God might be offended

When our kindergarten teacher told us about the Ten Commandments, I was quite intrigued to learn that we were not meant to create a picture of God. I always had a distinct image of God in my head, but I never had the desire to actually draw a picture of it until then. But when I realised this was something forbidden, I started to feel an irresistible desire to do it.

One day, I talked to my girlfriend and convinced her to draw a picture of God. I felt quite naughty, but I needed to get it out of my way. My girlfriend didn’t really know how to picture God, but in my head he looked something like a big round moon face up in the sky. I drew a paddock with a fence and a blue sky with a big moon face in it. The face looked a bit like a pig and I was worried God might be offended. My girlfriend just copied my drawing and we ended up with two pigs in the sky. When our kindergarten teacher asked us about the pictures, we were embarrassed and giggled nervously. She was quite a religious woman and when she heard our explanations, she shook her head in disgust about the blasphemy of the two little girls. She obviously realised straight away that this was all my evil idea and kept on giving me this concerned look for the next few days. I’m sure she thought I had the devil in me.

Peace

Short-lived glory

When I was about seven years old, the secondary school across the street organised a snow sculpture competition. The older students -who would have been about fourteen years old, but to us, they seemed like adults- got together in teams and over a period of two days constructed the most incredible snow sculptures. One team built a dog, another one a magnificent castle. But the winner of the competition was a majestic swan with an elegant, long neck. It seemed to be gliding over an imaginary lake and was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

I walked across the empty school yard with two of my best friends the next day and we stoped to look at the sculptures. We walked around the award-winning swan, admiring its noble neck and gently running our hands over its back. We were so mesmerised by it that we decided to climb on its back and pretend we were riding it over a lake. As I climbed on first and sat in front, with my two friends behind me, I felt exhilarated by the glory of the moment. But when I carefully leant forward, putting my arms around the swan’s neck, the whole neck and head and everything broke off and smashed on the ground. My heart skipped a beat and I jumped off the swan, so shocked that I thought I would have to vomit. Without saying a word, we ran away as fast as we could. I thought I would go straight to hell for destroying something as perfect as the beautiful swan.

The next day, I was having lunch with my family, when my parents started to talk about the barbarism of people who would go and wilfully destroy an artwork such as the snow swan. I felt horrible and sick with guilt, but I didn’t say anything. I thought there would be no way my parents would still be able to love me if they ever knew what I’d done.

The darkness after forever

I remember lying in bed at night, not being able to sleep because I was worrying. There was this one thing that really bothered me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had asked my mother how long the world was going to go on for and she had told me “forever”. The concept of forever was something I just could not grasp and it was driving me crazy. I tried to imagine the longest period of time I could think of and at the end of it, the same period of time again and then again. But this was still nowhere near forever. I was wondering, would there be anything after forever? I imagined this huge universe full of blackness at the end of the world and wondered what it would be like to fall into it. I would have been quite young then, lying in bed, looking at the light brown wooden ceiling of my room and getting scared about forever. I was glad I was not going to be alive anymore when this forever time was over, but I felt bad for the people who would be. Sometimes I was so worried that I couldn’t sleep for hours.

That's right

Celery's daughter

My father was one of the teachers in town, so everyone knew us as the “teacher’s kids”, which wasn’t really what we wanted to be. Students don’t like teachers, so as the teacher’s daughters, I was off to a bad start. On top of that, my parents were in the green party, always rode around town on bicycles, had a vegetable garden my father would work in after school and we didn’t eat any meat. Nevertheless, I didn’t understand why some of the boys were making me responsible for my family being a bit different. I desperately wanted to be like everyone else but saw my chances fading when they started to call my father “celery” and I became celery’s daughter. I never knew what to say and would usually just pretend I didn’t hear them when they called me names as I walked past. But I started being really nervous about walking past the big boys that I usually took a detour whenever I saw a few of them standing together.

One day, I complained to my mother about it and she told me to be proud of who I was and hold my head high when I walk past them. I thought it was easy for her to say that but I tried it anyway. After a few days, I felt as if it had started to work and I felt a bit less scared about walking past the big boys. But the same day, my brother came home and said he heard they were calling me arrogant and that obviously I thought I was something better. So I took my head down again and decided life was unfair.

The end of magic

My brother and I believed in Santa Claus long after all the other kids had stoped believing. Sometimes, kids would come up to us and tell us that Santa wasn’t real, but it was as if we didn’t even hear what they were saying. My brother and I were very different and fought about absolutely everything, but when it came to Santa, we were united in our belief.

In Switzerland, Santa Claus day is on the 6th of the December and it’s quite a big deal. Santa knew whether we had been good throughout the year and would read out the verdict from his big book. If we had been reasonably good, he would ask us to recite our Santa poem and then he ended up pouring the contents of his huge Hessian bag onto the living room floor - peanuts, mandarins, chocolates and dates. He always ended up pouring the bag onto the floor, but we were nervous every year. Santa has a companion called “Schmutzli”, who is a dark, silent character in a black coat with a hood and a black painted face. Everyone was terrified of “Schmutzli”, especially because we knew he would take us back to the forest in his bag if we hadn’t been good throughout the year. Most kids knew a story of a cousin’s friend’s brother or someone who had actually been taken away.

The anxiety and then the relief was part of the deal though and the whole Santa

thing was magic for us and we didn’t want to let it go. The day my brother and I finally had to face reality and give up on Santa was rather tragic. My brother, who is two years older than me, was absolutely devastated. He cried so much that he almost suffocated and accused my parents of lying to him and deceiving him. For me, the loss of Santa was very sobering and I felt disappointed and suddenly much older. In future, I was going to be a bit more careful about believing everything they tell you.