The calm before the storm?

The July 4 cookout went quite well. I did explain to MoL that we were having an authentic American meal: Hamburgers and hotdogs that each builds him/herself with onions, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, or whatever captures you imagination (my son topped his hamburger with potato chips!), chips, corn on the cob... MoL made tzaziki, which is a garlic dip made with sour cream, several garlic cloves, and cucumbers. Europeans seems to eat what we consider dip with a spoon or fork, often without the benefit of bread, crackers or chips. And then I told her why I made so much, so there was some pleasant conversation on that topic, and she informed me that Greece also has a couple of similar national holidays that are celebrated. Our meal was big, and my dangerously crabby husband lightened up considerably after weighting down his belly with huge helpings of everything.

In last night's World Cup game, Germany lost against Italy when Italy scored twice in quick succession during the second-half of the overtime of a 0:0 game. It was a blow to Germany, and we're now out of the finals. It's now down to France against Portugal (who beat England in the quarterfinals and sent the Tommys back home, alas. I had been holding out for England, anglophile that I am) tonight. The winner of that game, I guess, will play Italy, determining the winner of the World Cup. We're feeling a little sour about Italy right now, so we're rooting for France.

I had an interesting conversation with MoL during breakfast this morning. I had told her that I was accustomed to eating our big meals at lunchtime (a German custom), so when I hadn't had lunch yesterday and then ate my hamburger at 7 pm, it was way too much for me. My belly hurt. I couldn't finish my corn on the cob or drink my wine. I was uncomfortable for hours afterward. That opened it up for her to say that she's surprised that I have such a difficult time losing weight. I eat less than she, and yet... She asked if I had ever gone to the doctor to have something-or-other tested. I didn't catch what she said, but I guessed what she meant. I gestured toward my throat, and said, "Schilddrüse?" Thyroid? She said yes, and before I could answer her (and I didn't get the chance to answer the question at all), she corrected me by explaining that the thyroid isn't just in the throat but in the belly and thighs, as well, and then she moved on to another topic.

When someone else's information conflicts with my own, I often give it the benefit of the doubt in the moment I hear it, then later on check the validity of my own information to see what I might have mistaken or misunderstood. In Wikipedia.de, I looked up Schilddrüse, because it could be very possible that my understanding of the German word might have been inaccurate. I already know very well that the THYROID is located in the throat, in front of, and on either side of, the windpipe. But maybe I've been misunderstanding SCHILDDRÜSE all this time?

What I didn't get to tell her was that, yes, our village doctor had drawn blood to test my thyroid, but she didn't believe the results were significant enough to send me to an endocrinologist to do further testing. She just told me to walk around more, be more active. I didn't explain to her that I walk my son to and from kindergarten most days, which involves a hike up a steep gradient, and that, in fact, I had walked to her office that morning, as well. I'd decided to just leave it for when I could handle my health in my own country, in my own language.

Anway, after consulting Wikipedia.de, it turns out my information or translation wasn't mistaken.

My husband has barraged me over the years with a whole catalogue of misinformed health facts. While his education might have been... incomplete, even though he attended gymnasium and later aquired a certificate equivalent to a BS in business and internation trade, I lay the blame mostly at his mother's feet. She had had to drop out of school in Greece when she was 12 years old. She has a quick mind, but no education to back it up. I'm not criticizing her, I'm just pointing out a fact.

I considered whether I might print up the Wikipedia thyroid information, but then wondered what good would it do? But then, she might take it the wrong way and be insulted. And is it really worth it? I certainly don't want to do it do boost my own ego, to score a point against her... But might she want to know?

So things are calm here, now, and I'm grateful for it. I like peacefulness and harmony and quietude. But from years of experience, it's an ordeal of walking on pins and needles worse than when it's just my husband and myself. An explosive fight eventually breaks out between hubby and MoL, which results in MoL moving on to another son's home, where another fight breaks out, and she either moves on to the third son's home, or she hops on the next place back to Greece. That has been the pattern. She's been taking anti-psychotic and anit-anxiety drugs--at least she had been when she was here during the winter, though I've seen no evidence of them now, and I'm not about to snoop--and I see the difference in her even from last February.

Maybe that's helping keep the peace...? I've got my fingers crossed that all remains as peaceful as it has been the last 24 hours, and that this isn't the calm before the storm.

But then, a purely selfish thought just occured to me: The sooner she leaves, the sooner we will get stateside. Hmm. Maybe I will print up that article, after all...

A thank-you to everyone...

I just wanted to post a general thank you to everyone who has commented, especially the lovely ones concerning not my last post, but the one before, and my newest poem. I'm basically out of the reading and commenting circuit for the time being, and what stolen moments I can find are dedicated to writing "quickies" of any type: blogs, poetry, frozen scenes between people that get stuck in my head.

As soon as I can get back into the swing of things, I will return each and every comment in kind.
The Bad News: The atmosphere continues to thicken around here and we've had our first major scene late last night... Unfortunately, it was between me and my husband, resulting from a half-bottle of whisky he'd quietly, yet efficiently, poured down his throat; his bad mood; my having forgotten to record yesterday's Tour de France etappe, save for the last hour; and my MoL criticizing hubby about his bad behavior toward me.

The Good News (and perhaps the most disturbing): The mother-in-law and I have come to a better understanding of one another. Unfortunately, it's come under unpleasant circumstances... and it doesn't absolve her of her ceaselessly selfish behavior.

I did feel confident enough, however, to question why she doesn't switch her health insurance from Germany to Greece, thereby eliminating the need to make dozens of dr appointments every time she visits and putting her family out (namely me) to drive her all the way the heck into Stuttgart, to spend the day chauffering her to them all--and having to drag my kid out of kindergarten to do it. Her response, "Well, the insurance is better from Germany." My response, "But you LIVE in Greece, and you put everyone out to accomodate you and to conduct your personal business for you (a touchy issue separate from the health insurance one)..." And besides, no one ever asked ME if such and such a day is a good one for me to take the day off to drive her around all over der Vaterland...

Maybe this time my husband will let her take the car. I doubt it, but I can hope.

Or maybe she'll take the train, though I doubt hubby will let her.

Oh, and by the way, Happy 4th of July to all you fellow Amis out there. I've got a cookout ready to start. I hope it goes peacefully and the the only fireworks I see tonight are the ones from the few other Americans in our community lighting the skies.

It's getting emotional around here...

My mother-in-law is walking to the Rathaus (a rather telling name for a town hall, isn't it? Rat house?), accompanied by my son. She has some unfinished business there regarding her status as a resident of our village and our house. Each time you move, you have to register your new residence and all household members with the local Rathaus. For specific purposes, my mother-in-law, who really lives in Greece, got my husband to register her as a resident of our household.
A few weeks ago, my husband un-registered her because of our impending emigration. But now, she's over there, tending to her own business, (for once not making my husband do it for her), and what it involves specifically I'm not sure. No one in our community knows yet that we're leaving, for reasons of my husband's own, and there some concern MoL will let something slip while she's at the rat house... oops, I mean Rathaus.

So, MoL has been here since Saturday. Things have been going fairly smoothly, I suppose. I've gone out of my way to be accomodating and to at least meet her somewhere between what she wishes I were and what I am. I'm gratified that for once she knows her place as a guest and doesn't walk around here with the attitude that it all belongs to her. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that she's no longer an official member of our household. It might also have to do with the dramatic parting between her and my husband last February and that she no longer has the hold on him that she used to. And it might even have something to do with a certain amount of drama and line-drawing between me and her, as well. Or maybe I'm simply being territorial, but I don't think that's entirely it, either. You have to witness it to understand it.

I did notice that, starting on day one, she speaks low to my husband when I'm out of the room, diving headlong into her campaign to convince my husband that moving is a bad idea. She either thinks that I can't hear, or that I don't understand. She's said a few disparaging things about me, as usual, centering around my feeble German skills (though not as feeble as she likes to think), comparing me with how when she was as a fresh immigrant from Greece at age 17 or 18. In some ways, she's right, in others she's being unfair. She sees me as the prime mover behind our emigration, and she's right in the sense that, if her son hadn't married me he wouldn't be doing this. But it's a decision we've come to together.

Sunday, I could tell that my husband was beginning to feel a bit strained by his mother's murmurings, and Sunday night, he asked when she's leaving. He'd told me earlier that day that she'd said she was going to stay a week, at first, but now it's indeterminate. It's indicative of her narcissitic nature to constantly change her plans, as if they don't affect anyone else. It's very straining on everyone around her, and my husband has had plenty of experience with this type of behavior from her, even before I came on the scene.

This morning, my husband left for work and I prepared breakfast for her and my son. I ignored the fact that, just as I got out of the shower and was towelling off, MoL walked right into the bathroom without knocking to wash her hands. If I hadn't heard her coming and had a hunch she might "forget" to knock, and jumped back into the tub behind the shower curtain, she would have gotten quite an eyeful. Part of me wonders how much her neglect was passive aggression, and how much of it was her thoughtlessly assuming that I might not mind another person just walking into the bathroom while I'm butt-naked. I left it for another day, in the event she does it again.

While we ate, she very defensively broached the subject of our leaving. I have the utmost sympathy for her, and a certain amount of empathy, too, because I've been living in the position of complete separation from my family for seven years with absolutely zero support on this side of the Atlantic. I know how my mother has felt being separated from her eldest daughter (the more stable one, to boot) and her only grandchild. Understandably, MoL is very upset about our moving, and disagrees that it'll be the best thing for us. When I pointed out that I and my family have had to deal with the separation, as well, she said that at least my mother has my sister.

What I didn't mention is that my sister suffers ADD, has been a very large handful even now, as a young adult (25 years), and that MoL also has two other sons and two other grandchildren in Germany, and that maybe she'll have to rethink her priorities, set her pride aside, and work a little harder to maintain a semi-harmonious relationship with those sons and their families.
I was cold towards her, which is generally unlike me, although I was shaken by her burst of emotion and tears. But I knew from experience that she very deftly could turn this around to make the situation all about herself.

Before we got involved in the discussion, I prefaced my initial response with, "I don't want this to be an emotional conversation..." And I didn't. I needed to protect myself, and I wanted to keep things on an even keel for the sake of my son, who was munching away on his Nutellabrot between us. MoL likes drama and can really turn a situation upside down, and I needed to stamp out the fire I saw beginning to smolder.

She didn't like it when I pointed out that she only visits us twice a year, anyway, and what's the difference between visiting us in Germany, or visiting in America. She said she's 61 years old and didn't like the idea of sitting in a plane for hours on end. That she's travelling alone, and that at least my mother has my father to travel with. She said that when she comes to America, she doesn't know the language at all. I said my mother's 60. My father was in Germany once before, seven years ago. The other times mom had visited, she had been alone, too. (My dad actually came a second time, too, three years ago, but I'd forgotten about that. It wouldn't have helped my argument, anyway...), and that my mother doesn't speak a word of German, besides Danke. How is the situation different?

Like I said, I have a lot of sympathy for MoL's situation. I know it very well. But I was irritated, maybe unfairly so, that she has never once given a single thought to how my side of the family has felt, all this time.

At the end, I pointedly told her that I don't want to hurt her, and that our decision to move isn't about her. It isn't about me alone, or my parents or any of my other American family. It's about our own little family, me, my husband and my son, and what we think is best for the three of us as a whole. And that was the end of the conversation.

I tried to be really nice to her after that. I told her I'd bought a big lump of pork roast and that I would really like it if she would show me how she makes her delicious Goulasch. And after complaining that it's too hot to make Goulasch (never mind that it's too hot to boil and fry up big meals in pots and pans, anyway), she said she would.

Tomorrow, perhaps somewhat cruelly, I've planned an Independence Day cookout. I'd be lying if I said that the cookout hadn't put an evil gleam in my eye when I considered the timing of my MoL's visit and her reason for being here (to say goodbye). One might say it's an expression of my own passive aggression, but the party has been planned since before we knew she was coming. I'm really not that mean-spirited.

And anway, after this morning's conversation I've decided not to mention the reason for the mid-week grill party at all.

Just short of a cloudburst

It's thundering, as I write this. The weather is at just my favorite, when a cold front moves through and a storm brews in the near distance. The air is charged with energy, and it energizes me. I feel it tingling along my skin, prickling along my scalp, and my creativity surges. Words and images ricochet in my mind and I have to scramble to capture them. I feel content, yet restless, like a tiger in a cage. I'm grateful I'm alone so I can release some of the energy in my writing. 

 I just took this photo. I liked the look of the white clouds against the bluing clouds behind them, and wanted to share it with you. The crows were cawing in a mad caw-caphony as the thunder rumbled through, and they are now suddenly silent. I think the storm will pass us over, though it's possible another will mosey along and drench us in a little while. My aching limbs cry of rain and drama, and through the discomfort I welcome it. I love this weather.

Heaven Help Us All

Blogital Daughter vanishes again... Isn't it just the way it always goes? Hubby finally returns to work, I get back on my writing track for a week, only to be interrupted again.

What's my excuse, this time?

Well, my mother-in-law is expected to arrive in Stuttgart, Saturday afternoon, for an indeterminate length of time. Maybe a week. Probably just until she causes enough trouble to instigate another blow-out between her and my husband.

She's coming from Greece, where she lives, to say goodbye. While I have the utmost sympathy for her grief that her oldest son and his family are moving to America--I really do, I understand the separation issue all too well--I have no doubt she is going to be selfish about it and manipulate the issue to be entirely about her. It's just her way. After talking to his mother yesterday, my husband called me from work and said, "My mom's really sad. And now I am, too."

I don't think she'll persuade him to stay here, but the danger is there. It's right and natural that he should feel anxiety and grief about leaving. But we can't stay because of her, can we? The last time she stayed with us, they had an explosive argument. This is nothing unusual. It happens every time. At the end of that argument, my husband took me aside and said, "I really hope this America thing works out. We have to get out of here."

And besides, there are two other brothers left in Germany, and the youngest of them has a set of twins, not yet a year old. The middle brother is newly engaged, though my M-i-L doesn't know it yet.

In some ways, I'm more relaxed about this visit of hers because it's the last here in Germany, and her next visit will be on MY turf. But I'm a little nervous, as well, because while her inevitable theatrics will probably solidfy my husband's decision to go through with the move, she might play her cards just right (unlikely, but still a possibility) to influence him just enough.

So, that's what we're in for beginning Saturday afternoon. After today, I probably won't be around much until she leaves again. Check the sky periodically for SOS smoke signals, then send help immediately.

How do you let go of the past?

When I was between ten and thirteen years old, my best friend and I were inseparable. We did everything together. We slept over at each other's houses every weekend, sometimes several days in a row, if our mother's would let us, during summer vacation. We tried to wear the same, or similar outfits. "I'm wearing the red shorts with the white stripe. Are you going to wear yours, too?" "Yeah." "Good."

We both loved unicorns and the color purple. We wore purple eye shadow, purple nail polish, purple lipstick. This was back in 1980-1983, when those colors were okay to wear on our faces. We both bought knockoff Walkmans from Mr. D's dollar store, for $5, when Walkmans first entered the scene.

I remember putting those headphones on for the first time ever and absolutely reeling with the sensation of music flowing right to the center of my head, to swirl and dance there. I was standing in Katie's yard in my new bathing suit, the sides cinched up high past my thigh to my hip bones, as was the fashion. Katie's new bathing suit was quietly "borrowed" from her older sister, and quite a bit more risque than mine. We felt adult and poweful, filled with the potential of our budding sexuality, even though we both had to still pull down our bras in the front as they crept upward, not held in place by much of anything.

Before I met Katie, there was another girl I was acquainted with. Marci and I weren't really friends. We bumped into each other occasionally, living in different neighborhoods, and hooked up now and again to play together. I had problems with Marci. She was bossy and a little mean. As an only child until I was ten-and-a-half, I didn't learn how to assert and defend myself until well after I had married at age 28, so dealing with Marci was often painful and I did not pursue her friendship very often.

When Katie and I were in seventh grade together, I ran into Marci at our middle school. It had been some years since I'd seen her last, so being the nice girl that I was, I thought things could be different now. Hanging out with Marci didn't seem to be as difficult as I had remembered it to be. In fact, I was rather enjoying her company. I introduced her to Katie, and the three of us became fast friends.

It didn't take long before Marci began doing things alone with me, or with Katie, rather than as a threesome. Soon, the close friendship I had with Katie began to deteriorate. Marci had started telling me Katie was saying bad things about me, which I refused to believe. I wondered why Katie wasn't calling me anymore, and when Katie finally returned one of my phone calls, I surprised to hear that she was angry at me. She said Marci had told her I'd said something terrible about Katie. And it wasn't true. I repeated the things Marci had told me Katie had said about me. They weren't true, either. By the end of the call, we both decided we weren't going to hang out with Marci anymore, much less believe anything she said about the other, that we would tell each other anything she might have said.

I hung up thinking our friendship was saved, and very much disturbed about Marci. She was still mean and bossy, and now she seemed to be deliberately driving a wedge between me and my best friend.

Shortly after that phone call came my thirteenth birthday. It was the summer of 1983, and we were entering eighth grade, our final year of middle school before starting high school. I don't remember why, but for some reason I was celebrating my birthday alone with my parents, without Katie. I think Katie had told me she had other plans. My mom had taken me to the hair dresser to get one of those curly perms that were so popular in the days of HBOs erotic aerobicize ladies. My hair wasn't quite long enough to allow the perm to hang correctly, so I looked more like Li'l Orphan Annie than I did one of those sexy aerobics women.

As I floated around my house in the cloud of ammonia that emanated from my head, waiting for something to happen, there came a knock at the front door. When I opened it, I was surprised to see Katie and Marci standing there together. They were very rude to me, cold, teasing me about my hair.

That Katie and Marci were together was not according to plan. It worried me, and judging from their behavior, I could only assume Marci had said something really devastating to Katie to turn her against me. When they turned to leave, I closed the door behind them and cried, confused and deeply hurt by their nastiness. My mother comforted me, telling me she was sorry about Katie, but she had never like Marci and maybe now I would understand I was better off without her. It was a lesson hard-learned.

When school started a few weeks later, I deeply mourned the loss of Katie's friendship. I tried many times to find out what had turned her against me, but she wouldn't talk to me at all. In fact, it confuses and bewilders me to this day. I'd made other friends and developed new interests, and it wasn't long before Katie was replaced by a new best friend. But even through high school, even after the death of Katie's father and the note my family and I had sent her in sympathy, Katie refused to give me the time of day.

Though I wasn't a bit surprised, it was small consolation to see that Katie's and Marci's friendship did not survive long into high school. By that time, I had a large circle of friends, was active in choir, piano, theatre and enjoyed discovering the world of boyfriends and staying out late and sneaking into midnight showings of Rocky Horror.

I never heard from Katie again, but I still think about her. About fifteen years ago, a mutual acquaintance told me that she was getting her teacher's certificate, possibly in special ed. I begged our friend to please pass on my good will to Katie, half hoping I would hear something in return. I never did.

I wonder what Katie is up to now. Her friendship was so profound to me that even at nearly 36 years old, I have trouble entirely letting go of her memory. For some reason, she's been on my mind a lot the last few weeks, and I've even considered writing a note to her mother to say hello and to please pass on my greeting.

Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, it occured to me that the time is drawing near that I might finally be able to forgive Marci, who was obviously a troubled young lady. The severing of my friendship with Katie has left a hole in my heart for nearly twenty-five years, and think it's mostly because the reason behind it has never been resolved.

Should I contact Katie's mother? Would I be beating a dead horse? Is there a deeper reason why Katie has been on my mind so much for the first time in many years? Is it time to reconcile only long enough to communicate what happened and put old ghosts to rest? Is she as troubled as I sometimes am over what happened?

What would you do?

It's getting closer... when you know it's time to get out

My husband has been home since last week, so I haven't been able to write. Now that he's out swimming with our son, I'm taking advantage of the alone time to sit down and write a quick post before starting the laundry.

So, we're getting closer to V-day. Well, it'll be V-day for me, and I suppose it might be a little selfish of me to view it that way. But nevertheless, things are progressing pretty quickly now. Last Sunday, I suggested my husband take advantage of his week home from work to go through our stuff with me. He refused to talk about it, and the subject was dropped. But as the week moved on and our position became more secure, by Wednesday my Dear Hubby (DH) began going through his mother's stuff that's been stored in two of our three lower-level rooms for the last six months. He sorted through it, and through some of our own displaced possessions, as well, and we decided what to try to sell together. Which of our own things to sell. Not to sell his mother's. His mother's things will be transferred to his brother's place in Heidelberg, to the delight of the brother and his current female partner.

The subject of DH's mother's stuff is a touchy one in general, since all are in agreement that she should have taken care to rid herself of it or should have shipped it to Greece long ago, before she officially moved out of her Stuttgart apartment and left Germany for good. Instead, she just packed it all into boxes and made two of her sons cart it, carload by carload, to occupy half of the lower level of our house. It's an endless assortment of household things that should have been thrown away, along with her electronics, and exercise bike and a couple of pieces of furniture. But this kind of presumption and imposition is typical of her narcissistic and careless behavior, and not at all surprising in spite of the bad feelings it incurs.

The next two days were spent sorting through our son's toys, most of which will be left behind. Our son was very good about letting go of his belongings. Part of it was he's very easy going. Part of it was that most of those things are simply too young for him now, a big-big six-year-old about to start big-boy school in the fall. But just as I suspected would happen, my nurturing child was very reluctant to let go of his stuffed animals, even the ones he hasn't looked at in 18 months. So, the stuffed-animal pile is bigger than is convenient. He also, not surprisingly, was reluctant to let go of a good half of his books. Just like Mommy. I'm tempted to quietly slip some of those animals and books into the trash pile. He'll never miss them.

Next come the boxes of things I've already sorted through, and with DH's help to bolster my courage (he's not the type to hold on to things), we should be able to reduce those three boxes still further.

So the gist of all this is, DH is finally committed to leaving. We've been emptying our house out little by litte. He's even suggested that my son and I leave for Chicago in the first half of July. DH will follow about the middle of August, after he's settled our affairs here, to be there in time for our son's first day of school.

It's possible that I'll be back home in Chicago in less than three weeks. Hard to imagine, after all that's passed.

Thinning Out

We're getting ready to make the big move to America, and while my husband still refuses to verbally commit to moving (he still says, MAYBE we'll leave), he's cancelled our apartment damage insurance, for example, and has given the thumbs up to my sorting through all our stuff and putting it into piles of To Keep or To Toss. We have around twelve unopened boxes from our last move, and I've gone through all of them and reduced the To Keep pile to three boxes--not including my son's things. The To Keep pile will be further reduced, I'm sure, especially once I enlist my husband's aid. And everything else that's in the house will stay behind.

Yesterday, as I was going through one box and called my husband at work to ask if he wanted to keep a certain computer game, he made the most decisive verbal commitment to the move I've ever heard from him. He said, "Before we go, we can go through those things together." Naturally, I skipped lightly over those words, "before we go," as if it were the hundredth time he'd said it. But my heart soared when I heard them for the first time, yesterday.

It's been very difficult thinning out my life (though I wish thinning out my SELF would be so easy). I've always been a keeper of things. Papers, books, pens, little mementoes. Part of it is that common conviction that SOME DAY I'll need this again. Part of it is an unwillingness to let go of something of the past. And still another part is a childish irrationality that an inanimate object will feel lost and rejected when I throw it in the trash. This deep and well-hidden sense of animism is probably more indicative of myself than of an innate sense of common soulfulness among all and everything. But it's still there, left over from childhood, that little girl who was secretly certain that the rock held in her hand possessed a form of soul...

So how do you get rid of all these things that, if they possess no soul of their own, at least claim and harbor a portion of your own? It requires careful, steady ruthlessness, that's certain.

But even so, it's difficult.

Blonde. Jane Blonde.

Well, we are almost certainly going to make it to the States this summer. I won't go into the sordid details--and yes, they are sordid--but suffice it to say it's been an icky business the last week in particular. Just between me and thee, over the weekend, when it was understood it would be a no-go, I came the closest I've ever been to suicide. Not in a petulant way, little Silver wasn't getting her way, but rather because I don't think I realized until that point just how important it is to me to make this move.

I don't think I can explain how deep the need is without sounding like a complete debutante who can't make it work for herself in a foreign country. You'll have to take my word for it that I'm not being a princess about this whole thing (if you knew me, you'd know I am NOT the princess type), and everyone familiar with our situation believes it's the best thing for our family.

Thanks to my parents, but not to my husband's ill judgment and bull-headedness, we are considerably closer to departure than ever before. But as the details get worked out between them, my son and I are basically being held for "ransom", which is a shitty position to be in, and the future is still held precariously in the balance. I'm infuriated with my husband but can't show it, and indebted to my parents for their generosity and understanding. So now one stress has been replaced with another, and I'm floating through the house, doing my housewifely things, preparing our belongings for the move, continuing to home school our bright son... but still unsure where our destiny lies. Is it yay, or nay?

To facilitate the cause, I've begun carrying around a little medicine bag. It's a tiny felt change purse decorated with a silver edelweiss flower I bought in Füssen when we visited Neuschwanstein castle (the one the Disney castle is based on) a few weeks before our son's birth. In it are an American quarter, St. Jude's prayer (though I'm not Christian, I do believe prayers go somewhere and are heard), an English pound, an Elizabethan groat, an American flag pin, and my favorite little worry doll. I carry it around everywhere and hold it in my hand when I can. I talk to my mother's father, who passed away two years ago, and who I believe has had a positive influence on the outcome so far. I talk to my other deceased grandfather.

The flower on my tiny change purse looks very similar to the flower on this ring.

Neuschwanstein Castle.


I also talk to my husband's deceased father--who died shortly before my husband and I met, and who my husband is certain helped us find each other--and beg him to soften his son to comply to my dad's terms, and not to try to strongarm my father.

I might sound pretty wacky to some of you, but I won't apologize for my metaphysical practices.

Anyway, while I was thinking all this out a little while ago, my husband and son were rough housing before bed. My son said to his dad, "I'm James Bond! Who are you, Daddy?" James Bond was my son's very first hero, a few years ago. My husband said, "I'm James Gond!" I couldn't resist piping in with, "Well, I'm Jane Blonde!" and managed to elicit a rare amused smile from my husband.

I couldn't help but wonder how Jane Blonde would fare in this tense, delicate situation my family and I face right now? Much better than I, I'm sure.

Will we or won't we???

It's been a rollercoaster ride all the way.

I'm dropping by today to say that whether we relocate to America or stay here in Germany is hanging by the thinnest of threads. It's an agonizing time right now.

Wish us luck.

A Womb with a View

My son is the light of my life.
He's very special, and a natural nurturer.

He made this object out of computer paper and tape,
and decorated it with chocolate smudges.
Can you guess what it is?

Why, it's a Womb with a View, of course.

How do you romance your mind?

I didn't intend to post this morning, but a comment on the previous post--from a blogger on another blogging forum--prompted this response from me.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion about what they might consider worthy reading material, it's my own opinion that bashing a particular genre as illegitimate is being pathetically closed-minded. Romance seems to receive the brunt of this prejudice, and yet it's the highest-selling, most lucrative genre out there. What does that tell you? Those nay-sayers automatically assume that writers of genre fiction are largely bad writers writing predictable material.

Sure, in romance the girl always gets the guy (or the apprentice always gets the evil sorcerer several books down the line, or the spaceship commander gets the big ugly alien, or the good guy always dies, or whatever ending is appropriate for your favorite genre--including literary fiction), the journey there is never the same and can hold as many twists and surprises as a Dickens novel.

As for the writing, every single genre out there boasts some excellent writers who can not only dream up interesting story lines, but use language exquisitely to carry the reader along a fascinating journey. By the same token, there are also writers out there who, for all intents and purposes, can't put a proper sentence together and shouldn't be published at all, except that they have fertile imaginations and a great hook that sells.

Just as there are different types of intelligence--and one type isn't any better than another--there are different genres that fit different personalities or emotional needs. A person's IQ isn't lowered just because he or she likes to read about romantic love and steamy sex, or dragons and magic. Just as it doesn't automatically make you a great intellectual if you prefer literary and science fiction.

Read, and write, what makes you feel good, or what inspires your imagination. You don't have to like every single genre, you don't even have to sample from every one that doesn't spark interest. But snobbery and prejudice are so unattractive whatever form they take. They not only severely limit a person's experience, but colors one's character a certain shade of bland.

How boring.

Here's a fun exercise...

Two years ago, I realized two things about my writing:

1. I didn't feel that literary fiction was my niche. I had, and still have, little to say in the way of literary fiction.

2. Almost everything I had been writing revolved around relationships and romance. ...Including, to a certain extent, the horror novella I had recently completed.

In my critique group, I had received many unpleasant comments about several of my stories sounding like a Harlequin romance novel. Since I hadn't read romance novels up until that point, I decided to start and see what I could make of them--and if I could write a romance novel, myself.

Well, I discovered that I actually enjoy reading romance novels, though they sometimes depress me, and I do get tired of them after a few and have to move on to something else for a while. I also discovered that writing romance is fun, too, though I have yet to complete that novel I started two years ago.

While researching romance writing, I happened across the Harelquin website. Not only does it promote its own, very numerous imprints, but it has a free online library where visitors can read short stories that parallel the current novels of the month. It also features a writer's section where there are online workshops, message boards, and, among other things, a Writing Round Robin. One of the featured authors begins a chapter of a short story, about 1,000 words long, and then readers can submit subsequent chapters for online publication every two weeks or so.

I did this once, two summers ago, when I first started out in the romance genre. Of course I didn't get selected. I didn't expect to. But it was fun. And it wasn't until this month, that my timing was right on (or should I say write on?). Not only did I remember to check in on the current Writing Round Robin, but I managed to check just last week, shortly before the new one began. I promptly made my way to the online library and printed up a good dozen short stories to get a good idea of what and how to write. And, I've been having a lot of fun with my research!

So when does the new WRR begin? Well, today, actually, which is why I'm writing.

I just downloaded the first chapter of the new WRR, and plan to get started writing the second chapter this afternoon. Yeah, I'll submit the chapter. And it's highly unlikely any of my submissions would get chosen. But it's good practice, and good fun.

And it's a wonderfully non-committal way to get myself back into writing fiction. I may not get published, but I'm still a winner any way you slice it!

Oh, the summer time is comin', and the trees are sweetly bloomin'...

Oh, the summertime is comin',

and the trees are sweetly bloomin',

and the wild mountain thyme

grows around the bloomin' heather.

Will ye go, lassie, go?

This is the chorus to a song close to my heart. We sang it a lot at the Ren Faire I worked as a musician.

I got these lovely flowers for Mother's Day. My husband took my son out Saturday morning (everything's closed here on Sundays) to pick out my flowers.

I think they're the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen. My son decorated a card with three sunflowers on it. "This is Daddy, you and me," he said when I opened it. On the flap of the envelope, my husband had written, "Für unsere liebe Mami... Because you are the only angel that lives on earth." The inscription brought tears to my eyes, because it was a rare declaration of the depth of my husband's affection.

My husband also gave me a new backgammon set. Our old one is a glass board with glass stones which we got from a Folksfest carnival two years ago. I've been wanting a real, fold-up board ever since, so it was a lovely surprise. The day was relaxing, quiet, pleasant, and we got a good many games of backgammon in, as well! We're pretty well matched as players, so it's always a toss-up who'll win.

Black moods and sesame-seed bagel cravings...

I can't even blame my mood on the weather. Today is my favorite kind: impending rain and thunderstorms accompanied by a nice cool front.

To everyone I know, I'm an anomaly in this respect. I love rain, clouds, mist, thunder, wind, dramatic weather of the cool and cloudy kind. It comforts me. It rests contentedly behind my eyes. It doesn't burn my skin or make me sweat or hurt my eyes.

So, it's not the weather that's making me crabby, either.

I don't know what it is. When I awoke this morning, I felt pretty normal. But The Mood descended over me like a black shroud as I was blow-drying my hair, when my son sneaked into the bathroom and stood quietly beneath me. When I lowered the arm holding the hair dryer, I bonked him on the head with my elbow.

"Ouch!" he said. "Be careful, Mommy."

I was irritated that once again he had snuck in without knocking, a habit I'm trying to break him of. He's getting too old to walk freely into the bathroom when Mommy is in there doing mysterious Mommy things. Like taking a shower and personal activities of that ilk. I tried to be decent about it, but the irritation leaked through when I said, "Sweetheart, darnit, knock before you come in!"

And then I was reminded by him, for the umpteenth time this morning, to call his kindergarten teacher to find out when the fireman is expected to arrive for the kindergarten demonstration.

Today is speech therapy day, and normally we skip kindergarten (which is like preschool, and daily attendance is not required) on Tuesdays to concentrate on that activity. But the fireman is coming, and my son didn't want to miss it. So, I had to call to find out when he was coming, so we could work that in before zipping off to speech therapy.

And it was that final reminder that pushed me over the edge. I didn't want to be reminded again, and it wasn't even 8 am, yet. I didn't want to deal with phone calls in a foreign language and kindergarten and firemen and speech therapy and my diet, and my son's inevitable begging to take him to McDonad's as we sometimes do on our way home from Tuesday speech therapy, and cleaning the kitchen, and changing the sheets and doing more laundry and folding it and spending the afternoon trying to reign in my son's energy to sit the afternoon learning to read, write, add and subtract, and the further inevitable begging to play our favorite computer game afterward...

And so, that's why I'm crabby. Oh, and I'm sure PMS might have something to do with it, as well. Nice synchronicity, there, she adds wryly.

And so I thought I'd use the downtime--before picking up the boy from KG to bring him to our appointment--to do a little blogiting. And you know what? I don't even feel like that, today.

The clouds just broke open with lightning and thunder, and I think I'm just going to sit back and play my computer game for a little while. Haven't played it in weeks. Maybe it'll take my mind off my bad humor and my empty tummy.

Secrets Kill

A common secret that shouldn't be common, nor a secret.

Secrets kill your spirit, your mind, your body.

Last year I came to understand that the my greatest weapons over emotional abuse inflicted by a partner battling his own inner demons is to no longer respond to his outbursts, and to open my mouth and tattle.

Responding to verbal abuse creates justification for the abuse. And if you let the other person go on without visibly getting worked up about it yourself, you go a long way toward minimizing the situation. Eventually, the abuser gets an earful of his own blathering and backs down when he understands that you're not a sufficient sponge to soak up his feelings of inadequacy. He shuts
up because his words echo back to him and he hears their ridiculousness.

Useful phrases in my repertoire, when I start to get worked up in spite of my efforts not to, include:

Why are you shouting? and
Come back when you find something worth getting angry over.

In reference to my last post, my husband and I are both concerned about our son's readiness for German AND American first grade, both of which have very different requirements. Our son already meets his German requirements, which are minimal, but my husband is desperate to ensure our son's academic success in Germany, in the event we stay put. Germany is far less forgiving of students who don't excell early, determining as early as age ten whether they are university material or not and dictating the direction of each student's education accordingly.

So, to ensure that our son has an advantage over every other incoming German first grader, he wanted me to teach him to read in German this summer (in addition to a year's worth of American kindergarten curriculum which we've been desperately cramming the last few weeks) he told us that our son could no longer watch TV or play our nightly computer game after hours of afternoon of studying, and that I could not read any more books.

My infuriated response was to write about it in my previous post. But I kept quiet to him about it (because I also recognized his need to start a fight), and his mandate was never enforced.

In the meantime, I inquired of our son's speech therapist and kindergarten teacher about the best techniques and tools for teaching reading to German children, and they both stoutly insisted to let the school do it. They have their methods, and it's best when everyone starts off on the same foot. I told my husband this, and while he wasn't happy about it, never pressed me further. That's not to say the bug won't crawl up his ass later on and I won't get another earful.

But the pressure is off for the time being.

And I never even stopped reading, as if he could stop me.

My husband's problem is mild compared to other abusives. He's very caring, sensitive, thoughtful and responsible to a fault. He's an injured bird done wrong by his parents. and the result is a common Jeckyl-and-Hyde syndrome. But that doesn't make his behavior right or justifiable, and it doesn't stop me from feeling desperate, infuriated, and even depressed at times.

I work hard to make our marriage tolerable in our present environment. I work hard to remain in touch with my Self, in spite of my husband's occasional attempts to rob me of my individual identity. I work hard to instill in our son a sense of love and gentleness, and to help him understand that his father's behavior is sometimes inappropriate. And I work hard to ensure our son understands that he is boundlessly loved not only by me, but by my husband as well.

I try not to let this side of my life bleed onto this blog. I don't want sympathy--there are a lot more people who need a lot more help than I--but sometimes I need an ear to scream my frustration into.

And I need to get it across right now that it's wrong to assume that all people who receive abuse from their partners or spouses are weak and passive, uneducated or unintelligent, and take it all lying down. Abuse is a secret, insidious disease, and it is far more common and reaches into far more social sectors than you might believe.

And if you find yourself in an abusive relationship, start telling people. It's liberating and empowering. It strengthens your deepest belief that you don't deserve it. It makes you stronger to begin taking steps to better your life and your spirit, however you choose to do that.

Keeping secrets will only kill you.

Earning my right to read

I must earn my right to read, if you can believe that...

My son and I have been desperately ill the last ten days, and we're still not out of the woods.

Well, he is. I'm not. And now my husband is home sick, too, and will be home for the next week.
But I have learned one thing: Hot Toddies are not only yummy, but they really do help sore throats, which is my current ailment, caused by fever and unstoppable coughing the last week and more.

But that aside, my husband has now declared that I have to earn my right to read a book. As some of you know, I've been home schooling my son to prepare him for American first grade in the fall (the German system starts the basics a year later). So far, he can read several English words strung together in simple stories. I'm very proud of him, but he still has a ways to go to meet our goal.

But now my husband is feeling slighted that our son can't yet read German words, an issue which will be addressed when he starts German first grade in the fall. (Assuming we don't make it to America.) In spite of countless teachers informing him that our boy more than meets the requirements for first grade admittance, my dear hubby insists that our son MUST know how to read German before September. And to add and subtract. And to write upper and lowercase letters. (Those last two are already getting covered by our current home schooling.) And to ensure that I accomplish these things, he said I am not allowed to read any more books until our son can do all of it.

Talk about pressure. On me. On our son. Talk about utter assholery. And now I have to deal with his constant presence until he returns to work next Monday. So goes another week without writing. And I'm reduced to reading under the covers with a flashlight, just like a kid.

On another continent, I would never have put up with the bullshit that I do. I often marvel at how far my head was up my bum when I got married. Shoulda coulda woulda.

I write too much, and it's keeping me from writing.

No really, I do, and it does. If you've ever gotten a letter from me, you'll understand what I mean. My letters are LONG. I often plug away for an hour or more, going from one topic to the next, recounting every last detail. This is a stubborn compulsion of mine, because I am utterly convinced that, without all that background information, how can anyone fully understand and appreciate the impact of what I have to tell?

It takes every ounce of will to keep a note just a note. To keep the kb count of an e-mail below 50. Sometimes I can do it, and I walk away very proud of myself. Most times, I give in to my natural inclination and end up glued to the computer with my son imploring me for my attention, "Mommy, Mommy..." and me saying, "Okay, just a minute." And that minute turns into several, which lapse into an hour... You get the picture.

I don't write letters very often, anymore. I have a lot of friends and family, and I hated getting stuck at the computer, compulsively vomiting forth every detail of my anecdotes countless times, trying to make each letter unique. Against my moral judgment, I started writing mass e-mails. But no one likes those very much, and I got a few hurt responses. After I joined Blogit and understood how I could make a blog into something other than a boring ol' daily diary, I started a public blog. This is specifically intended to repost some of my less incriminating Blogit blogs for friends and family to read. If they wanted. Without having to plod through five pages of an e-mail. And they could respond. If they wanted. Pressure off, right?

Wrong. My posts are often long-winded, because every story has important backstory and important details that are oh-so-necessary for a reader to attain a full appreciation of the bottom line. I struggle to keep my posts to a manageable length, and I walk away from the computer a happy camper if the word count is under 500 (I'm currently at 345, so I'm doing pretty well). For me, blogging is partly an exercise in being concise. And much like dieting, I still often fall off the wagon and give in to those natural tendencies.

But what I'm wondering is, Why can't I write this effluently when I'm working on a piece of fiction? Okay, it's extremely difficult for me to write a short story less than 5,000 words. It takes a lot of effort. And the more I write, the longer each story gets. My latest reaches about 25,000 words, and had outgrown its original short story status and now wears size Novella jeans. And it's a good story, too. Not a pleasant one, but it's my favorite and the most developed.

But here's the crux. With this disease of verbal diarrhea, why can't I write a whole novel? Why doesn't one pour out of me like a letter or a blog? Why aren't I as compulsive about getting down all those neat ideas I have (at least a dozen) and churning out novel after novel like some people do? Why can't novels be my medium of strength, rather than blogs and boring letters?
I need to excercise that muscle, is what it probably comes down to. I need to retrain my storytelling to flow undammed down the ravines of fiction, rather than overflowing the gulleys of personal experience. There's a lot of energy spilling out of me when I write. It's the same energy that I feel when I create music. I think it can be coaxed to flow as effortlessly through the fictive part of my brain, as well. Can't it?

Unfortunately, just like going to the gym or popping in that Pilates DVD, there's a lot of discipline to be developed, too. Like dieting and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, creating fiction takes work. Blogging is like sitting down and eating a Snickers. And it's all too easy to succomb to temptation and take the path of least resistance.

I better get started on that excercise routine.

Maybe I'll start on Monday. After coffee. After writing a blog.

Oh, and by the way. Don't ever call me unless you've cleared your calendar for the afternoon, or have mastered the art of gently and expediently guiding me through my long-windedness.

Hello. My name is SilverMoon, and I'm a verbaholic.

(742 words, by the way. Could be worse...)

A Brilliant Idea

I'm forming a new tactic in the Moving to America campaign. My husband is concerned we won't have enough cash to fund the venture. And as I lay in bed a few hours ago pondering this dilemma, I remembered something my mother and I talked about a couple months ago. Why not send me ahead to find a job, get health and car insurance and our son's schooling squared away, and send him money every month until we get our finances in order?

Isn't that a great idea? Before I leave, I could go through our stuff (half of which is still in cartons from our move last year) and sort out what to keep (a few sentimental items) and what to throw away (most everything). Then, my husband can take care of selling what's saleable, including the car, since he'd be doing all that on his own, anyway. And assuming our son goes with me, our expenses here would be cut in half because I'd be living with my parents and not accruing any.

That would work, don't you think? Huh? Don't you?

Now if I could only sell my husband on it...

When You Piss and Miss and Miss the Mess

Ten days ago, our bathroom sink sprung a leak. Actually, it’s been weeks or even months that the thing has been leaking. Up until the moment I noticed that there was a pool spreading from beneath a set of shelves into the main area and heard water freely running down the elbow pipe, I thought the constant wetness on the floor directly beneath the sink was because of sloppy hand washing. You see, my son is six and my husband loves to flop around in the water when he washes his hands or takes a shower and lets it drip everywhere. Between the two of them, I’m always mopping up the mess on the floor. So you can see how I could have assumed the fault lay at the feet of the Y-chromosomes I live with.

So it was ten days ago when I noticed a serious pooling problem, beneath those shelves. And after a little nosing around, I quickly discovered our sink was leaking. Badly. Today, a plumber came to fix it. And when I saw the man walk through our door, I wanted to hide. I was still angry at him about our last encounter, and also horribly embarrassed.

When we first moved here a little over a year ago, we noticed a funny smell in our downstairs toilet. The smell got worse and worse, until finally, around the end of summer, we begged our landlady to get someone in there pronto to check it out. Up until that point, she had been dragging her feet, about the matter, telling us to pour water down the effluence drain in the boiler room to dislodge whatever might have gotten stuck in there. Never mind that I insister to her and to my husband that the smell wasn't coming from the toilet, but from the hole near the ceiling where a small fan used to be.

After insisting the problem would not go away on its own, our landlady finally called the local plumber. He was an older gentleman and a cloud of cigarette smoke wafted about him like a tarnished aura. He stuck his head in the toilet room and said, “I don’t smell anything.”
I insisted there was, in fact, an odor, and a very unpleasant one, at that.

“I don’t smell a thing,” he protested. And there we stood, arguing about whether or not there really was an odor.

I finally pulled out my trump card. “Well, we don’t smoke, and I can tell you for sure that it smells like something died in there. If you don’t smell anything, then you better figure out whether there’s anything to smell at all.”

So, about two weeks later, his thirty-year-old son came to sniff out the problem. His visit was a surprise. I had no idea he was coming. If I had known, then things might have turned out somewhat differently.

I led him downstairs to the strange-smelling toilet. He took one look around and said he didn’t smell anything, either. And wouldn’t you know it, the smell wasn’t so bad that day. In fact, it was hardly there. Still, I insisted that there was a bad odor.

He sniffed around the air vent (I suspected a bird, mouse or bat had fallen into the PVC piping that leads from the bathroom up into the attic where it remains open to anything that cares to fall in there), and said, “Nope, nothing.” Then he sniffed around the base of the toilet, pointed to the floor and said it was urine that was stinking up the joint. I looked to where he pointed, and I saw the unmistakable evidence of drying piss on the floor.

I was mortified. I knew that that morning, after a long night’s sleep, my son had been the last person to use that toilet before decamping to the main area of the house upstairs. Like most young boys, he isn’t always very accurate, especially when still crusty from sleep. He usually tells me when he misses, or cleans it up himself. But this time, he didn’t do either.

I insisted to this man, who has farmer-boy good looks and eyes that make my heart jump, that the pee left on the floor was a one-time occurrence, that it wasn’t the odor of urine that we’d been smelling. Really. There was a distinct smell of dessication going on somewhere behind the wall. Really really.

But the man wouldn’t believe me. He left the house shaking his head, and I, angry and irate, nearly shouting at him to believe me.

And now, eight months later, he was gracing my doorstep once again.

Neither one of us was very happy about it.

He uses a very thick SW German dialect, and it’s very difficult for me to understand him and the many other Schwarzwald natives in our neighborhood. When he spoke, I had to ask him to repeat himself and he was clearly unhappy to oblige. Mustering every last bit of adult reserve I had, I stopped myself from getting snotty back, and silently led him to the bathroom. He spent all of five minutes in there dismantling the elbow pipe and installing a new seal. He asked me for some paper towels, and when I gave him the roll, he smiled nicely at me. I managed to smile back, though I imagine my expression must have looked more constipated than friendly simply because he took me off guard.

When he was done, he politely said goodbye and left. And as I pondered the change between us, the doorbell rang again. I buzzed him in and he poked his head up the stairs and wanted to know if we were paying the bill. I said that I thought our land lady was going to do that.
He shook his head no.

Back on uncertain footing, I asked if he could send us a bill. And of course he said he would.
I know his daughter is in my son’s kindergarten class, because I’ve seen him there twice in the past few weeks. Both times, I did an about face and hurried out the door, feeling the residual anger and embarrassment of the summer before staining my cheeks. I’m not a bad housekeeper, and I certainly don’t let piss dry on my floors if I know it's there. But that one time, it got overlooked. And someone found out.

And I know we were not imagining the stink from the toilet. It’s not as bad now as it was last year. In fact, it’s almost gone, now. And I’m more certain than ever that something had fallen down that impromptu air duct and died.

We’ll never know for sure.

And I’ll also never know how many people now think the new folks on the hill (you never get over being the new folk in small towns) let piss dry on their floors until they have to call a plumber to find out what stinks?

I know I shouldn’t still be embarrassed, but I am. I might be able to face him the next time I see him at the kindergarten, but the memory that he caught me with piss on my floor will never fade.

The Blogital Daughter returns home... to another list.

I've been feeling that creative urge again. It's been far too long since I've felt that way. The urge to write. The urge to immerse myself in the company of other writers, dickering with the grammar gurus and the punctuation police over the intricacies of who vs whom and comma usage.

In much the same way I've missed this particular forum, I've also come to miss my old writing list. It's quite a large list, actually, with members from all over the world. One of the unique things about it is that it is not just a writing list where dorks like me discuss the same boring old drudge about writing over and over again. It's also a list that plays host to a number of critique sub-lists. Fiction, Poetry, Romance, Scriptwriting, Non-fiction, Juvenile, and others I'm sure I'm missing.

A few days ago, I signed on to that list again. Only for the discussion list, however. I don't have the time right now to dedicate to writing fiction again. Blogging, right now, is tons less effortful and more fulfilling than writing fiction. Besides, with posting your work comes the obligation to critique others' works in return. And I just can't handle that at the moment.

But I did rejoin the discussion list. I'll probably keep most of my opinions to myself, as usual, unless something really gets my dander up. And I'll probably roll my eyes at the tight-assed, dogmatic opinions of certain individuals, as usual. But the point is, I'm back on the list.

And it feels good.

Culture Clash: When Homeschooling Doesn't Add Up...

When kids go to kindergarten in Germany, they start at age three. The basic goal is to socialize the youngsters and make them aware of their surroundings, rather than filling their heads with useful, basic education. In their sixth year, the children begin first grade. This is when they begin to learn the basics. The prerequisite for children entering first grade is pretty minimal. They should be able to write their first name, follow directions, play nicely with others, recognize numbers in dot patters (think of dice), count to ten. Stuff like that. Sounds pretty reasonable, right?

So, when we started talking about going to America, we didn’t really think about what our son would need to know when he starts first grade this fall. We thought that the kindergartens were basically the same: to get the kids socialized and introduce them to some kind of educational structure. But last week, after my husband received his immigrant visa in the mail, it suddenly became priority to make sure that our kiddo has what it takes to enter first grade.

After contacting the principal of the grade school my boy may attend this fall (assuming we really do return to the good ol’ USA), I discovered that he is, in fact, about a semester behind schedule. I had been home schooling him a bit in German, up until this point, just to give him an edge when he starts German first grade. Good thing, too. But he doesn’t have the knowledge needed to advance to first grade in America. He should be reading basic words by now (about 40 of them), writing, counting beyond 110 by 2s, 5s and 10s, calculating simple math problems...

When did this start happening? I don’t remember doing all this in kindergarten. Okay, I don’t remember much about kindergarten at all. My memories of that class encompass Show and Tell day, cookies-and milk snack time, Letter-People. Oh, and I’ll never forget the time I handed in a kitty cat ditto and the teacher called me to her desk to ask why I hadn’t colored it.

“I did,” I said to her, “I colored it white. See?” I pointed to the places where my white Crayola had gone outside the lines and faded the blue outline. My teacher didn’t say anything. But before handing in the page, all the kids at my table had said that I was doing it wrong. That I had to color it a color. “White is a color,” I’d told them calmly. Little did I know...

When I returned to the table, the boy next to me leaned close to and whispered, "See? I told you." The two little girls on the other side of him nodded sagely.

What happened to those days of kindergarten, when the biggest issue was whether white was an appropriate color to color with, or who poked a hole in the inflatable Mr. D (for Doughnut)? I'm now doing hard-core home schooling in the afternoon hours when he should be watching Scooby Doo, or riding his bike in the driveway. Having to rush my child to catch up with the rest of the American kids his age is stressing him out.

And me too. And we're only in the first week.

I've sought the company of others

I Admit It...

Yes, I've sought the company of others. Selfishly and shamelessly. And if I've learned one thing, it's this simple fact: There's No Place Like Home.

No one else can take the place of the one that truly holds your heart. Not cheap freebies, not those who lure you in with promises of variety and intricate gadgets. No one.

No other blogging site can take the place of Blogitland. For some reason, the best of the best seem to have collected here... and we all pay quite a lot, in comparison, for the privilege of writing and reading in this place.

We're writers, though. We're not supposed to PAY to write, are we? And yet we do. We are quite all right with the fact that we get less than a penny a click, and yet we continue to foster our abnormal and co-dependent relationship with Blogitland and other Blogiteers.

How many of us have gone away, and come back desperate to regain that sense of completion we have only here?



Why is that?

I've thought and thunk and thought summore.



It can only mean one thing,



We've succumbed to subliminal messaging. That's gotta be it.



I may continue to wander in search of greener pastures, looking for a cheap lay of land, but none are as verdant and fertile as the fields of Blogitland.

A Surprise Visit from a Distant Friend

Last night, I ran across a friend online. Although I’m online at the same time almost every weeknight, I’d never seen her presence until last night. I met her maybe four or five years ago at an English-language play group in Stuttgart. She befriended me (it usually takes some effort to befriend me. I can be shy, at times!), and we really had some nice times together. We’d talk on the phone for hours, or meet downtown on Königstrasse to window shop. At first, our boys would accompany us, and then they each started Kindergarten so we got to share mommy and wifey stories in the luxury of their absence. I watched her belly swell as she grew a new child, and held that tiny little girl the last time we saw each other.

Her husband, once contracted under Daimler-Chrysler, decided he had had enough of being the ausländisches underdog and not being taken seriously by his coworkers. When he cancelled his contract, he returned to America with my friend and their children feeling profoundly disillusioned, leaving not only Germany, but his profession behind.

I had tears in my eyes when my friend and I parted ways. We didn’t see each other often, but I had an affection for her, and just knowing she was in the same city was a great comfort to me. I was sad when she left, but we traded e-mails for a while. And then the e-mails became less and less frequent. The last time we heard from each other was about six months ago.

But lately, she’d been on my mind a lot. I knew I had to write her, but I’ve been less busy than completely preoccupied. You know how that is? So, when I saw her on my Trillian contacts list, I was thrilled. I did a virtual happy dance, threw her virtual hugs, and we IMed for a good hour or so. For the umpteenth time, she offered to kick out their current tenant and rent out the other half of their Ohio country fixer-upper to us. I don’t know that we’ll ever take her up on her offer—or how serious her offer really is—but it’s fun to think of our families being neighbors.

Seeing her again, even if only virtually, did my soul lots of good.

I know this has happened to you

Can you hear my tortured cries across Blogitland?

I just lost my post because my tired old computer farted again.

And if you can believe it, and I'm sure you can because you've all been here before, too, after I got back online I even check to see if maybe, just maybe, my little humble musing got saved and posted after all. Of course it didn't. and so here I am, bleary-eyed and barely able to type without a mistake in every word, trying to make the best of it, trying not to waste my opportunity. Maybe, just maybe, that was meant to happen. Maybe I was meant to write a better post. Maybe about the same subject, maybe about losing posts to the ether.

But dammit anyway! I don't want to write the whole thing over again... I'm tired. I wanna go to bed. And tomorrow, well, tomorrow's another day, and I have laundry to do and toilets to clean and floors to wash and a child to homeschool...

But maybe it was simply meant to be.

Yeah, right. Or maybe, my fingers were just clumsy.

crap.

Could it be? Dare I hope?

I'm happy to announce that, while we haven't formed any definite plans and have not fully committed to relocating stateside, my husband seems to be looking forward to the possibility.

And I couldn't hope for less, at this point.

Yesterday, he spent a good portion of the day on the Internet searching up activities of interest in the Chicagoland area. Soccer (he's German, of course he's going to look up soccer clubs!), swimming, cycling. He searched up a local writer's group for me. He spent a long time looking up first-grade entry requirements for our son. And together, we searched for local Canasta clubs. We found next to nothing that wasn't centered around online playing or linked to retirement communities. In fact, in the first search we did for Canasta clubs, we turned up nothing but pages of obituaries!

I spent a few minutes yesterday and today reassuring him that since we'll be sheltering with my folks, we'd be in a safe position. And, that for once, the burden of earning an income for our family wouldn't be his alone, anymore. Additionally, we already have a car and furnishings waiting for us, so we won't have to buy anything once we leave my parent's nest. Really, we have much more than most other immigrants entering the U.S., although our advantages stem from the fact that America is my homeland, and has been to my family for three generations.

He needs to be handled with kid gloves. It's a big risk he's taking, on a personal and professional level. And he's the type of person that, if he feels he's being pushed, he'll push back and do the opposite of what you ask.

Slowly slowly, he'll work himself up to the full committment. That's the way he works. I have my fingers crossed that this time will be no exception.

I never thought we'd come so far...

Well, here's a bit of good news.

Today, two weeks earlier than expected, we received my husband's US residency visa in the mail.

We've got six months to enter the US before it expires.

I've got half that long to make sure my husband doesn't chicken out and change his mind, and then to get us there in time for the new school year.

Wish us luck, everyone. We need this. My son and I, in particular, need this.

We just need that extra little push to bring us to the finish line. Please send us lots of positive energy...!

Choose Me! Choose Me!

This morning, I had a pleasant surprise. After bringing my boy to kindergarten, I settled down to a cup of coffee and checked my e-mail. I do this every morning not to see if I got any letters from friends, anymore, but to see if, while I slept, someone decided to inquire after my editing services.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I got two nibbles... but they were from two women who wanted me to employ them. I wrote back and expressed my sorrow that I could not take them on, but that I'd like to keep their resumes on hand "just in case."

So, as I waited for my computer to boot up (it took three tries to get online, the tired, farty old thing), I sipped my coffee and pondered the irony of receiving those two inquiries. Could I possibly list them as co-editors, to further entice potential clients to trust my expertise? And as I came to the conclusion that, no, that would not be very ethical, I logged in to my e-mail and saw in the subject line of one: Proofreading and Editing Services.

My heart skipped a beat. Would this be a potential client, or an employment hopeful?

Well, be still my heart, it was a request for my resume, editing examples and rates list. And it wasn't a one-time deal like everything else has been. It would be a permanent freelance position for a big non-profit org. Holy moly. It wouldn't be enough to pay the rent, by any means, but it would be regular work and enough to pad our income just a little tiny bit more. I immediately set to and gathered all my stuff together and e-mailed it away, attached to a nicely professional letter.

Now, I'm not silly enough to think I was singled out for this opportunity. No way. It came from the New York craigslist, so I went there, searched "proofreading", and checked out the competition. I was happy to see that I am in good standing, have extremely reasonable rates (cheaper than just about everyone else), and that I could have copyedited some of those ads and websites myself... though I wouldn't expect any potential client to know that, or else they wouldn't need a proofreader!

After I sent off my resume and examples, I wrote another potential client who has neglected to send me the disclosure agreement he wanted me to sign, as he promised he would do sometime this week. I don't know if I'll hear from him again, but I gave it a good shot, having called him last week in CA (from Germany) to follow up on his initial inquiry. At the very least, it was good practice.

Then this afternoon, I got a surprise e-mail from a university student who asked me to quote her a price for editing her thesis. I replied, and am waiting to hear back from her, too.
So, maybe something will come of these three good leads. They would all be good projects, affording a tidy sum in my pocket. I've got my fingers crossed...

Where do your friends rank???

A recent post by Strat got me thinking about my high school days. When I was a freshman girl involved in theatre, all my friends were senior Thespian boys (go figure), so I got into all the trouble-making earlier than I might have. I was fourteen when I started drinking, and though I never smoked cigarettes I did smoke pot on occasion. We got drunk in a local forest preserve, then piled into a couple of cars (I remember one time when seven of us in crammed into a tiny, two-door, early 80s Ford Escort) to make for Jakes Pizza or someone’s house for a Wall Party. My boyfriend and his fellow band friends took great delight in sign stealing, and left their mark on streets and public buildings (missing letters, missing signs) throughout the area for years after.

Our school was somewhat more strict than Strat’s, it seems. Absolutely no cola on campus (except for the coke machine in the teacher’s lounge, which we routinely broke into during weekend play rehearsals), no cigarettes (except those smuggled into the bathrooms between classes), no off-campus lunches even for seniors. I remember a few hair-raising off-campus lunches with my friends, too, as well as quite a bit of hell-raising on the weekends. I wonder how much my parents knew or suspected? Even at nearly 36, I don’t plan to enlighten them about those teenage escapades.

We’d remained friends and in semi-regular contact long past our respective graduation dates, through college and most of the 90s. But in the last few years, we seem to have gone our own ways: One of them turned criminal--he was one of the sign stealers and now steals money via fraudulent means, and you can find him in local paper archives. One female friend, who floated on the periphery of our core group, became an exotic dancer where she met her husband, then later got her degree in English at 31.

Another found God in a big way, but still we remain in contact and respect one another’s path.

Two were born again and I haven't heard from them in years, I being the group heathen and therefore damned to eternal hell and below their recognition. I like to think they think of me now and again and pray for my soul. I’d rather have that than emptiness and misplaced pity in their hearts when they remember their female group mascot over whom they were once so protective.

Last week, I uncovered a blog belonging to one of them (reborn about 18 months ago). He’s a talented guitarist whose poetic writing style reminds me strikingly of Strat’s. In that blog, there was almost none of his former poesy. He spoke of mundane matters in a mundane style, except for every other sentence referring to God and needing to devote all aspects of one’s life to Him.

In one of his later posts, he had spoken of feeling uninspired, that the room he had dedicated to his creative and musical pursuits has done little more for him than collect dust. His posts became sporadic. And it occurred to me that instead of using his talents as a celebration of Divinity, he may have chased down the path that causes Divinity to choke the creative from him. Reading his posts made me sad, and it struck me that he sounded less accepting of his chosen path than trying to convince himself of its perceived rightness.

Another, a stout atheist in HS and beyond, attained his PhD in Theology and converted to Judaism while still at university.

And still another remains very much the same as he’s always been: a forty-year-old Catholic, somewhat more bitter than before, still as depressive and self-absorbed as ever, and doesn’t understand why he can’t keep a girlfriend and why he goes so long between. Don’t mistake me. He’s a gentle soul, musical, articulate and creative, and a good friend to have. My description isn't mean, just honest.

I find it interesting how religion has emerged to play such a vital role in many of their lives and has effectively managed to separate us. A part of me resents that I’ve lost to religion two of the people I’ve held dear for many years. Something about that doesn’t seem right. According to people “like them”, someone like me—with no set rules of Divinity to follow, with a propensity toward a kind of nature worship and affection for goddess tradition—is now unworthy of their friendship. I, who have never said an unkind word to them or about them, who have always regarded them with a friend’s love, am now below their regard simply because our priorities differ in this particular thing.

Shouldn’t Divinity should be inclusive, not exclusive? I respect the various paths my friends chose and I don’t begrudge them their methods of filling the empty places in their hearts. I have my own ways, but certainly don’t place them above anyone else’s. The Divine, after all, takes an infinite variety of forms. But it’s a real shame when we feel the need to sacrifice one form of love to embrace another.

This year, we’ll have all been friends for 22 years. Why would anyone want to forsake that? Why would the Divine, in any form, expect one to repudiate friendship? Isn't love supposed to be the whole point?

Lessons in Waiting

Last Tuesday marked the beginning of significant change for our little family. After months of filling out forms, standing in endless lines, and subterranean emotional preparation, my husband and I found ourselves finally at the American Consulate in Frankfurt to take the final steps toward his U.S. residence visa.What that means for us is, after having lived these past seven years in Germany, my husband’s homeland, we may very well be returning to the Chicago area once and for all before summer’s end. I’m very excited about this, and I think my husband is, too. And our son will be delighted.

The day at the Consulate passed very smoothly. The mission was to attend an interview conducted by one of the Consulate officials and then proceed to his physical, as outlined in the appointment letter. Just like in the movies, there was a line of people waiting to get into the Consulate itself. As we waited, I noticed a sign on the wall that indicated no electronics are allowed in the building. Opening the bag I held, I looked inside and found we had forgotten to leave my husband’s cell phone in the car. He took the phone and ran down the block to put it away.

In the meantime, a young woman, 23 years old, turned around and started talking to me. She revealed that she had lived near my hometown, and even had attended church meetings in the little schoolhouse-turned-community center in our farming community. (Actually, it’s no longer a farming community, but a burgeoning village—a recent victim of urban sprawl.) I was really amazed to run into someone else from my tiny little corner of the Midwest.

Last year on the subway, I ran into a young woman, a Seventh-Day Adventist missionary no less, who is from the next town over from ours. It really is a small world.As we laughed together, the woman behind us joined our conversation .“I admit it,” she’d said, “I was eavesdropping.”

The first young woman and I both made the same dismissive hand gesture and at the same time said, “That’s okay!”

“This far from home,” I said, “we’re all family.”

Just as my husband returned, and while the three of us were deep in conversation, one of the line attendants inquired after each person’s business.

Now here’s the interesting part. To the girl in front of me, and the girl in back of me, he spoke English. To me, he spoke German. I don’t know what it was that made him assume I might be German, except maybe my reddish dark-blond hair and blue eyes. But other than that, I’m about as American as they come. My clothes certainly have held to my American roots—t-shirt, oversized PolarTec pullover, hiking boots. And my hair basically has kept its style over the last seven years: long with bangs. I’m horribly unfashionable in this part of the world, and embarrassingly out of date in my own country.

So why would he presume to speak German to me—especially after interrupting our little Kaffee Klatsch? Didn’t he hear us all chatting away in English?He ushered the three of us (my husband trotting behind to catch up) to the front of the line where we simply checked in and were given a number ahead of several others who no doubt wondered what gave us privilege over them.

Then, we had to stand in another line to enter an antechamber, where we had to pass through a metal detector and x-ray our bag and coats, just like at the airport or a courthouse. Only four people at a time could enter the antechamber, and that’s where I was separated from my new friends. I didn’t see them again, even after entering the Consulate, but that was not surprising.

My husband and I were directed to the immigrant visa section of the large waiting hall, separate from the American portion of the area where passports, birth-abroad certificates, and the like are handled.It was about 8:20 a.m. when we entered the Consulate, and were immediately directed to Window 22, where we paid our application fee. (Someone had told us last year, before we even started the application process, to expect to pay around $500 in fees before it was all over. He was not kidding!)

We were given our receipt and told to sit in the waiting area until our number was called again. W511. We looked around, and decided the wait wouldn’t be as long as we thought it would be (the papers sent to us indicated a 3- to 6-hour process). There simply weren’t many people around, and our number was pretty low.

It certainly didn’t take long before our number was called to Window 23, where we turned in my husband’s application—as if he already hadn’t filled out a zillion other forms last summer, putting this whole thing in motion. We finished up there nice and quick, with no fuss, and were told to sit and wait until our number was called again.

This wait took a little longer. After fidgeting in our chairs for a while, I said to my husband, “I’m going to read a little bit. Once I really get into it, they’ll call our number.” And sure enough, maybe ten minutes later, we were called up to Window 11. There, we turned in all of our documents: police report, military records, birth certificate, marriage license, affidavits of support—a whole pile of papers. In a bored monotone and without pause for breath, the woman gave us instructions of what to do when we first arrive in the States.

After spending a few minutes getting those instructions straight, we were told to sit down—again—and wait for our number to be called—again—for the formal interview.This wait took still longer, and not even my old reading trick helped speed things up. I think it was because we were both a little nervous and I couldn’t concentrate. We waited long enough that we both began to wonder if maybe they might call our number on the American side. It sounds silly, but we’d waited just long enough for our numbed minds to start hypothesizing and playing tricks on us.

Eventually, we were called to Window 17, our final destination at the Consulate. The interview seemed more like a chat over coffee than an actual interview, except for the obvious questions the interviewer asked us: Where will we be living, has my husband been there before, how long have we been married (all of this information was already on the umpteen thousand forms we’d filled out), why do we want to relocate? At one point, I took my husband’s hand, and the man smiled at me and said, “Don’t worry. You’re doing fine.”

It was 11:10 when we finished up with the formal interview, and, taking the advice of our interviewer, we took one of the taxis lurking outside the consulate to the doctor’s office to make it there before it closed at 11:30.

As we rushed through the door of the doctor’s office, the Turkish receptionist, adorned in her very attractive head scarf and ankle-length black skirt, directed us to a waiting room upstairs.

When we entered, we recognized several other people from the Consulate waiting hall. We all smiled at each other in greeting, everyone clearly excited by the prospect of gaining their U.S. immigrant visas. At another desk, a woman crossed my husband’s name off a list. Beside his name was the scheduled time of our interview, 8:30. The list was long, and there were people with later interview times at the Consulate who had yet to arrive, their names still to be crossed off.

Like everyone else, we had to pay the doctor €125 in cash—German insurance would not cover this exam, imagine that—and after seeing that list of Consular patients for the day, I said to my husband, “This doctor must make a whole lotta money.”

Back in the waiting room, my husband and I talked about the man who’d interviewed us. “I think he liked us,” I said to him. “He was really nice, very friendly.”

“Too friendly,” my husband said. “Did you notice how quick he was with his questions?”

I thought about it and realized my husband was right. The man had been very friendly. Very chatty. But in the midst of the chattiness, he shot out pointed questions, so that those taken off-guard by his friendliness might stumble over one if they had secretive or dishonest reasons for wanting to gain permanent admittance to the U.S.

I said, “You’re right,” and felt a little let down. I like to think I’m not naïve, but sometimes I really can be. I like to believe the best in people. We had been a nice, humble couple during the interview. I’d smiled genuinely at the interviewer, thrilled that we had finally attained this final step, the future opening up before us, both of us happy and optimistic. And the man had seemed like a really nice guy. I understood his position, of course, being one of the final people to decide yay or nay to hopeful (and sometimes devious) immigrants from Germany. But I really wanted to believe he was a nice person, that he’d liked us, that the sparkle in his eyes had been as genuine as my smile. So, in a conscious decision to not play devil’s advocate for once, I let myself believe what I wanted to believe.

The physical went smoothly, too, though there was one hitch in my husband’s immunization records. Once we get that straightened up early next week, the physical results get sent to the Consulate. Within two weeks after that, we’ll know whether my husband has received his visa.We have still another long wait ahead of us, but I’m fairly confident the outcome will be favorable.

The Unexpected Visitor

We had an unexpected visitor last week. His name is Rudy, and, as my son and I walked home from his Kindergarten, Rudy slunk around the corner of a house and took an immediate shine to my youngster, following him all the way home. He even expected to be let into the house!

Rudy is a young black-and-white cat, no more than a year old, and friendly as all get-out. I’m terribly allergic to cats, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t let the little guy in. So, my son stayed outside to keep the feline critter company while I made lunch. It wasn’t long before he ran up to the kitchen yelling, “Mommy! You have to come outside and see the kitty. You have to!”

Some of you might understand that when a young child utters such words with such urgency, you don’t want to see what all the ruckus is about. But I put down my spatula, turned down the heat in the fry pan, and followed my excited child downstairs and out the door.

What I saw wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, but it was equivalent to a cat getting stuck in a tree. Li’l Rudy, as we later came to know him, was stuck behind the Plexiglas backing between the roof of the garage and the roof of the overhang that protects a portion of the driveway from rain and snow—no doubt installed there for the very purpose of keeping small furry creatures from hiding out in that prime area of shelter. But Rudy managed to find a gap between the Plexiglas and the garage wall and squeezed on up there… And couldn’t get back out.

Last year, when we first moved here, we encouraged two young stray tabbies to hang around our house by placing bowls of cat food and water by the patio door leading into the kitchen. We didn’t do it for long, however, because we soon learned that un-neutered male cats are rather unpleasant (Smelly!) companions when they think your home is theirs, and then mark it as their territory. Remembering that I still had a box of that cat food, I ran upstairs and poured our little friend a bowl, then crawled across the flat roof of the garage and placed the bowl below the gap where the cat had crawled through, then carefully climbed back down to wait.

Rudy was very interested in getting to that food. After trying to squeeze through the gap, he finally decided to twist his nimble body around the corner where the Plexiglas ended flush with the edge of the garage roof. He essentially bent himself in half, sideways, to reach the roof on the other side of the plastic shield. Cheering Rudy on, my son and I then returned to the house for our own meal, leaving Rudy to finish his and go back home.

But Rudy didn’t go home. He trotted along the side of the house to greet us at the back door while we ate. My son was outside in a flash and spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the little cat.

After a couple of hours, my son moved on to other things… he finally needed some downtime, so I let him watch TV. And while I busied myself in the house, the cat fell asleep in the sun outside the back door. It was quite late by then, close to 6:00 p.m., I think, and I started worrying about the cat.

Up until then, I figured he’d go on his way, meander back home. From his friendliness and the collar around his neck, it seemed clear to me that he had an owner, somewhere. And having lived with three outdoor cats (all of them spayed or neutered, by the way, a much nicer way of owning cats) for a goodly portion of my life, I was familiar with their wandering ways, and the fact that cats always come back home. But Rudy was looking mighty comfortable in that patch of sun in front of our kitchen door. And I worried about darkness falling, and him being left on his own in the cold April night, in the territory of two very wily stray cats who roam our gardens in this section of our neighborhood. Pitched against those two, Rudy would not fare well.

Watching him through our glass door (I’m severely allergic, remember), it seemed that what had appeared to be a design of the collar was actually printing. So, rolling up my sleeves, I went outside and took Rudy gently in my arms and held him in my lap while I worked his collar off. Sure enough, written on both sides of the collar were Rudy’s name and life story, such as it was. It seems that the little cat had lost his mother when he was a kitten, and had imprinted on people, explaining his amazing friendliness. Also written on the collar, to my immense relief, was a phone number. I put down the cat, grabbed up the phone and dialed the number. The owner, an older woman in her late 50s or early 60s, had clearly missed her darling feline (and darling he was!), and was quite happy to hear from me. A few minutes later, I met her in our driveway, and Rudy ran to her, happy to see his Mama.

I don’t think Rudy’s friendliness isn’t entirely due to having lost his mother shortly after birth. After watching him with his human Mama, who loved him enthusiastically and rocked him in her arms like a baby while he batted at her chin with his soft paws, claws safely tucked away, I think Rudy’s Mama has had a profound influence on his trust and affection for people.

My son and I were sad to see Rudy go, but are glad he’s back home with his loving Mama. She invited my son to come visit, and maybe we will. Or it may happen that we’ll find Rudy sunning himself on our back stoop again, and we’ll have to call his Mama to come pick him up. Either way, our lives were enriched by Rudy’s surprise visit.

Rudy takes a cat nap on our back stoop.