Bear Place

(A warning. this is a month of catch up, so it might be a long post!)
I might as well start with the house.
Until now I have been staying in Bärenort, which translates roughly to Bear Place. In winter it is truly a place to hibernate, but we (the bearenorters) think it was really once Beerenort, which means berry place, because the woodland and wilds around the house are full of blackberry brambles. I think sometimes they could be the remnants of a spell covering the house with vines, because there is something fairy tale like about the whole place. I remember when my father first bought the house, eight years ago maybe. It could have been a shady ruin. Cold damp brick, dark moss, rotting birch trees, stark white but fallen.
It has life now and is peaceful and bright. The sun catches in all the room corners possible, and most hours find me sitting high up on the kitchen window ledge where I can see the coming and goings of all the people in the house and hear the birds racket from somewhere in the near woods.
On one side of the house the area is marked as wildlife preserve, and on the other a road goes up, past the sheep field on the right, the neighbors on the left, the abandoned factory, across overgrown train rails and finally up to the street which cuts through the small town on it’s way toward the Teutoburger Wald.
There are six permanent residents in the house altogether, and others (including me) who come and go seasonally. Besides my father and I on the second floor there are Tina, his niece, and her family in the apartment across the way. Laura, her daughter is just a month older than Dante and can produce the most shrieking high-pitched ear-shattering notes if she feels threatened. Steffen, the husband, smiles all the time and recently bought a ‘mini’ car to fix up as a project. It looks like a toy car, but is actually just British.
The downstairs floor is owned by the silver haired Ulrike, a petit potter on whose oversized sweaters there is almost always the trace of clay dust. While I was there she spent two weeks on a Grecian island, and came back, head still in the sun, with amazingly smooth white glittery beach stones.
Her older daughter, Gesine, soft spoken and all heart, lives in Fulda but her son Hannes (around my age or a little older) just moved back from Hamburg and was there all the time that I was away. The details of his leaving Hamburg are a little fuzzy but include a (manic?) psychotic episode precipitated (or worsened) by his, er…green habit.
This is not something you would ever guess of him; he’s the most mild-mannered darling boy ever. A good soul.
The last person in the house is Christoph, who rents a room downstairs from Ulrike. He’s a young blond southerner. He’s very active and friendly and has a really nice girlfriend (wife?) Lena, just barely older than me. My father and he don’t always get along. Ulrike and he have stopped talking entirely. I think he won’t be here much longer.
Sometimes Christina, one of our neighbors, a young mother visits bringing Anna, an amazingly intelligent two year old. And Anja, long-time friend of the family’s, comes over, with her huge black dog Pablo, for coffee, or when we grill, or to cut our hair (which she used to do professionally).
Now you know all the people and some of the drama. This is where I’ve been for…all time. There is no time here. The slow signs of fall, the browning of the birch leaves, the wind growing stronger, the first rainstorm, even these seem like a continuation of the summer I spent here last year. Even though I know, for example, that Hannes spent most of the past year in Hamburg, he is in this house now and that’s the way I’ve always known it, and where I’ve always known him to be.
The house is changing too, there is a lot of construction to be done on the top floor. My father is putting roof windows and solar panels in. But it still seems to change like mountains change, like people change when you are always watching them.
I’ve been here longer than I’ve stopped in any place since the end of school. So it is really a home, (though not for much longer).