Speaking of marmalade jar moments

January 2021 

It's one of those moments where you only realise how precious they are long after they've already passed.  

They've always occupied my thoughts. So much so that a metaphor by Cornelia Funke has stuck with me to this day, one I read in my favourite children's book when I was 9 years old. The one that now bounces around on TikTok and Instagram Reels, losing its magic in the process:  

Moments so beautiful that you want to capture them and keep them forever. You want to put them in a jam jar and when you're unhappy, you open it and can breathe in these moments to remember them.  

But to this day, I haven't found a more fitting metaphor.  

It's cold. So cold that the air stings against my cheek and I want to bury my face deeper in the collar of my winter jacket so that you wouldn't be able to see it at all. Everything about me is so frozen that I wonder why we even sat down instead of continuing to walk and at least moving a bit in the process. To continue searching for snow, which we've been looking for all afternoon in vain, even though it still smells like it. Apart from two chunks at the edge of the path in the forest, everything has probably melted away again. But the cold has remained. 

Only the cup of tea in my hands brings a pleasant contrast to the icy air that's slowly eating its way through my jacket into my jeans. It's steaming as if the water were still boiling, because you've just poured me some more from the thermos flask. 

I look at you and you're sitting just like I am. Wrapped up thick in your green winter jacket, the cup close to your face as if it could give you some warmth. And you're telling me about your new internship, which you're enjoying so much that you can't stop smiling. Which makes me smile.  

It's somehow unreal, I think. We've known each other for so long and especially after this year, when we could barely see each other in person, I'm so incredibly glad to have you with me and to be able to say that we're still friends.  

In front of us lie these big fields and you can see the garden of our house, where we used to play. The swing we tried to reach the sky on and do a somersault, has been taken down. But you can still make out the two cement mounds. We were incredibly happy.  

If someone had told my nine-year-old self that we'd still be friends eleven years later and sitting here together, I would have just looked confused. Of course we'll still be friends then? We're friends forever, I would have said.  

By now I know that that's anything but clear and friends forever is a wish in children's heads. But somewhere inside me I know (or perhaps it's a 

childish hope in me): We're friends forever. We can not see each other for months and still know exactly what to say when the other is feeling down. We look out for each other, include each other. We don't leave anyone behind.  

I take a sip of my tea, which tastes of peppermint and good mood, before it runs scalding hot down my throat and fills me with warmth from the inside. It's like a kind of serotonin boost in this icy cold. As if you were hearing that one song that you danced wildly to for hours when you were twelve, screaming the lyrics whilst jumping around the room, because you thought it was so incredibly good.  

The song I listened to before my A-level exams to take away some of my nervousness, because I knew I could recite it forwards and backwards. 

The song I played when I moved out and was just crying, because it would at least give me 200 seconds of happiness.  

I have to smile whilst you stick your tongue out because you've burnt it on the tea despite the weather and I know it for the first time in my life whilst I'm experiencing it. This here is a moment for a jam jar, however small and insignificant it may be. It brings me so much happiness that I missed last year—sitting with you in this freezing cold on this bench, talking about everything and nothing and drinking tea.  

I've been really lucky.