The ground beneath my feet

Why I avoid visiting my parents' building sites

A first quick answer could be: because they are their building sites, not mine.

I don't need to listen deeply within myself to know that at 26 years old, I absolutely don't want to have my own house building site hanging around my neck or sticking to the soles of my shoes right now. I'm aware that from an outside perspective it probably looks different since I've been presenting myself in Engelbert Strauss fashion. Nevertheless, I know for certain: I don't want to build or renovate a house right now. I don't want to have to find expired spaghetti from 1992 and inevitably have to relive children's screams and divorce proceedings whilst my sciatic nerve rudely reminds me that those old times are long gone. I also don't want to have to listen to affectionately spiteful remarks about whether the cat is even moving with us. No, thanks. I am fine. 

I enjoy listening from a distance as a good friend of similar age tells me about the progress of her renovation. I like to comment on kitchen and bathroom plans and I'm not only a good listener, but at least equally horrified that decent light switches start at 30 euros (not at 4, as naive millennials believe, who are still in the life phase slatted bed base hanging). Freestanding bathtub? Absolutely for it! Bar counter in the kitchen? Of course! Floor-to-ceiling windows in every room? You can do it, but you definitely don't have to. Plan four children's rooms? Ah, too optimistic for my taste. 

Many conversations have been running along these lines since 2020. The Corona pandemic and the reduced VAT – some Germans in the past year thought they'd use it to simultaneously escape an absolutely monstrous undertaking. The construction industry is booming, tradespeople are almost as hard to come by as tiles from Italy, and to my exhausted mother's melancholic complaints I only counter: at least you can be glad you have something that pushes you physically and mentally to your limits. Something that keeps you in good spirits. Certainly not the fairest move on my part. But you could have expected it if you invited the disillusioned, frustrated daughter to dinner after a year of digital studies.

Already in conversation with my father and his wife, I repeatedly emphasised at the beginning of the Corona pandemic how envious I was of their major project. Well, purely theoretically. After I had helped them insulate the attic for a day and thus proudly put eight hours of the total 2,100 hours of voluntary work on my account, I became somewhat quieter and let several weeks pass before I repeated this statement. 

So I did visit my parents' building sites. Not often, but at regular intervals. After all, infection risks and travel restrictions also played a major role in crossing state borders. But the number of excuses is shrinking just as quickly as the number of non-corrupt CDU members: currently I am actually only one kilometre as the crow flies from my mother's and her husband's shell structure. In other words, my "new home". Yet I'm almost never there. Last time a few weeks ago and with a good friend, a bottle of Fürst Von Metternich and the plan to combine two hours of shell structure ventilation with a Corona-compliant full-on binge. Before said friend is ashamed to the core of the combination "full-on binge" and "bottle of sparkling wine", I would like to mention that I a) quickly realised that permanently getting plastered with port wine would only have worked as a solution if things had ended after the first lockdown, and I thus felt the sparkling wine much more distinctly towards the end of the year and b) we drank other spirits afterwards. But now that I think about it, "refined drinking pleasure" probably fits better. 

So why do I avoid visiting the building site? In reflecting on myself, it occurred to me that my avoidant behaviour is probably based on two main reasons: firstly, I believe I can't contribute much to the building site right now. Baking muffins, bringing coffee, helping during lunch breaks, finishing five kilos of gratin – none of that was a problem in the past. However, those were also only indirect support work and not concrete manual activities. So I believe that my time as a supporting hand will still come – but right now, in terms of the shell structure, I can't do much beyond ventilating and applauding.

Secondly, every step forward of the new means a loss of the old. With every move upstairs, the day of moving out downstairs, in the old settlement, draws closer. Somewhere between "you don't dig your own grave" and "every beginning has a magic all its own" I would say that I am attached to our old house. After all, I've spent the longest part of my life there. All my teenage memories are inevitably tied to this house and this street. I suspect that only at the moment of the final move will I truly understand what it means for me to leave this place. Even now, I sometimes look from outside at the window of my teenage bedroom and imagine how one of the twin girls will hang her curtains there. How she presses her nose against the pane and waits with the same eager, trembling anticipation for the Polo of her teenage love to turn in, just as I used to do. 

Now it is actually the case that I have no difficulty removing the ground from under my own feet. As a special education teacher, it has always been my goal to abolish my own work and thus myself in the sense of the "help me do it myself"empowerment. The job is successful when it doesn't need me. As a volunteer in the development policy field, it would be my greatest wish if we and the necessity of non-governmental organisations and foreign money that must flow to other countries didn't exist at all. (But – surprise – we don't currently live in this human-rights-fair version of the world.) In itself, I like to gradually remove the ground from under my own feet and look around for something new. And so I will probably start on Tuesday to prime chipboard panels and with every brush stroke consider what the new holds for me. And what music I want to listen to when I lie down in the 1.85-metre bathtub for the first time. Freestanding, mind you. 

Sarah Schmittiger