Parents' column: When children fall in love

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First love: she loves me, she doesn't love me ...

Photo: Bryan Rupp / Stocksy United

You have to excuse, little time today, I have to go right away, it's stall time: Farmer Hauser drives the freshly cut grass into the cowshed with the trailer, and we shovel the mountains of fodder with pitchforks in front of the 70 dairy cows who are hungry from milking.

The amount of grass such a cow can devour in minutes is unimaginable.

Dozens of kilograms a day!

Photo: Lina Moreno / DER SPIEGEL

Jens Radü

, 40, has three children and in wise moments asks himself who is raising whom here - and if so, why not? 

You can already see: We are on vacation on the farm, in the middle of an alpine pasture in the Allgäu, I already have calluses from shoveling on my hands, the children (Frederik, 9, Oliver, 7, and Elisa, 2) are happy: chickens to look at , Rabbits to pet and next door a family from the Netherlands.

With two daughters.

You guess what's going to happen next, don't you?

The first love

The two are called Femke, 9, and Nynke, 7, and while I am writing this, the two of them are probably wrapping the scarf for the stable time around their necks and also my little Oliver around their fingers.

Nynke in particular has obviously taken it to him.

Like a Prussian tin soldier, she struts through the stable in her oversized rubber boots and greets each cow individually.

And after Oliver.

They feed the donkeys together, outbid each other in chuckling and being silly and romping through the hay.

They talk about literature (Oliver is currently reading “Doktor Proktor's Pupspulver” by Jo Nesbo, so much for the level of conversation), dung heaps and apple strudel.

Can it be more romantic?

I can't help but listen to the two of them, shovel a large load of grass in front of Barbara the cow next to the damp nose.

While Oliver and Nynke disappear into the calf pen, I think of Josephine.

Oh Josephine.

I was a little older than Oliver now and on vacation with my parents in the south of France.

The beach could only be reached via a four-lane road and a railway line, so we spent practically two weeks in the somewhat puffy resort.

What didn't bother me at all, on the contrary: Josephine lived next to us - dark hair, dark eyes, bright smile, a gorgeous gap between the front teeth - with her parents, her sister and Volvic, the dog.

"I didn't understand much and yet everything."

Josephine spoke no German, I no French, neither of us spoke much English, but somehow we managed to meet for badminton that evening in front of the house.

I cleaned myself up properly, Stefan Edberg's complete tennis dress including sweatbands, as if I didn't have a game of badminton on a mild summer evening, but the Wimbledon final, Center Court, at least.

Josephine didn't show anything in her apricot-colored T-shirt, and we played until it got dark every evening.

I seldom hit the ball, probably even less often the right note, but Josephine smiled and answered.

I didn't understand much and yet everything.

On the last day we exchanged addresses and I wrote her letters on Diddlmaus paper, my sister helped with the translation.

I hope you are well.

How is Volvic?

Josephine sent me a photo of herself, three by four centimeters, black and white, I think she was wearing this apricot-colored T-shirt on it.

I put it on my desk.

"Jens is in love", my older brother teased me, I was extremely angry about this infamous allegation.

And knew how right he was.

That heartbeat when a letter rattled through the slot.

That longing looking out of the window.

This well-what-actually?

So new, so naive.

Oh Josephine.

What has become of her?

Relationship status: it's complicated

Heinrich Heine, for whom headless infatuation was probably the normal rather than the exceptional state throughout his life, once wrote: "In youth, love is more stormy, but not as strong, as omnipotent as it is later."

Indeed?

At least I can empirically confirm that with the stormy: Oliver and Nynke rush through the stable as if this was Super Mario on NES, giggling as excited as great aunts after ten Mon Cherie.

Sounds like RomCom idyll, I know.

But be careful - relationship status: it's complicated.

As we walk from the stable across the yard back to the holiday apartment, Oliver groans: "Oh girl, half my brain is full of girls."

Because Nynke isn't the only one.

There's Emma from preschool.

Leila with the long, blond hair.

And of course Maren.

She is in the same class as Oliver and has often been to visit us.

She looks a bit like Nynke, dark hair, dark eyes, tooth gap.

And with a sense of absurd humor: Oliver tells a long joke, by the time he finally got to the punch line, I'm already faded away.

But: "Maren laughed herself to pieces and said she wanted to hear the joke six more times."

If that ain't love

But what about Nynke then?

Will Oliver write her letters?

Maybe I still have some of the Diddlmaus paper at home.

Incidentally, one of Heine's later poems goes like this:

Which one should I fall in love with,

Since both are lovable?

Did Heine take a vacation on the farm back then?

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