18 Years Ago: Reprise (May 26th)

Hike near Prevorst.

I took four days off after stopping my 18 Years Ago series on Friday. And here are a few things I did, having not done them in a while: watch a movie with my family (About Time, which we all recommend); binge-watch crime/mystery shows on German TV one evening (alone, with my sock-knitting); take a woodland hike with a school friend of Markus' and his two sons; cook for a few hours at a stretch (listening to NPR podcasts); bathe (to relax, I don't mean to suggest I was neglecting myself while serial); take a 16K bike ride with my husband; read (currently: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn, a recommendation by the same writer who told me about The Two Kinds of Decay; it's a memoir of a tough childhood reminiscent of Tobias Wolff's with an intense dance between memoirist-son and absent father, told in a sporadic way that speaks to the vignette style of my own writing); sleep; pick strawberries with my daughter.

Berry picker.

We've had some extra time because it was a holiday weekend. The holiday was Pfingsten (Pentecost), and I've written a Language & Such entry to ponder the word. Protocol for holidays in Germany is that businesses are closed, and so are all the stores. But there are some exceptions. For example, the farmers are permitted to sell their perishable products, even on the holiday. Miriam and I went out for a walk, planning to buy a container of strawberries at the stand. When we found they were offering U-pick for the first time this season, we went out into the fields to search for ripe berries and carry them home.

Pfingstrose on Pfingstmontag.

In the garden, we're watching the slow arrival of early summer. The German word for peony is Pfingtstrose, i.e. Pentecost rose. We have a massive clump of peonies, nearly as tall as me. I shared photos earlier this month as a metaphor for waiting, and I found I was still waiting for the first blooms on Pfingstsonntag. I rather thought the actual holiday for which the plant is named would do the trick. Yesterday, on Pfingstmontag, I found one blossom just about open, but the temperatures are cool, and I think the plant is holding out for warmer air. I haven't decided which word is stranger: peony or Pfingstrose. (The word "peony" via Latin from Greek: Paiōn, the name of the physician of the gods.)

Clematis.

Meanwhile, the clematis has more than made up for the laggard peonies.

Since it was so much fun to write about happenings in May 1997, I can't resist adding a couple of photos and remembering. By today's date, May 26th, Simon was 9 days old. When he wasn't asleep, he hung out with us. We set him on the boppy pillow on the table next to us during meals. He slept in our arms. He made eye contact. He nursed and nursed. We were off to a good, healthy start. Born well, healthy baby, healthy mom and dad devoting time to his care. Good times.

When Simon was one week old, Markus took his portrait for the birth announcement. Here's another pose.

One week old.

I have to say, Simon rather turned his daddy's head.

My boys.

18 Years Ago: May 17th--2015 Life keeps moving

I split my post in half today. If you missed the first one, scroll down to find it or choose "Older Post" in the options at the bottom of this page. That's the 1997 part. If you're just now joining in on my "18 Years Ago" series, have a look at the left sidebar for the Blog Archive for May. There's a post for every day!

Here, today, in Flein, Germany, we had a pleasant day. While walking this evening I wondered about the passage of time and the paths we've taken along the way. I try to picture Simon in his last year of high school here in Germany. But then I wonder, would we be living in Germany now if Simon had lived? Even further back, where would we be if he hadn't gotten sick? Maybe we really would have moved to Canada in 2002, where our kids could have grown up near their Lautens cousins. That's fun to picture.

Meanwhile, Markus, Miriam and I really do live in Germany (along with our kitties Sam and Simon), and we're doing OK. Miriam is busily preparing for tomorrow's physics test, so we postponed plans for a longer hike in honor of Simon's birthday. Instead, we went outside to watch today's Trollinger (Half)Marathon pass through our neighborhood. Markus and Miriam have been running in the 5-10K range this spring, and I have a feeling they got inspired this morning. It's a somewhat hilly course, but overall it passes through beautiful scenery. Here's a link to a map of the course.

The full marathoners passed through first (468 of them). About an hour later we went out to watch the half marathoners (5,000+). They came in hoards, rounding the corner where we stood cheering them on. We kept an eye out for runners from GGS, the business school where Markus is a professor. After a while, I began noticing students from my English classes at the DHBW. It was fun to pick them out and give them a shout. It did me good to feel connected with young people who are not much older than Simon would be today. As my teaching career has progressed, I have managed (without direct intention) to be teaching students about Simon's age. The year I left the Salt Lake Arts Academy (2010), Simon would have been in 7th grade, just like the group of kids I had as mentees. When I started teaching college students in 2012, I hadn't considered at first that Simon would catch up to their age group, too. I've been grateful both times.

If you've kept up with my posts leading up to Simon's birth in 1997, you may have expected a birth story today. But I've decided to save that for another day. After all, on the day of a birth, you are in an amazing bubble, away from chronology and mental processing. I wanted to leave it that way today. Birth stories come when you get a little distance on the events. In other words, the series won't be ending here!

May 17, 2015

We've got candles lit, and I had a facetime call with my family in Ohio this evening. My sister, Julie, and her daughter, Margot, were visiting, as well as my brother, David. My parents also keep a Simon candle, and the five of them each lit one and spoke about Simon. Julie said that she pictures him joining her son, Nathan, at McGill University in the fall. In the photo to the left, you can see a photo of Simon and Nathan together in 2003. Margot remembers playing video games with Simon and thinks they'd have a good conversation about this year's new releases. David said he could have used Simon's muscle over the weekend because they'd been doing some lifting and carrying. My mother lit a yellow candle and said Simon had always called it "gelb" instead of "yellow," picking the easier of his two words. "Red, green, gelb, blue..." (I don't remember that detail, but my father corroborated it.) My father remembers playing whiffle ball with Simon and the joyful way Simon rode the red wagon down the front walk and made a quick turn at the bottom of the hill.

For a look back at birthdays with Simon, you can pop over to May 17th Coming Up (2011). Today I made a commemorative strawberry pie for at least the third year in a row. Simon's birthday comes in the middle of strawberry season, and we can get them from nearby fields. We set a place for Simon at all three meals today, a tradition Markus started last year, and one I rather like.

Would Simon like a pie like this, with a Super Simon heart? Who's to know. But I enjoyed making it and thinking of the boy I knew and the grown young man I try to imagine.

Birthday strawberry pie
May 17, 2015

Out through the fields near Flein (flash post)

For a chance to move my legs and breathe and look around me, I got on my bike and rode with Miriam across the fields to Sontheim, the next town over. She was on her way to the gym to work out on the elliptical machine. I looped around from there and followed a no car/no motorcycle sign onto a path that soon became a grassy, unpaved groove.

From there I popped back out onto a familiar asphalt path, where I could curve around the Deinenbach creek, the newly growing fields, the fruit trees dotted here and there, the expanses of yellow rapeseed, the bursts of lilac spearing the sky. I believe it was Goethe’s Farbenlehre (color theory) that dictates proportions for complementary colors: half red : half green; one-third orange : two-thirds blue; one-quarter yellow : three-quarters purple. Things seem to be the other way around at the moment, with yellow everywhere and dots of purple now and then.

It’s the Saturday before Easter, sunny and pleasantly cool. The paths are popular. We each thread our own particular way through the space. Most of us live nearby, with our own particular reasons for being out there. Many walk. With dogs and without. Singly, in pairs, in larger groups. A few march along with Nordic walking sticks. Bicycles. Baby carriages. Scooters. Roller blades. Now and then there’s a car or a tractor crowding the rest of us briefly off the path. They’re only supposed to be there if they have official business. I’m often skeptical.

Overhead, birds (mostly crows) course through the sky carving paths that don’t follow the lines cut through the fields for human traffic. I’ve been lucky enough to see an owl and a heron a time or two picking their way along the fields under the cover of dusk.

Welcome spring! A few weeks ago my legs grew tired, my breathing hard as I pumped my bike up the hills. Today’s ride was gentler, but I felt readier for the rises, for the up and down shifting, for the pleasure of working my way forward on a bike.

Fields deeply furrowed, probably for carrots (photo March 2014).

Short grass-like plants in tidy rows will be wheat or rye
by harvest time (photo May 2013).

Looking toward Flein and grocery discounter Lidl with the red roof
from the Talheim side (photo May 2013).

Strawberry fields getting ready
(photo May 2013, but this year's plants are close).

Another sunny Sunday

If you can call twice in a row a habit, then a Sunday afternoon bike ride in the hilly vineyards at the edge of Flein is my new one. Much like last week, I enjoyed the solitude of following the paths that climb and wind through the tidy rows of grape vines.

Waxing crescent moon straight overhead in a blue sky. Gentle breeze. Temperature right around 70 F (20 C). I saw horses in their grassy pens, a family of hairy goats (including a tiny black one), and two jack rabbits in the middle of a meadow, chasing each other in circles. Up near the edge of the woods I looked for the dark brown butterflies again. I saw only two, which supports last week's theory that their lives are particularly brief. (The German wikipedia link offers a picture of about what these butterflies look like. As far as I can tell, they live a full season, rather than mere days. If you've never tried this trick before: click on another language in the languages list, e.g., English, to be switched instantly to the same article in the other language. Braunscheckauge is apparently a Northern Wall Brown.)

Between the vineyards I spotted several fields of rapeseed in nearly full flower. Here are some photos I took last May of rapeseed in full fluorescent bloom. Note, today is April 6th, and last year's photos were a good five weeks later.

Rapeseed field near Flein (photo May 2013)

From a vineyard hill, looking down at the fields
beyond the newest homes in town (photo May 2013)

Other signs of an advanced spring: the strawberries in nearby fields are in flower already, too. The fruit trees at the edges of the agricultural fields, alongside the vineyards, and next to many buildings are also blooming gloriously. Most of them are loaded with simple white blossoms clustered like half a large popcorn ball. (There I go using popcorn imagery again.) Since most of the fruit trees around here are apple trees and since most of the blooming trees have these flowers, my conclusion is that these are indeed apple trees. (If you know better, please correct me.)

Future apples 

A wonder in form and simplicity

The grape vines still appear to be holding back. A few have released the beginnings of leaves at their budding eyes. But most have a sort of pent-up, held-breath containment. They must be waiting for rain. The earth in our gardens and out in the fields is drawn with cracks from the lack of rain. If I were a grape vine, I'd be waiting, too, until several good dowsings of rain convinced me to let forth for another season.