I have a tendency to frown upon gossip as a mean-spirited habit; after all, “small minds discuss people,” or so the famous saying goes. But today, during one of my regular visits to see Inga in Dorsten (a small town about forty-five minutes away by car from where I live), I began to see gossip in a different light.
Inga is in her 80s and lives alone in a simple but cheery apartment building near the center of her town. Nearly fifty years my senior, she occasionally trembles when transporting the coffee pot between her living room and the kitchen, but apart from that she is impressively fit in mind and body. She has played the cello ever since she was a teenager and had been searching for someone to play duets with when I happened to meet her son Walter, the husband of a pharmacist who works on the first floor of the building where Ulrich and I used to live. The pharmacist, Walter, Ulrich and I had shared a few too many drinks together at the 30th birthday party of a mutual friend when I began to ramble longingly about my rusty violin practice, to which Walter suggested that I get in contact with his mother. From there our unlikely friendship was born.
We are from different worlds, Inga and I, and she is only the second German friend I’ve made in over four years of living here. I don’t mean “friend” the way you might refer to an acquaintance whom you frequently bump into on Saturdays at the corner store; I mean the full embracing of another person, the deliberate drawing them into your world despite the spikiness of your external differences. In my case, as a foreigner, the language and cultural barriers only add more layers of friction to the generation gap between myself and Inga. And yet, she has not only whittled away hours with me on her cello but rather truly met me each time I’ve showed up to her door, again and again. She has set out platters of crumb cake and poured me cups of coffee or Earl Gray, then listened patiently as I’ve strung together quivering sentences which at times contained confusing grammatical errors and at other times deployed unusual word combinations in order to express a simple thought. It takes a certain amount of patience, or perhaps boredom, or possibly loneliness, to endure these repeated awkwardnesses willingly.
Today, as she has done during each of my previous visits, Inga sipped at a cup of coffee with milk and lamented her relationships with each of her three children, namely the fact that she does not see them as often as she would like to. Then she spoke of Walter and his wife, the silver-haired pharmacist whose friendly face I had grown used to seeing at our old apartment building. Although I had barely spoken to her before the birthday party earlier this year, I had always been charmed by her ruby-lipped smile. So when Inga began to say that Walter and the pharmacist have barely invited her into their home and attributed this to his wife’s neuroticism and obsession with cleanliness, an uncomfortable pulse began to beat at the base of my spine and a tiny voice in my head cleared its throat. My body tensed as I prepared to resist, ready to steer the conversation in another direction, hoping to avoid betraying the lovely pharmacist. And then, as if suddenly waking up, I saw the way Inga grimaced as she spoke and felt my resistance gradually dissipate. I began to see that she was not badmouthing her son and daughter-in-law out of spite but rather from a place of tangible pain - there was a real anguish which had accumulated inside her and which, in the absence of someone to talk to, threatened to bubble up and spill over and make these waning years of her life unbearable. I had only ever thought of gossip as a stab in the back, a way to tarnish the reputations of others, but today it inhabited a different tone in the refuge of Inga’s living room. I realized that when gossip flows within the closed loop of an intimate, trustworthy environment, then the risk of it spreading like wildfire becomes non-existent and instead of burning it rather gains an opposite, healing potential for the gossiper: a way to articulate and point to one’s pain and an outlet through which their emotions can be released, so that they do not need to mute the notes of their own suffering.
This was lovely and thoughtful. I too have noticed that nestled inside talk, including gossip, is something that is sometimes less about another person, thing, or place, and more about the speaker. I'm so glad you have a friend who listens to you, and that you are doing the same for them, each listening to what you are really saying.
First, this line is superb: I mean the full embracing of another person, the deliberate drawing them into your world despite the spikiness of your external differences. And second, what a perfect observation. reminds me of when Juan would say - after I'd vented - "we all need to let off steam otherwise we will boil over and burn everyone around us."