Surreal

Well I am writing this post sitting in my little sister's apartment in Munich, having kicked her and her boyfriend out for the night. We're staying at their place for the weekend, enjoying the traditional Christmas market and pre-Christmas festivities. They have very generously relocated to her boyfriend's parent's apartment.

The apartment is a tiny jewel box in the heart of the city. It's my little sister's miniature castle. The house is organized to a degree that would make Martha Stewart write an article on how less truly is more. It makes me want to throw away half my possessions and start over.

My sister has a knack for selecting decorative objects and then displaying them in a way that is unique, yet classic. My decorating style, on the other hand, consists of fighting against the constantly rising tide of children's toys and putting objects out of Bee's ever inquisitive and increasingly proprietorial grasp.

This is a long holiday weekend for David and I. I am trying to relax after the gourmet mania and fighting off the stomach flu that defined this year's Thanksgiving. I was thankful that I was well enough to cook all the dishes I was assigned for Thanksgiving. I was thankful that I didn't actually get sick after nibbling at Thanksgiving dinner, as opposed to just feeling sick. Other than that, I wasn't thankful for much else. I was finally feeling better most of the day today but now my stomach is starting to feel wobbly. I think it's time for bed.

Tomorrow we will be attending mass at my favorite church, more city strolling, Christmas-marketing, and hopefully eating.

Princess

Here is one of my favorite pictures from October.  In it, Miss Bee is headed home from her first birthday party, a princess party that she still talks about almost two months later.  

You can see the wound up excitement in her step-- a combination of too much cake, meeting a princess who made balloon animals, and a pinata (you break something and get presents instead of time out!)  Basically the parents covered every possible party trick with the exception of "pin the tail on the donkey."  I could never compete with them.

Bee arrived at the party wearing her Snow White halloween costume but wanted to take it off after a few minutes as it was impeding her play.  The cape however, she loved.  She thinks it's her princess cape, but to me, she looks like a mini Mighty Mouse.  My little superhero is growing up much too fast for my liking.

It's beginning to look a lot like

Thanksgiving!  

Okay, well, Christmas isn't here just yet, much to my chagrin.  I love Christmas and start thinking about it every, oh, August or so. Growing up, my father had to restrain me from playing holiday music in October.  "No Christmas music until after Thanksgiving!" he would declare. 

It was, and still is, a guilty pleasure of mine to listen to Handel's "Messiah" long before the holiday decorations have begun to appear in shop windows and on the outside of buildings.  My father may be several thousand miles away, but I still listen surreptitiously, headphones on. 

Handel's Messiah is beautiful. Most people don't realize there is a lot more to it than the Hallelujah chorus.  In my opinion, there is no better way to begin a dreary work day than with the soul stirring refrain in the section "For Unto Us a Child is Born."   I am riding on the overheated metro, praying Isaiah 9:6 along with the chorus.  A full orchestra (London Symphony) adds the exclamation points to "Wonderful!" "Counselor!"  Arpeggios soar toward the heavens.  The violins sing on the E string.  I am carried out of my daily commute to a higher place.  

Isaiah 9:6 is read at midnight mass on Christmas eve.  For years, my family attended this mass. We would celebrate Christmas Eve dinner, "Jul Aften," with my grandparents, arriving home around 10 pm.  Gathered in my parent's living room, we would sit half dozing or quietly chatting until it was time to bundle up against the cold and go to church.  Inside, the lights were blazing and the organ and trumpets blaring. "Joy to the World" never sounds as perfect at any other time. 

Midnight mass seems to bring all kinds of people out of the woodwork. I have sat with people who brought their own sodas (maybe they were looking for a movie?), who were exchanging and unwrapping gifts during the service and the inevitable few who simply fall asleep.  I guess what matters is that they try.

I really can't wait until the day after Thanksgiving.  I will fill my house with music.

Six years

Right now I am sitting in my favorite chair, watching David listen to NPR in the kitchen. Then man wonders why it takes him an hour to wash eight dishes, but we both know that it is his unhealthy addiction to the sonorous newscasters on National Public Radio.  I am not a fan.  In my opinion, NPR's radio personalities all sound like they took an overdose of cold medicine and chased it with a glass of wine. 

When Bee was a newborn, David used to listen to NPR every night while he made dinner, full volume. The news discussion of the day would blare down the hall, through the dining room, into our little study where I was usually curled up on the couch with a sleeping, nursing, or sleeping/nursing baby.  

The talking was inescapable.  Hypnotized by the constant droning, I would eventually drift into the kitchen, baby in the crook of my arm, and listen to the news.  I secretly like to hear the news. Sometimes the stories are very interesting.  However, until the broadcasters begin to speak with Italian accents as opposed to California nasal, it is banned in the house.  

Since David knows my feelings about NPR, he very considerately wears headphones while he listens to the news.  Tethered to his computer by an extra long cord, he gracefully maneuvers to and fro, cautious lest his computer slide off the countertop.  (That would be the death blow to his poor laptop.  We've had it nearly our entire marriage.)

His computer was our computer before we decided that I needed my own for graduate school.  It was the first major purchase we made together, aside from a few items of furniture for our apartment.  The laptop has survived a road trip from Guatemala to Virginia, five international moves, more countries and overhead luggage compartments than it should have to.  David has meticulously maintained it, applying ram and external hard drives like an aging starlet injects Botox. 

David takes care of things.  He is a doer. He makes reservations, drives stick shifts, solves problems, reads maps.  I draw on his confidence, and admire his ability to tackle life head on. Even more tellingly, he takes care of me:  doing the dishes because he knows I hate scraping plates, taking Max for his "last call" walk of the night because it's cold and dark outside, and cutting Bee's fingernails because he knows I couldn't stand it if I accidentally nipped her skin and made her cry.  

In a little over a week, we will celebrate our sixth wedding anniversary.  We aren't planning anything special for the day; our vacation to the US was our anniversary and Christmas gift to each other.  Instead, I will take some time to reflect on how much we have grown up and grown together in these past six years.  So much.  I am so lucky to have him as my husband--dish washing deficiencies and all.

We cannot live without books

Bee is long since asleep, so I am off to read (but hopefully not finish) mine.

the amazing cardboard box

We went to Ikea this morning to buy some containers to organize Bee's toys.  Her small play area in our apartment's main room is growing tentacles of toys that extend into the living room and dining room. I have to do something to fight against the clutter.  I need a few square feet of grown-up space.

Anyway, I always love going to Ikea, even though entire villages of people are usually there and Bee goes quite wild with her own child sized shopping cart.  We bought a bunch of stuff, more than we intended to purchase, including a set of star shaped Christmas lights that will look very pretty hanging in the front window at Christmas time.

We came back from our vacation with an entire suitcase filled with new toys and books, wonderful presents given to Bee for her birthday by family and friends.  She loves her new dolls and containers of Play-doh.  She was happy to come home to her play kitchen filled with realistic wooden food.  However, despite the embarrassing multitude of toy options available, at the moment, my little Princess only wants to play one game: "x-ray-der."  

Evidently the x-ray machine at the airport left a mighty impression on Miss Bee.  She now aspires to work for the transportation authority. When I realized that she was using our coffee table as an x-ray machine, I put a cardboard box, empty at both ends, on top for more x-ray realism.  She loves passing her shoes and teddy bear through the box and pretending she's at the airport.

Last night, after Bee had gone to sleep, I folded up the box and stowed it behind a piece of furniture.  First thing this morning, Bee frantically asked as to where the x-ray-der had gone.  I set it up again, and from her excitement you would have thought I had just given her the best present ever. 

So, when we have visitors to our apartment, we will just lie and say that decorating our living room with cardboard is something we saw in Better Homes and Gardens.  It's the latest ec0-innovation.  It's proof of my sweet daughter's vivid imagination.  It's the cheapest damn toy I never bought.

Twilight

I swore I wouldn't read those silly books about chaste vampires.  I mean, how absorbing could they possibly be, right?  After a recommendation from my dear friend Em, however, I decided to buy "just" the first one.  

I'm not usually so easily swayed, but it's because of Emily that I found Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series and read Harry Potter.  I like everything about Emily, but especially her knack for finding me a good book.

Our shared taste in fiction, however, does not extend to Em's enthusiasm for war novels that have a lot of battle scenes and unrequited love, so I have to make sure her recommendations don't include a sad dead soldier in the final chapter.  I will read war stories from time to time but really, why do the soldiers always have to die at the end? Why couldn't they survive the war and go start a restaurant or something?  (Emily, my gift to you, "Three Day Road" by Joseph Boyden. Written on the front cover, "The most haunting story of war and loss since Birdsong.")

What I really love is a book that you want to stay up all night reading, where you pull the text close to your face, hold on to the edges of the book, and read for dear life. Both "Twilight" and "New Moon" made me do just that. I was reading last night until I could no longer prop my eyelids open. I read this evening in Bee's play kitchen while she fed her baby doll Play Doh. I was present, just not mentally!

I have the other two books in the series stacked on my nightstand and I am rationing them out. No more than one book per day. (My personal talents are few and far between but I can read very, very fast, especially when I am motivated to find out what happens next.)  I am going to be so sad when I finish Breaking Dawn.  On Sunday.  Hopefully not Saturday.

"The sun poured in like butterscotch"

I saw rainbows twice while on vacation.  The photo above was taken from the balcony of our stateroom while on our Disney Cruise.  David and I were both excited and apprehensive about our trip.  We need not have been worried, as it was wonderful. The rainbow over the water is just one example of the magic of Disney.  They even control the weather!

The second time I saw a rainbow was on my last day at home.  Our flight was later that evening (little did I know that I would leave on Saturday and not arrive home until Monday morning) and both my Mom and I were feeling despondent at my and David's and Bee's imminent departure. So, we went and did what all good women do in the face of stress: we went shopping.  Bee was having her afternoon nap so we made our escape, just the two of us.  We were driving to the mall when a double rainbow appeared the the sky.  I'm not sure whether it was just a good shopping omen or a fitting end to a perfect vacation.

But really, of all the days that we were home, the very best day of vacation was the first full day. Waking up in my house, in my childhood bedroom, sitting at the kitchen table, jet-lagged at 5 am, drinking hot tea, eating scrambled eggs that my Mom cooked, my father wandering in with a cup of coffee in hand, Bee playing on the kitchen floor, David reading the paper, the sun rising, and the love of my family "stuck to all my senses."

Take and eat

I was planning on going to the gym during my lunch hour today but decided I needed some fresh air instead.  I set off towards my favorite bakery, which is about 15 minutes away from my office.

Outside, the sun was shining, and while the air wasn't exactly fresh, it was invigorating to be out and about with the lunchtime rush.  I was wearing my favorite emerald coat, looking like a peacock in a flock of ravens. Black seems to be the operative color for winter wear. 

I was about a block away, deciding on my lunch, when I saw a beggar leaning up against the wall. His clothes were tattered, and he was leaning on crutches, waiting silently for someone to give him their spare change.  

As I walked toward him, a middle aged lady came in the opposite direction.  Without slowing her steps she handed him her lunch, from the bakery where I was headed.  Without acknowledging her presence or stepping away from the wall the man took the bread and immediately began to eat, hungrily.  I thought to myself, cynically, "Well, at least he won't want mine." 

Immediately, I filled with shame.  Is this how I love my neighbor as myself?.  Jesus walked among the poorest of the poor, not with selfish, flouncing girls like me. How could those thoughts have passed my mind? 

I worry that I have become cynical.  Where I live, begging is a pseudo-profession. People approach me on the street everyday and ask for money.  I always say no. I don't give alms.  Beggars have their turf and individual ailments to draw attention to themselves.  The young man with the grotesquely swollen leg sits halfway up the steps leading out of the metro. Directly across the sidewalk, the friendly looking elderly lady stands wearing an eye patch. Further down the street, an old wild haired man sitting on a bucket stares at the pavement. Outside my grocery store, there is usually a Roma woman cradling a lethargic child. Comparatively, I am so privileged. I should empty out my wallet, give my green coat away.

When we lived in Guatemala, we used to give the street children cereal out of our car windows.  It's different here. I see the same people every day. Should I give them a handout every day? Make their acquaintance? Bake them cookies? Offer my prayers?  

The beggar today shocked me with his hunger and brought me face to face with my own indifference.  His careworn face was that of Jesus. Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Mommy Time

When David has to work late I try to do something special with Bee so she doesn't focus on missing her father. Tonight, after dinner we skipped Bee's nightly bath and played beauty salon. Afterward, we had a "princess and teddy bear" story time.

The magic formula:

One Limoges plate fit for a princess.

Two butter cookies.

Two teddy bears.

Two new storybooks, "Corduroy" and "Bear Snores On."

Never mind that my comforter is now covered in crumbs, that her royal highness wasn't content with just two stories, and that she didn't want to go to bed afterward.  The drama of being two years old is continuous, but the happy little moments spent snuggled together reading a good book are the ones that matter.

Home again

I have a sink full of dishes, a bedroom full of six overflowing suitcases to unpack, a jet-lagged toddler singing crazily to her stuffed animals in her crib, a bad head cold, a brand new computer to hook into my wireless network and absolutely nothing to complain about.

I had a wonderful vacation and have so much to write about here. 

I will have to tackle it a little bit at a time, because in just three weeks we celebrated Bee's birthday, visited a multitude of relatives, took endless shopping trips to Target and Tysons Corner Mall, drove to Charlottesville for the day, spent a night without Bee (the first) in Washington VA, met Cinderella at Disney World, and found paradise on a Disney cruise. Our return trip back to Eastern Europe could form the plot of an Indiana Jones movie.  There is so much to savor and bemoan in the retelling.  

Right now though, I have a daughter who needs my immediate attention.  More tomorrow.

Right now though, I am off to put my nest in order and then off to bed.