I flew through the air, breaking through clouds. I looked through semi-transparent arms and hands that slowly regained their normal color. Vineyards rushed by below me, then I hovered over a small town. A group of children were playing in a courtyard. The game turned into a scuffle and I saw a boy jump into a group of children and start spinning around like a whirlwind with his arms outstretched ... I laughed and was in a different place. The image that captivated me broke out of its frame, as if it wanted to refuse to acknowledge its own limits. Then I saw Her. She turned and smiled at me. "Hey," she said teasingly as she winked at me. In her eyes, my reflection danced and for a moment, nothing else existed. As if controlled by instinct, my hand reached out to her ... and pulled back, startled, so as not to burn my fingers. Thick steam rose from the cooking pot and fogged up my glasses. I carefully stirred the pot once or twice with the spoon. Klong, Klong... it sounded like bells ringing as the stones hit the inside of the metal pot.

As if he had been waiting for this sign, Dad shouted from the living room, "How much longer will it take? I'm starving!"

"Coming right up!" I replied.

A moment later, I put the soup plate down for Dad. The broth was a reddish color and in the middle of the soup plate was a rock about the size of a child's fist, with a piece of moss on it that looked like a small, green island in the middle of a sea of rocks. Dad took a deep breath of the rising steam.

"Hmmmmmmmm" he said with relish. "It smells wonderful!"

Then he dipped his spoon into the broth and tasted the stone soup.

"So, how does it taste?" I wanted to know.

Dad smiled.

"Sweet," he said. "Surprisingly sweet."

family
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About the Creator

Martin S.

Japanologist who earns his bread as a copywriter and occasional comedian. I also train and teach boxing in a small gym in Heidelberg. I read and write much less than I should in my spare time, so Vocal is a great place to hang out. ;)

Reader insights

Outstanding

Excellent work. Looking forward to reading more!

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  1. Compelling and original writing

    Creative use of language & vocab

  2. Excellent storytelling

    Original narrative & well developed characters

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