Putting down roots, expat style

For the most part, our coming move is risk-free: we're staying in the same building, after all. I don't have to find new favorite places, new playgrounds, new routes to the train station, new good Small Boy walks; we're just going a few meters down the street. The one change the move will bring will be, of course, the actual apartment. We're going from a single floor layout to a two-floor unit, a change that will have its advantages (I won't hear R giving Small Boy breakfast anymore) and drawbacks (Small Boy is perfectly confident on stairs but it's been really nice not to have to worry about them in my daily life). We'll have the same number of rooms, but each room is a smidge smaller. We don't really need that extra smidge of space but I've grown used to the psychological openness of our spacious main room and I hope I won't miss it too much. You see, I couldn't agree more with what Mausi wrote here: "I think it's so important, especially as an expat, to have a peaceful oasis to come home to after a hard day of dealing with the natives." Especially if you are a non-employed expat, I think your home and environment is crucial to your well-being.

That's why I'm so pleased to have found a place with a little outdoor space in this neighborhood. I'm happy in this neighborhood, and so is R, and I'm not ready to leave here even if we are pretty much paying our maximum allowable rent. A more frugal couple would consider a different neighborhood, but moving to this neighborhood after four years in Small Village changed my life and I'm not ready to move on. The changes, taken one at a time, have been small but taken together they're far more than the sum of their parts. I didn't suddenly find a job - in fact I was employed (in the city, of course) when we lived in Small Village - but I feel closer to opportunities if I wanted them (and closer to child-care that would allow me to take advantage of them). I don't suddenly have more friends than I did two years ago - or, rather, I'm fairly certain I would have met most of these people anyway because I met them through pre-existing networks - but I have far more acquaintances and far more casual interactions with people than I used to. I think the few new opportunities that have come up, like writing for a local English-language magazine, could have been exploited anyway because they are language- and not place-dependent; I e-mail my contributions to the editor anyway. It's not as if moving to the city has solved all my problems. It's simply that I feel like I belong here in the city more than I ever belonged in Small Village.

I've grown terribly fond of this city; we're a good fit. Bern isn't for everyone - it's rather staid and slow to change even by Swiss standards and doesn't have much of a local "scene." Almost all of the exciting concerts or interesting art exhibits go to Zurich, the international organizations are located in Geneva, the bio-tech research firms (and the money they bring) to Basel. If you're a Manhattan kind of person, Bern would probably slowly bore you to death; if you think living in the national capital would be like living in Washington, DC, you'd be disappointed. But I'm happy here. It's a good fit. There's something about the city that has captured my heart. That makes me smile. That makes me feel, like Christina wrote here, grateful to have found this place.

Poetry Thursday - Picture this

This week's Poetry Thursday prompt was to take inspiration from an image. I first posted this picture after our vacation in October; I've been thinking about the man in it, and the riverbank on which he sits, for far longer than that.



Fresh water fugue

My father was a fisherman.
The rivers he fished echo through my childhood like a fugue.
Their names are smooth and round in my mouth
like the river rocks I rolled in my hands as a child:
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.

My father was a fisherman.
I grew up bathed in the light of his long love affair
with the waters of the American west.
Trained by an angling eye, I learned to worship
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.

My father was a fisherman.
He lived many miles from the headwaters of his heart
but summer after summer my father fished those rivers
and summer after summer those rivers restored him:
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.

My father was a fisherman.
From him I learned the rhythms of happiness,
rhythms of happiness that flow at the pace of trout streams.
Like a cygnet I imprinted on the river valleys of
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.

My father was a fisherman.
He gave me gifts that glistened like the scales of a brook trout,
gifts I used hard and fierce without thought to value
the way children use gifts, their measure taken only years later:
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.

My father was a fisherman.
And though I have watched the sun rise over the Grand Canyon
and seen it set on the Swiss Alps,
at night when I dream my heart dreams of
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.

For my father was a fisherman.
And perhaps there is river water in my blood
or some gene my father handed down.
Or perhaps it is simply that we shall always love best those things that we loved first:
the Yellowstone and the Firehole,
the Snake and the Missouri,
the Big Lost and the Big Wood.
The Madison.

***

You can read more poems and see the images that inspired them here.

A bend in the river

I spend part of almost every day in a city so lovely, so old and well-preserved, that it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The streets of my city are 800 years old; they are paved in cobblestone and bisected by a culvert that carries away the water from the five fountains of the Old Town. The fountains are over 400 years old and on summer days people fill their bottles from their springs. The sidewalks are covered by arched arcades - the Lauben - so that on a rainy day one can walk the length of the Old Town without an umbrella. To the south of the main street lies the Münster, the old cathedral that was stripped bare duing the iconoclasm of the Reformation; to the north the Kornhaus and the French Church with its Huguenot past. I walk these streets almost daily, the compact and almost perfectly preserved streets of the Old Town of Bern, paying no attention to the fountains, the Zytglogge, the Münster, until I suddenly catch an inscription, a date, 1526, 1602, and then I stop and look at the bend in the river, the protective U of the Aare curling around the extended finger of the Old Town, the bend in the river that made this a good place to found a settlement, the defensive bend in the river that hugs the city on three sides, and I think: this place has been inhabited for 800 years. This city has nestled up to the river like a child in the protective curve of a mother's arm for 800 years. My feet walk streets that have been walked for 800 years. The river made this city possible, made it defensible, made it livable. The river makes this city beautiful, makes it joyful. From above, from the Rose Garden, the river tucks the city in to bed, wraps it like a ribbon.

From a bend in the river, a defensive bend in the river, came this city, this city that is my home.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

You've seen When Babies Attack! But nothing could prepare you for When Toddlers Attack! With a Stick!













(photos taken at Old Faithful Geyser Basin)

Moose at Willow Flats, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Oxbow Bend (Snake River), Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Oxbow Bend (Snake River), Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Family traditions

I seem to be unable to upload pictures in the blogger post page; I've been posting pictures by importing them via the Hello program. But when I do that, I can't intersperse pictures and text, and each picture appears as a separate post. The four pictures below are meant to be read as part of a single post. If you read the captions, you'll see that Small Boy and I returned to some old family haunts on this vacation - in fact, Small Boy is the fourth generation of my family, going back to my maternal grandfather in the 1950s, to vacation in Ketchum/Sun Valley, Idaho. He's also the fourth generation to visit West Yellowstone and Yellowstone National Park, though I suspect that is a less unusual family destination than Ketchum, Idaho.

I have to confess that I expected some sort of epiphany upon seeing my son on the banks of his grandfather's beloved Madison River. I expected some sensation, as if by squinting and looking into the sun at just the right angle I would see my father on the far shore. I didn't. And much to my surprise, I didn't feel the loss of it. I was too caught up in watching my son throw rocks and occasionally point up to the sky and say "bihr" (bird). I was too caught up in the moment to think about the past. That's a good change in me, and a much needed one. My son is, of course, my parents' grandchild. But he's my son and R's. And above all, he is his own self. We will make our own traditions and find our own special places. I will always circle back to the Rocky Mountain West, to those sage flats, to the cottonwoods, dragging Small Boy in my wake; I can't stay away for too long. But I won't weigh those trips down with emotional baggage anymore - I carried it out with me in September, but like Small Boy throwing rocks I threw it in the river and left it there.

The trip home was lighter.

Small Boy on the banks of the Madison River 2006

My father, on the banks of the Madison River circa 1966

Me and Small Boy, Warm Springs Creek, Ketchum Idaho 2006

My mother and brother, Warm Springs Creek, Ketchum Idaho circa 1967

Gros Ventre River, Grand Teton National Park

Gros Ventre River, Grand Teton National Park

The Gros Ventre River, Grand Teton National Park

Small Boy at Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park

Small Boy at Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park

Near Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming