The Man in the Rat Fur Coat

Well, a few things have happened since I wrote last, not least of which is the apocalypse speeding up its timeline. It's hard to know how to write a newsletter like this when every day brings stories more horrifying than the last. But I also feel like the best reaction to what's coming is to keep building what we are building, only harder. It might get washed away or it might save my life or it might do neither or both. But honestly, I don't know what else to do.

Which is all just to say, I feel like making this newsletter relentlessly positive today because I know I can be a bit of a bummer sometimes, and because we have enough of that right now, and this is my little way of making up for that.

Here's the thing: while I've been here in Germany, I have gotten to hang out with a couple long lost cousins, people from branches of the family my dad and grandma and great-grandparents lost touch with around the time that the Berlin Wall went up. I found them through a mix of genetics testing and obsessive genealogical research (and a bit of luck because of my cousin Karin's hard work, too). I was, of course, a bit nervous to meet them at first, but they are wonderfully, fantastically, exceedingly lovely. And it is a strange contrast to be welcomed so enthusiastically in the land my great grandparents fled, all while feeling so unwelcome in the political rhetoric of the country these great-grandparents fled to.

My cousins' names are Karin and Volkmar, and both are married with delightful adult children who are just starting their lives. The funny thing is that while we have an almost infinitesimally small amount of shared variable genetic material (they are fourth cousins), the parallels between them and me and those on my father's side of the family are wild. Volki and I have the same hairlines. Karin and I have the same eyes. Our mannerisms—the way we move our hands, the way we laugh. Almost all of us are teachers. We all love language. We all love animals. It's striking, and it's a bit bizarre.

A few weeks ago, I went to Karlsruhe to meet Karin, her husband Spiros, and their sons Nicolas and Fabio. They very kindly put me up in one of the nicest AirBnBs I have ever been to. Karlsruhe is near the Black Forest, so of course I wanted to go find the source of a fairy tale. They loaded me up in their car and we traveled to Mummelsee, home of mermaids and spinsters and a little man in a rat fur coat. It is extraordinarily beautiful, and the lake in the middle is supposed to be home to fairies and sprites. Because these are German fairy tales, and I promised not to be a bummer, I won't tell all of these stories. But if you're curious, the best English write-up I've found is here.

But since it's less of a bummer, I want to tell the story of the man in the rat fur coat. The story is fairly simple – a man in a rat fur coat asked a midwife to come help his wife give birth in the lake. After she did so, he offered her straw. She tried to refuse, but he ultimately convinced her. On the way home, she threw the straw away, except for a tiny bit that was stuck on her skirt. When she got home, she found that the straw had turned to gold, and the gold she had discarded was gone forever.

The theme, like most fairy tales, is not subtle (though it is different than most because no one dies). But I like this one because it is a reminder that we should not turn away gifts, no matter how little we may think we need them. It's a reminder that the future might hold magic, might hold the unexpected. And this visit, it seems to be that – it seems to be a gift from my family I didn't know I had, and also from friends all over Europe who have welcomed me with open arms (more on them soon.)

But it is another sort of reminder, too. If you put yourself in the position of the man in the rat fur coat, it's a reminder not to insist upon giving gifts to those who don't want them. This is a lesson I have yet to learn; I keep trying to be kind to those who don't ask for my kindness. Keep trying to serve communities who don't want anything to do with me. I don't know why I do this, but it's not a good way to live.

But there, in Karlsruhe, Karin and Spiros invited me to their wonderful home to spend time with them and their sons Nicolas and Fabio, to sit drinking Radlers in their beautiful garden—where they had ducks and chickens and adorable cats and dogs galore—for hours and hours, enjoying each other's company. It does not make for a spectacular story, since nothing went wrong. But it makes for a good lesson—accept the gifts you are given, accept the love you are given, and focus on that. If I can take this lesson from this trip, that will be plenty.

A couple weeks later, I went to Forchheim, a little town near Nuremberg, to visit my cousin Volki, his wife Maria, and their daughter Lea. It was a whirlwind trip. I only had a few short hours there. But man, did they welcome me with open arms. They threw me a barbecue (in Deutsche, Eine Grillparty) with their neighbors and Lea’s boyfriend and their neighbors and their children.

Before the Grillparty, Volki took me to an ancient biergarten with beer caves that went back hundreds of years. Then he drove me all around the area of Forchheim, which is a bit of an outdoor person's dream. They call it the "Franconian Alps." We ended at a cave with a breathtaking view.

Back at his place, we sat eating and talking and enjoying each other's company. We played a game called Hitster, where they play a song, and you have to identify approximately when it was written. You get a bonus if you can identify the artist and the name of the song. Their version had German and English songs, but they didn't make me guess on the German ones. They also all spoke immaculate English, which is good, because Mein Deutsche ist Scheisse. But what struck me most was that none of them paid any attention to who won (Maybe I did pay attention to this, and maybe it wasn't me).

Volki and Maria share a yard and are neighbors with their best college friends. They have these gatherings once every week. They enjoy each other's company immensely. Every week, his neighbors choose someone in their family to choose a musical artist, and then that week, every member of the family listens to that musical artist and chooses their favorite song. It gets Eagles fans to listen to Post Malone, it gets Beyonce fans to listen to Led Zeppelin. They might not always love what their family members share, but it's a chance for the different generations to come together and understand each other, to join together in appreciate of art that speaks to them, and to have fun talking about it. This is not to say that the horrors we face are not horrors we need to look at. But this approach seems like a way better place to put our energy than where we put it when we doomscroll.