Germany! Day One

Our oldest daughter is studying in Germany for the spring semester. A couple months ago that statement conjured thoughts of Covid restrictions and difficulties with testing and vaccinations. Now it raises questions about the stability of political institutions and potential violence. 

But two weeks ago, neither of these concerns troubled us. We had our booster shots, we had negative Covid tests just in case (which may have been a mistake - more on that later if my fears come to fruition. We made the mistake of going to a clinic to get tested that may bill us an exorbitant amount - but I'll worry about that when the time comes.)  We had plane tickets, a hotel reservation, a rental car reserved, KN 95 masks, comfortable shoes, and a daughter to visit.

Here we are setting off for international travel only momentarily maskless on our 14 hour journey. My parents came to watch the younger kids, as we again took advantage of a child studying abroad for an excuse to travel.  Travel from Texas to Europe is overnight - we left midafternoon and arrived midmorning in Frankfort. 

A credit card perk - visiting the airport lounge for a meal and free

Welcome to Heidelberg!

We rented a car from Frankfort, thinking it might be just as economical as taking public transportation (I don't think it was, after paying for gas and parking), more flexible (it was), and safer from Covid (another perk). However, we did not rent the GPS - thinking we could use our daughter's cell phone to navigate and only rely on our international plan, which charges per day of use. I had printed some google maps and directions from the hotel, but they didn't provide a lot of detail, so this was a source of marital discord over the first couple of days, because neither of those options provided reliable cell service while driving. We finally reduced the stress of trying to get where we were going by buying a map, which was not quite detailed enough, and checking the directions at our lodging places the night before or at a cafe with free wifi, and then screen shotting them, so we could read the directions without cell service. How did we ever navigate in the 90s with just a Let's Go, Europe! and vague notions of the locations of train stations? We never felt as lost then as we did the first couple days of this trip with more information at our fingertips than ever. Perhaps because of that false sense of being able to access information immediately, I did not plan very much for our journey, knowing that our daughter had ideas that she hadn't completely committed to yet.

Finally checking in to our small hotel.

The view from our hotel in Heidelberg - overlooking the Neckar river from high on the hill above the Heidelberg castle, or schloss. Hence, the name of our hotel - Schlosshotel Molkenkur. In spring when there isn't a covid outbreak, this patio has dining tables.

Gummi bears on our pillows

Junk food requested by our daughter and her friends, whcih took up precious space in our carry on bags, which is all we were allowed (plus personal item, of which we brought the maximum size, of course)

Here she is! In front of her accommodations - an old mansion on the hillside. Twenty-four students and a few staff, including the residence hall parents, live here.

The walk from her house to the town was downhill through a small, wooded park

Loved the moss covered walls.

Universityplatz. I'm bungling the spelling here,

Time for cafe cremas.

Loved the flower shops - more photos to come. The flower ships in each town were better than the last. 

A closer view of the Marian statue in the platz

Some almost familiar stores along the Hauptstrasse

Small details along the way

At the Jesuit church in Heidelberg

The interior of the Jesuit Church

A recognizable image

An image not quite so recognizable - this is Ruah, an incarnational represenation of the Holy Spirit in as a woman.

The sanctuary of the Presbyterian church was decidedly quieter.

The building where our duaghter has class.

Our first dinner out was at a restaurant called "The Potato" (Kartoffel?) in a little town about 20 minutes away down the river. It took us about 20 minutes longer to get there as we bungled our way along without a map. But the meal was worth it - meat, potato, salad, beer, and apple strudel with ice cream.

A hunk of raw meat which we cooked on a burning hot lava rock was the star of dinner.

Good night, little town on the Neckar River, whose name I can't remember!

Recent recommendations

 A little time today to catch up. Here are a few recommendations from recent watching/reading:

The new season of All Creatures Great and Small is airing on Sundays on PBS. I think if you subscribe to PBS, you can watch them all at once, but we are enjoying the anticipation of the Sunday evening family viewing time once everyone is in their PJs and ready for school Monday morning. The seven year old starts counting the days until the show on Thursday. I loved James Herriot's books as an elementary student. I wanted to be a country vet for a number of years. The show derivates from the books, but it is excellent escapism. This season is all about James trying to discern whether he should stay with the Farnons or return to Glasgow. The theme of finding a home resonates a little too close to my own sense of rootlessness/desire for rootedness.  Ready to emigrate to Yorkshire. 

We also watched Ted Lasso with the older kids over the holidays. It is adult viewing, for sure - not just because of the terrible language - but the relationships between the team and staff are warm and forgiving. Wounded people finding friendship and acceptance makes for heartwarming viewing. I think I could also make a home in England. 

We also saw the box office hits Encanto and West Side Story recently, the first at home, the later in the theaters. I think I prefer Coco to Encanto, although the theme of Encanto of appreciating everyone's gifts in a family is a good one to celebrate, although I thought the plot was a bit thin. It's getting a lot of positive press, and the music is super catchy - almost too catchy. I'd prefer to alternate the playlist with the songs from West Side Story, but only the 15yr old went with me to the show. We went while waiting for her to compete in a track meet in College Station. It was a reward to her for coming with me to the George HW Bush presidential library. I'm a fan of presidential libraries - lots to learn about contemporary history: the stuff you live through and don't know how it will be remembered, if you even realize you are living through history at the time. 

Finally, my reading in 2022 is off to a good start: I think I mentioned that I finally read Edith Shaeffer's The Hidden Art of Homemaking. It made me feel nostalgic for our early parenting days, when I was both more intentional about parenting, and less bombarded by images of what parenting should look like. I was not nearly the artful and intentional homemaker that Shaeffer was - partly because I didn't enjoy the art of a good deal of it. Reading it made me feel slightly guilty - we'll never have musical evenings as a family, nor will we sit around and read Shakespeare, much as I'd enjoy that. But I can get the laundry washed and folded and set candles on the table and put up some curtains and practice hospitality when we can. These days that mostly means providing taquitos and ice cream sandwiches to the teenagers. 

Next, I turned from homemaking to historical fiction. I binge read Pachinko by Min Jin Lee over the weekend. It is an excellent portrayal of the Korean experience in Japan beginning before WWII up to the 80s as it follows a Korean family that had to emigrate from their island country to that of their colonizers. They struggle to make a living in a country where they are despised, but because of their poverty and the conditions in Korea, they are never able to return. It is a novel full of heartbreak but also strong depictions of family devotions - sometimes to the point of tragedy. The book is long, an epic about a family whose hard work eventually pays off, but with a price. We have friends who are Korean, and when we had dinner with them a few times they commented on how they prefer Korean to Japanese ramen and Korean soju to sake, etc. Until I read this book, I didn't consider that the preference was more than just taste. 

I also finished  Tish Harrison Warren's Liturgy of the Ordinary which was the Chritianity Today book of the year in 2017. Warren and her husband are both ministers in the Anglican Church, and as I mentioned, she is the writer in residence at a church in South Austin. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Kathleen Norris's Quotidian Mysteries, but with childcare and marriage added in. Norris's work focused more on the idea of making every moment holy, while Warren looks more for the holiness in every moment. Is there a difference? Perhaps only slightly. Several themes stood out - seeing each day as a gift from a loving God and honoring that gift instead of wasting it, as well as being content with the way things are instead of wishing them to be otherwise - which is my great failing. Her connection of dissatisfaction with being a consumer of life, instead of a grateful receiver, was pertinent. She also reflects on our attitudes toward work being oriented toward production rather than gift, reminding readers that Christians have a different perspective towards time, success, suffering, communion, etc. What we do should bless others - whether it's meal prep, sending emails, or some other form of what she calls "vocational holiness." There are lots of good quotes in this book, but not enough time to share them, because now I need to head to sleep, because glancing through this book again has reminded me that her last chapter on sleep is probably the one that was most necessary for me to read. She present sleep as something we do for others and as a response to God's generosity and our incarnated selves. I often, as in right now, skimp on sleep to do something I want to do instead of getting enough rest to serve my family and God tomorrow. 

So it's off to bed, even though I have a list of other things I wanted to write about, and a list of other things I should be doing. Maybe tomorrow. 

Reading Wrap-Up 2021

 It may be a couple weeks into January, but I still am motivated to review what I read last year. I counted 69 books - just added a few I read while researching my paper on Wendell Berry's poetry - just barely down from last year's 70. And I did not include literary journals or magazines like Plough that I subscribed to last year. I only skimmmed a local lit journal - Bat City Review  and a children's local publication - but I really love Plough.  I'm still reading my winter edition. It is only a quarterly, but a bargain at $18 a year, and I love the topics, the writing, the poetry, the photos. I'm not sure if a subscription supports the work of the Bruderhof, but it is worthwhile work. 

But I'll shelf that thought and move on to an accounting of my reading hours.

This year I read:

Nonfiction: 14 not counting spiritual books, but counting collections of essays

Favorite:  A Continuous Harmony. This early collection of Wendell Berry's essays focuses on connections between literary criticism and social commentary.  I enjoyed reading Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed for its local history and the author's honest assessment of her home state. She can accommodate the complex condition of loving a place and disapproving of some of its history. I've only just started to learn more about our local area - which makes me think I should include the books about Walking Austin and 60 Trails Within 60 Miles of San Antonia and Austin a friend gave me as a going away present. I didn't read them straight through, but I have read through all of the first, and most of the second, looking for places to explore.  (just boosted my number...) I also liked The Hidden Life of Trees and the Post secular religious fiction for teens book, as well as WSJ children's lit specialist Mary Gurdon's The Enchanted Hour, about reading aloud.

Ficton: 25

Favorite: Busman's Holiday and The Squire. Things Fall Apart. Jayber Crow. I also was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading Octavia Butler's Wild Blood. I read more fast fiction this year, like Liane Moriarity books and Malibu Rising, which are imminently entertaining but like junk food. Yum. Serious fiction reading was Elena Ferrante - I never did get around to reading Bleak House or any real classics this year. The Great Believers about the outbreak of AIDS in Chicago was also really good - well written, interesting, engaging.

Poetry Collections: 7

Fav: New Collected Poems or Blue Horses. Berry and Oliver are easy poets to read. I did like a couple of the poems in the Bat City Review, but many were unintelligible. I read some of Sally Thomas's Motherland, and loved what I read, but did not finish it, so not counting it toward my total. I also enjoyed a number of W. S. Merwin's and Galway Kinnell's poems, but I didn't spend a log of time with them.

Children's Chapter Books: 12
Winner: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Always fun to read, even the 4th or 5th time around. Bobbsey Twin books, Penderwicks, and Narnia. See below. I feel like I may have forgotten some titles here - did we read Cupcake Cousins this year? Did I forget them because they were forgettable? I also enjoyed Randa Abdel Fattah's two books about a Muslim girl in Australia. Interesting topical reads. 

Spiritual reading: 9 

Best of the bunch: This is a tough call. I thought I would like Acedia and Me better. Barking to the Choir  was very similar to Fr. Boyle's first book.  I was fascinated by the Enneagram book, and I finally read a Richard Rohr book, but this category needs an uplift next year.

Classics: 4 Achebe, Sayers, St Francis de Sales, Bagnold?, and 3 Narnia books - 3 Bobbsey Twins

Rereads: Children's lit series: The Penderwicks, The Bobbsey Twins, and Narnia books - which I have loved reading with our second grader. She loved the first two Penderwicks, but we paused after book 3. I know what comes in Book 5, when the sisters move away, and I know it will make her cry. I'll let her read those on her own. The Bobbsey Twins have been fun to read for the nostalgia factor, but they may be quietly removed from the shelves of many libraries for their portrayal of Dinah and Sam, the black couple who take care of the Bobbseys' house and gardens.  For instance, Dinah is compelled to spend a week with the Bobbseys aboard their new houseboat in order to cook for them even though she doesn't want to go because she gets seasick. I couldn't help wondering how big this houseboat was that it had room for a family of six and their cook.  

On the other hand, the seven year old began to lose interest in the Narnia books after the Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  We read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Prince Caspian, but I also was ready for a break after those four. I was not an enormous Narnia fan as a child, either, I think because the later books are not as charming as the first. 

I totally forgot Things Fall Apart. I think I confused it with another book because I was thinking it was a play. Maybe I confused it with something by Wole Soyinka, whom I read for the same modern lit class in college?  At any rate, in comparison with the new book by Nigerian author Abbi Dare, The Girl with the Louding Voice, Achebe's writing shines brighter. Dare's book was a good read - entertaining and thoughtful, but it seemed a little like magical realism that this girl would continue to have such good luck, whereas in Things Fall Apart, the good fortune of Okonkwo at the beginning of the book is obviously doomed. Is it personal taste/outlook that I find it harder to believe the book about good fortune?  Achebe is obviously a master storyteller, also. His choice of details and dialogue are complete enough to impact readers' imaginations with a movie like depiction of pre-colonial life, but spare enough to convey a sense of loss and longing. 

I have enjoyed my book clubs for introducing me to new books - hoping to keep up with some of the Book Riot Challenge again this year to keep up with my San Diego group virtually, but some of the challenges don't appeal to me at all and would require some effort to find. But I do appreciate the challenge to read outside of my comfort box.

Right now I am finishing Tish Warren's Liturgy of the Ordinary and have to finish Lab Girl, which I started months ago. Warren is writer in residence at an Episcopal church in south Austin, which I didn't know when I picked up the book in a little Free Library after seeing it recommended on the internet. This city is home to a fair share of creative people. 

Time to run! More to come!

Welcoming a new year

 Ah, 2022. Who has a birthday on February 2nd or February 22nd? It's a great year for you. 

For me, I hope that it will be a quieter year than 2021. Last summer was surely full of enough changes to last a couple of years. While we have a couple of graduations this spring, a First communion, and some travel (we hope), we don't have any major transitions like a son getting married, moving, and starting a new job to look forward to. 

As for those changes, they are still taking some getting used to. Our oldest and his wife were here for about a week at Christmastime. It was wonderful to have them here for an extended visit and to have the whole crew overlapping for a few days. We filled it with a trip to a light show, decorating the tree, a little shopping, a dinner out at a wellknown local restaurant, the Oasis.  The weather was mild, and we had a couple dinners on the back patio with good food and wine and laughter. The kids enjoy each other's company most of the time, which pleases my heart. Our second son who now lives in Boston was here for almost a week as well. On the eve of Christmas Eve, the kids exchanged gifts, and we gave our presents to our married children. My mother in law created a new stocking for our daughter-in-law, so we had ten to hang from the mantle. And then on Christmas Eve morning, the newlyweds flew off to see her parents. So Christmas morning was a little quieter.  Santa Claus may have been unmasked for the youngest, although she persisted in a narrative, perhaps out of the belief, as my older children admitted, that her parents were much more frugral than Santa, so he must be the one to deliver presents, even if Mom returns all of the ones that don't fit. Our first Christmas in this house in this new state of being was different, but it felt like a baptism of sorts of the new place. Chalking up the door lintel on Epiphany Sunday felt like a new start, also.  

As usual this time of year, I've been thinking about new starts and trying to break bad habits and start new ones. I've been working on the 7 hours of sleep again, although this week when school started up again, 6.5 was the average. I could tell over break that I was a much pleasanter and more productive person when I slept more, so that supposedly easy change should result in others, like biting my tongue before saying something negative. It bothers me that my children and husband accuse me of hating our new house - and of hating our old house, although I can understand why they think that. I didn't hate our old house - I hated living on a busy street. And I hated that it was an odd shade of green inside. And I didn't like dealing with the pool. But I did love the weather, the beach, the proximity of the mountains, the ease of getting around, the closeness of our friends, our parish, the library, walking everywhere.  The family thinks I hated it, as I've mentioned before, because I would often point out flaws when they talked about staying forever, because I knew we could not stay forever. Although now I question that - and that is the number one thing I have to stop doing to have any inner peace. We made a decision and now can only go forward and not back. And my tendency to question choices and experience regret is evident to the family, I'm humbled to say, so they think I hate it here, too, although again "hate" is too strong a word. I might hate driving around. I might hate how much debt we took on. But I don't hate the place or the people, the nearby parks and trails, the great sunsets, the way everything in the house works, at least mostly for now.  I don't want to be a regretter or a resenter or a hater.  So my biggest goal for this year is to work on thinking less about the past and being more grateful for the present. This attitude is a habit of mind I have been working on for years....  but I've pulled out a little journal again for writing down positive things that happen, and I'm trying to remember to stop my mind from wandering to dark places by repeating, "Jesus, I trust in you" or "have mercy on me, a miserable sinner."

Reading Edith Schaeffer's The Hidden Art of Homemaking during Advent has helped remind me of the responsibility I bear in helping my own children experience thanksgiving and joy and beauty. I long ago said I believed in spending money on beautiful things, but I have not put that into practice. Nor lately have I done a very good job of doing even small aesthetic acts, like lighting candles at dinner or keeping flowers in the house. But that is one of my goals this year also - let go of my cheapskate tendencies and get some new, clean furniture, plant more flowers, and keep the counters tidy (struggling with this one in between Christmas cards and FAFSA and tax season). Because our last three homes were places where it was difficult to buy or place new things, I didn't put much effort into decorating. Now it's time to be a grown up about housekeeping, so to speak. We left behind our worn -out couch, and I have been shopping new chairs and a new kitchen table and new patio tables. We have been lugging around a huge old kitchen table that was a hand-me-down from my roommate's parents when I was in grad school. My roommate didn't want it back when she moved out of our little apartment just before my wedding.  The kitchen chairs are from the thrift store, and the upholstered chairs are handmedowns from my grandparents and from an estate sale. I've been getting quotes for reupholstery for a couple of them - more than many new chairs, but I can't find what I love for less, so now I just need to finalize the fabric choices - a decision that is challenging me. (trying to think back to reading Don't Overthink It by Anne Bogel - another refrain I need to reiterate to myself...)  The patio tables we have now are from a Kmart closeout sale twenty years ago. I can't believe they have survived all these moves. They've come in handy when we've had parties. And because they still work, shopping for a patio table can wait, but it's on the list.

I also want to clean out the garage - even though we just moved. We didn't have time to go through the boxes of mementoes before our move, and now there are just too many of them. I need to shred some financial documents and then just reorganize so that each kid has one momento box, and that's all there is. Goodbye taxes from 2008. Goodbye sweet scribbles on copier paper that were created by who knows which child. Goodbye folders and folders of bureaucratic nonsense from my husband's old jobs. And goodbye old trailer that needs to be sold and extra bikes and box of posters from high schoolers. Someday I want to be able to park two cars in the garage. And I want to have space to make garden boxes for raised beds in the back yard. That day is coming this spring, I hope.  

Family goals? I want to get everyone out for a hike or camping trip before the heat arrives - a tough call even though we are a smaller group because of various trips - right now I'm typing in the student center at Texas A and M while I wait for my daughter to run in a two day track meet. We have a couple college visits planned with the son who is a senior. We are trying to plan a trip to Heidelberg, Germany, in February or March while our daughter is there studying abroad. She was not excited about going with Covid restrictions looming. Some of her friends cancelled, not afraid of losing a $3000 deposit. But she arrived and spent a week with my brother-in-law and his family in Nuremberg with her middle brother - whose semester abroad was supposed to happen in 2021 and didn't. They had a wonderful week just hanging out with cousins and getting to experience life in Germany. Now we're all tempted to move abroad. Or at least I am... 

Goals for Faith formation: working with the second grader on preparation for First Communion. I found my old Catholic Heritage Curriculum materials for second grade (getting recycled or passed on after this year...), and want to do some of the activities. We have done a good job of preserving read aloud time in the evenings, so I should incorporate more religious titles - the saint chapter books haven't been off the shelves for a long time. (except when they got moved this summer)

Also, I recommitted to a Bible Study for 8 weeks on the book of Exodus, and I started listening to the Bible in a year app - already a couple days behind, but trying to tune in while commuting. Returning to basics like scripture study for this year - and trying to avoid guilt inducing social media posts.

Finally, in a month or two, I'll make a decision about my own occupation for the next few years. I've really enjoyed substituting at the high school - I stepped into a long term position for five weeks and loved being around the teens. I also submitted one application to grad school - which has a very low rate of acceptance. And I start teaching ESL classes in 10 days. So by the spring I will compare all of my options - grad school likely will be eliminated - and decide whether to continue with adult ed or go back to school to get a teaching credential. 

Out of time. Posting without rereading or thinking any more about this... Reading wrap up in the next post...

Happy New Year!

2022 is almost here. It's hard to believe that another year has passed. A sign of aging - the slipperiness of time. Granted this was a busy year, perhaps one of the fullest we've ever had, and hopefully, the busiest we will ever have.  Blessedly, the past few months, although full, have given us time to breath. And although December was busy, it was a very normal Christmas season, almost quiet. We had all the kids home for a few days, which was wonderful. They enjoyed each other's company, and we enjoyed their company. We didn't do much - a light show and concert, a dinner out, a short hike, several delicious meals at home, Mass, gift exchange. We made some cookies for the neighbors, sent Christmas cards, and lounged a lot. A quick trip to visit grandparents and some of the cousins was made at the end of the month. And the two middle kids took off to Germany, a trip with a few bumps, for a week together, and then our oldest daughter will spend the semester there. All in all, the last few weeks were restorative. Now we are ready to start another year. Resolutions coming soon!

Photos of the last two weeks below: