Living vs. Traveling: We Need Both

Finally...we ordered the fancy ice cream.

This week’s day trip to Tübingen was, I imagine, what a lot of people imagine our life overseas is always like. It involved a train ride through rolling green hills, strolls down cobblestone streets, a hike up to a castle overlooking the Swabian Alps, lunch and wine at a little Italian place in the medieval part of town, pictures snapped by a fountain, ice cream and coffee in the square.

It only took us an hour and a half, from our apartment, to get there, and involved just a tiny bit of coordination to send the dog off to a friend’s house for the day. But honestly? We hardly ever do this. We have a baby, a toddler, a dog, and no car. My husband’s embroiled in an online Master’s program. We’re on a budget. By the time weekends roll around, we’re usually just trying to make it to the kids’ nap time so we can conk out too. We have a lot of fun together, but it’s fairly ordinary fun. We go to the zoo, to the playground, to friends’ houses. We cook dinners and Skype with the grandparents. Sure, there’s a lot beyond our doorstep we haven’t seen, but we also have a lot going on right where we are. Sometimes I feel guilty about it because I’m in Europe and I imagine every weekend I should be traipsing off somewhere, trailing diapers and sippy cups in my wake. Other times, I’m just happy to be doing exactly what my husband and I do as parents of two little kids– living. 

And that’s what living overseas is– it’s living. You go to the grocery store. You go to work. You vacuum the apartment. You take the kids to the park, to pre-school, to play-dates. You pay bills and let the mail pile up. You walk your dog. Frustrations come and go; sometimes you love the bakeries so much you decide there’s no better place to live, other times you get sick of speaking another language and you just want to go home.

We’ve done a lot of living in Germany, but this week, in Tübingen, it was really nice to travel again. My husband and I love traveling, and we’re good at it; we’ve achieved a pretty nice blend of planning and spontaneity. We’ll travel cheap but splurge on the right things–this week it was finally one of those ridiculously extravagant ice cream sundaes plastered all over the German ice cream shops. “Today’s the day,” my husband said, pointing at the menu. “Today we’re ordering the fancy ice cream. It’s time.”

Traveling is a little bit like casual dating, which I’ve actually never done, but have learned a lot about from the movies. In both cases, the romance never really has to fade. Everything is always new and lovely. You capture the magic without slogging through any of the hard work. I don’t miss dating, but in Tübingen, I realized how much I have missed traveling.

“This was the perfect day!” my husband and I gushed to each other all the way home. “We should do it more often.” And hopefully, we will. The baby’s a little older now and our son can handle skipping a nap without completely melting down…at least until 5 p.m. or so. And there’s a lot to see.

The point is not really that we live in Europe, though this is of course a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we intend to treasure and make the best of. Even back in Michigan we lived just an hour away from what Conde Nast Traveler has ranked as one of the top 10 islands in the world. How often did we go? Maybe once a year.

The point is that wherever we live, it’s important to live, and it’s important to travel. We need to rejoice in the ordinary, and we need to step outside of it. It’s easy to get caught up in routines, and certainly those are important and comforting. But the thrill of tossing them out the window for a day–even with young kids, obligations, or whatever else is holding you back–is unmatched.

I remembered that this week, sitting at a cafe in Tübingen, eating fancy ice cream.

Guest Post: Two Hours To Write!

Today I’m over at Nina Badzin’s blog talking about how I manage to make time for my favorite hobby–writing. If you don’t know about Nina yet, you really should. She’s a published fiction writer and champion blogger whose “Hobbies & Habits” guest series features great insight on working balance into life. Thanks, Nina, for hosting my article. And readers, please feel free to hop over there and comment!

Versatile Blogger Award

I’m honored that Sandra Madeira recently nominated me for a Versatile Blogger Award. Sandra, a freelance writer, is the ultimate “Versatile Blogger”: her three blogs, My OpenLeaf Journey, My Writing Challenge, and Sandra’s Space focus on different aspects of pursuing dreams, creating a meaningful life, and writing. Thanks, Sandra!

Accepting the Versatile Blogger Award requires the following:

1. Thank the award-givers and link back to them in your post.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass this award along.
4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.

Following Rule #2, I’ll reveal seven (hopefully interesting) facts about myself.

1. My husband and I have, in the past eight years, lived on four different continents (we’re now in Germany). I love traveling, but actually moving to all of these different places has not always been easy for me.

2. I love languages and have worked hard to study them in every country where I’ve lived. I’ve forgotten almost all of my Chinese and most of my Spanish, but my German is finally improving again since these days I get to practice all the time.

3. My favorite foods in the places I’ve lived have been: jiaozi (shujiao) in China, salteñas in Bolivia, bread–any kind–in Germany, and morel mushrooms in Michigan.

4. My daughter, now seven months old, was born in Germany, which I thought was pretty cool until someone pointed out that she’d never be able to be President of the United States. Now I’m really worried she’ll want to be.

5. Despite all my traveling, I’m a Michigan girl at heart; I’m proud to be from East Lansing, where we take our ice cream seriously, but my favorite place in the state is without a doubt beautiful Petoskey, where I was lucky to live for three years.

6. I DO point to my hand when explaining where I’m from.

7. I am afraid of flying.

I’m now excited to pass the Versatile Blogger Award on to seven people whose entertaining, well-written blogs convey versatility and talent.

Kate at A Life Like This One writes beautifully about her life as a mom and writer in the Michigan northwoods. Her site also includes links to lovely photos, recipes, and information about Waldorf-style homeschooling.

Will at Bohemian Breakdancer, originally from Ireland, now lives in Poland and writes witty, revealing essays about his travels. He’s also a graphic designer.

Brock Heasley’s blog covers everything from Mad Men to memoir writing to parenting. His writing is honest, engaging, and funny.

Sarah Callender has one of the most unique and enjoyable writing styles I’ve encountered. She’s a fiction writer who also composes a mean essay, most of which somehow manage to make me shriek with laughter and somberly contemplate the meaning of life at the same time.

Beth at Twenty Eight Letters writes poignant, reflective, and image-rich pieces about her travels. She’s also a foodie and avid reader.

Guilie at Quiet Laughter is culturally versatile; she blogs thoughtfully about “blurred cultural boundaries” and about fiction writing.

I encourage you to check out these terrific blogs!

Kreativ Blogger Award

I’m honored that writer Laura Stanfill recently nominated me for the Kreativ Blogger Award. Since I’m in Germany, I particularly appreciate the spelling of this particular award (creative = kreativ)! I also appreciate Laura’s creativity–she’s a talented fiction writer with a blog offering not only thoughtful reflections on the writing craft, but also regular “original writing exercises” guaranteed to stretch your writing muscles. Thanks, Laura!

Accepting the Kreativ Blogger Award requires the following:

1. Thank the blogger who gave you the award and provide a link.
2. List seven interesting things about yourself.
3. Nominate seven other bloggers, provide links, and let them know!

As I’ve just thanked the lovely Laura, I’ll now move on to seven facts you might not know about me:

1. I wore braces for four years–as an adult–and have never regretted it. I received orthodontic treatment in almost as many continents as I’ve lived in (by the time we got to Germany, I was free to wear just a retainer, so I don’t count that).

2. My mom wanted me to get braces when I was a kid, but strangely, I refused (I was a sentimental child, even where crooked teeth were concerned). She spent four years saying “I told you so.”

3. I love to garden, but I’m a total amateur.

4. Unfortunately, I have not figured out how to grow Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or potato chips, nor can I seem to escape their evil clutches.

5. My stroller once ended up in the back of a German police car.

6. I have loved horses forever. I’ve taken lessons, leased, planned out a whole barn in my head, and even ridden in a rodeo, but I have yet to own my own horse. Maybe someday.

7. I love, and I mean love, German health care. I’m not big on politics, but this is one issue I’m willing to argue about.

And now, the best part: I get to pass this award on to some awesome and very creative bloggers! Here they are, in no particular order:

Sarah at The Unwrapping writes beautiful, dreamy prose, often layering parallel stories to create a most magical effect.

Kathy at Lake Superior Spirit evokes the beauty of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula through her honest, detailed prose and postcard-worthy photos.

Emily at Keeping Time offers beautifully crafted, metaphorical snapshots of a live filled with daughters, travel, and love.

June Mears Driedger‘s writing, according to her blog tagline, explores “the intersection of faith and creativity”; her posts are reflective and thought-provoking.

Sarah at This Heavenly Life, through her vivid writing and photography, captures the significance of everyday moments.

Leigh-Anne at Quiet Laughter is a poet and artist, two creative outlets that find perfect harmony in her lovely blog posts.

Rose at Granbee posts poems rich with internal rhyme and endearing characters; her most recent project invokes a Lenten journey.

I encourage you to check out these terrific blogs!

Spring Somewhere Else

Officially everywhere!

“Every time the seasons change, it reminds me of being somewhere else,” I told my husband. We had just walked past our millionth crocus (they’re everywhere now, littering the strips of grass between sidewalk and street like candy wrappers, only beautiful).

“Is that weird?” I asked. He shrugged–he knows better than to actually answer that question.

But is it? In one sense, I feel the seasons should ground me deeply where I am. I feel, specifically, this dirt between my toes, this side of the sun on my face, this flower petal, soft enough to crumble to pieces under my thumb. Yet at the same time, the special attention I pay to place when a season shifts keeps me going backwards, to other places I’ve lived and loved, as soon as the air changes.

I remember, studying in Freiburg during the spring semester of my junior year in college, stepping off the train after a week in Spain and reeling at the new air, which had grown palpably thicker while I was gone, rich with scent and weight. Sterile winter chill had given way to a cacophony of buds on every tree, a riot of birdsong, black dirt. “It happened so fast,” I thought at the time. “I went away, and I missed it.”

Here in Stuttgart, spring means:

• Tables set out at the Biergarten 
• Children digging in sand and whooping down slides while their parents sit on benches and shade their eyes at the Spielplatz
• Farmers tilling the soil in the fields by our apartment
• Crocuses everywhere

I love it, but even as I snap pictures and tip my head back to catch more sun, I can also picture spring in Michigan as though I’m living there, not here:

• Flip flops and shorts everywhere because it’s finally 55 degrees
• A few tiny traces of snow clinging, only in the very shadiest spots, to…grass!
• Magnolias bursting to life, then fluttering down to carpet the street with their sweet rotting leaves
• The first cautious trips to the beach. And the sound of waves without ice.
• Construction

When seasons change, I’m prone to intense nostalgia and intense appreciation of where I am. Sometimes I’m home, sometimes I’m here. I like having both.

Banana Bread Karma

No really, it tastes like cake.

My son’s gym class teacher had been passing the sign-up sheet around for a few weeks.

“Who can bring cake for the children’s Fasching party next Tuesday?” she asked hopefully. She always waited until we were all seated in a circle, too tired from following our toddlers over and under and through mats and blocks and ropes to protest. Not a bad strategy.

I picked up the pen and bent over, supporting my daughter’s back in her carrier with one hand, writing “banana bread” with the other. OK, it’s not technically cake, but my husband would be back in the U.S. when the Fasching party took place and I knew no matter how little sleep I’d gotten, I could handle banana bread. I had my go-to Joy of Cooking recipe, after all, and some bananas already withering into their brown skins on my windowsill.

“But they don’t really have banana bread in Germany,” I remembered as I signed my name. “Maybe she’ll think I’m just trying to bring a loaf of bread.” I paused, then added “Schmeckt wie Kuchen” to the sheet. “Tastes like cake.” A promise, I guess.

The loaf came out perfect–one of my better ones. A slight crisp on the outer edge gave way to dense, crumbling dough flecked black with banana seeds. Nevertheless, I drizzled a sugar glaze over the top to make it more “cakey.” To convince my audience.

We arrived late; my son, still dreamy-eyed from his nap, could only stare at the other children dancing in their costumes, his lips slightly parted, his cheek against my knee. He is rarely shy so I didn’t move, loving the feel of his fingers making their tiny prints on the back of my calf. He didn’t want to let go.

The party’s theme: Im Wilden Westen (“In the Wild West”). German children dressed in cowboy shirts and Native American garb stamped and whooped to Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson. Disoriented, I took my son’s hand and pulled him to the cake table. My friends had delivered the banana bread several hours earlier, and I noticed it right away–front and center, completely untouched.

In Germany, cake is an elaborate affair. Afternoon Kaffee und Kuchen remains a popular tradition, marked by flaky pastries and fine tortes piled with bright fruit. On this long cake table in the Wild West, many such cakes had already been sliced and re-sliced, the platters ringed with crumbs. Only my banana bread remained. Granted, it looked pretty humble, even ugly. But if only they knew how it tasted!

I bought two slices, on principle. My son was thrilled. “I love banana bread!” he cried. As she passed me the plate and my change, the woman behind the table leaned in and said, “I gave you both pieces for a Euro.” A discount. Thanks.

Did etiquette dictate I should take the rest of the banana bread home when I left? Probably not–we’d leave before the party ended. I just hoped, as my son and I licked the crumbs from our fingers, that nobody would throw it away. I should have sent a note with the bread, I thought. I should have told them what it was. 

There came a point in the afternoon when all I wanted was to grab my banana bread with its two slices cut away and run out the door, all the way back home, where I would open Johnny Cash on iTunes and sing too, instead of just mouthing the lyrics with my lips in a crowded auditorium where nobody else seemed to know the words. I wanted to eat the banana bread until it was gone. I should have bought the whole thing back. At a discount.

Sometimes living here is like that. I’ll go days where I love it, but then all of a sudden I want to shrink back into myself and go back to a home I don’t even have.

My husband came back a couple days later. He pulled a heavy block, plastic-wrapped, from his suitcase. “Banana bread,” he said. “My grandma baked it. It’s really good.”

I peeled back the wrapping, cut in, and ate.

My 2-Year-Old Has More Self-Control Than I Do

Patience rewarded

It’s been so cold lately that all there really is left to do is bake. Today we made blueberry muffins and little A. “helped,” which is sort of code for him standing at the counter with an apron on while I try to keep him from dumping an entire box of baking soda into the mixing bowl.

When the muffins came out of the oven and had cooled a bit, A. carried a couple to the table. I told him I was going to go make some tea and that I’d get him a glass of milk while I was at it. While I headed into the kitchen to put the water on, clean a few dishes, and eat an entire bag of potato chips, my 2-year-old sat at the table, staring at his blueberry muffin. It occurred to me, as I stood shaking chip crumbs into my mouth while my son carefully touched the muffin wrapper with one finger, not even daring to peel it back, that I needed to work on patience.

2-year-olds get some pretty bad press, and ours has earned his stripes in the predictable categories of tantrums and whining sessions, but in that half-sweet, half-humiliating moment where I realized my self-control had been trumped by a toddler’s, I started thinking about some of the other things my son does better than I do. Here are just a few:

1. Spontaneity. Hey. I feel like eating one of those soft pretzels from the bakery. Let’s go down and get one! Now I want to kick a soccer ball. That’s good too. Hey mom, can we sing “Jimmy Crack Corn” for 20 minutes straight? Of course. Because really…why not?

2. Enjoying work. Washing dishes and vacuuming: mundane tasks, or hobbies? Hobbies, definitely hobbies. Soapy water on the floor and socks caught in the vacuum suction are small prices to pay.

3. Finding fun. My kid is so imaginative. For up to an hour at a time he’ll stand at the windowsill with a couple of lego cars and some dolls, creating elaborate skateboarding, ice skating, and diving board scenarios. He’ll crawl in and out of a cardboard box  or sit at the bottom of my closet rearranging my shoe pile. Sometimes I think it’s funny how many toys are marketed to toddlers when it doesn’t actually appear they need many.

4. Skateboarding. People raise their eyebrows when they see him toting his skateboard around, but seriously, this kid is talented.

I love that boy!