European Vacation

We are planning a European vacation!  We have been talking about when to take a family trip to England for a while now and next year feels right.  That is not a statement I can substantiate definitively but the fellas are great ages to really enjoy this; they are old enough to travel well and young enough to soak it all in and see it through the eyes that we sometimes forget we have when we are adults.  In our infinite wisdom we decided that since we will be in the general vicinity we should also visit France and Germany on the same trip.  We have always enjoyed a good challenge but we then realized that 2012 is the year the Summer Olympics will be held in London and the year that Brits will celebrate the Queen’s 60^th Jubilee.  Not everyone may be familiar with the latter but it is a big affair if you are British and closes schools and results in street parties and potential chaos for travelers.  We thought about 2013, we discussed going earlier or later in the year, we stared at each other disappointed for about 15 seconds and then we decided we should map it out and see just how impossible this could be, surely not impossible enough to thwart us?

Subsequently we have been search engine fiends looking for killer deals, short listing places to visit and then adding three more, and being creative about ways to get from here to there and back again in about two weeks.  When I announced that I was making a spreadsheet my delighted hubby chuckled and said “Sweet, now I know we’re really going!”  We have to make sure everyone has finished the school year and we want to be certain we can make our annual trip to Iowa to visit family at a different time next year without throwing everything into disarray.  Then there are passports, arrangements to meet friends that I haven’t seen in years, plans to see friends that are temporarily living in Stuttgart, an uncle to be introduced, and reserving rooms in the Bed & Breakfast that used to be my parent’s home.  My hubby and I have a list of things we want to do that has to be culled and places to add that the fellas have suggested, not the least of which is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe.  As an adult I am appalled that we would travel all that way to ride a big wheel but as a child I would have understood it unequivocally and this is their trip too so it has been added to the list.  The problem is not where to go and what to see, it is where to stop and we keep adding to the list rather than subtracting.  It seems like a wonderful problem to have and I realize how fortunate we are to be contemplating such an adventure together.

As a self proclaimed over-thinker my mind has wandered and tried to determine if the fellas will be remotely interested in visiting the school I attended and how we manage to visit the local pub with them in tow.  Will they appreciate the beauty and respect the serenity of Notre Dame and what to do if they say that the food that has been prepared for them is awful?  We’ve discussed and over-analyzed how to mentally prepare them for each day as it will be packed but we do not want to feel rushed.  There is so much fun in planning and anticipation and we want to plan the days and then let them flow, be spontaneous and drink in the experience, every delicious new moment.  For now I lie down with a picture of us huddled together having our picture taken at the top of the Eiffel Tower and it’s a great way to fall asleep!

Girlfriends

I underestimated the value and the strength of female friendship for a long time.  I went to an all girls’ school from the ages of eleven to eighteen so there was no shortage of female friendship and I may have taken that for granted.  I actually loved going to a Girls’ School because it removed all pretension of having to be cool, calm and collected around boys.  We were able to be silly and girly and we had the freedom, which I believe was the intention of our parents, to focus on our studies without the distraction of boys.  It did however serve to fuel a curiosity about the opposite gender that had to be satisfied largely on the bus ride home.  Some rather curious girls, who shall remain nameless, even propagated a stunt that was supposed to involve three members of the Girls’ School infiltrating the Boys’ School which was separated from us by a big wooden door.  As to how this was going to satisfy the mystery that are boys was not an integral part of that plan but as news of the plot spread there was increasing interest in its outcome.  In my memory that door is twenty feet high, about two feet thick and creaked loudly on the rare occasions it was slowly opened.  It was also right by the teachers’ lounge so no-one in their right mind would have chanced walking through it without clear and specific instructions from someone with authority. 

Therefore, it seemed perfectly logical at the wise age of about fourteen to think that a grand heist could be pulled off by crawling through one of the windows that was on a level with the driveway that passed the Boys’ School on the way to the Girls’ School.  Entry was discussed and planned with great detail but it appears that there was no escape plan; luckily that fell into place ultimately.  The first one in was the only one in because at the very moment of infiltration a teacher from the Girls’ School appeared nonchalantly around the corner.  Of course theories have since been exchanged about this perfect timing and the apparent unperturbed manner with which this teacher headed towards the small crowd by the window.  So pull her out or shove her in was the only choice and they shoved her in and the window slammed shut.  Feeling quite triumphant for a moment that one lone girl in a classroom of boys soon found out that she stood out like the proverbial sore thumb and consequently the next teacher that passed which was shortly thereafter, also with alarmingly good timing, escorted her back to the Girls’ School.  She did at least get to go through the door or the Iron Curtain as we called it, which gave her some credibility but then she had to explain what on earth she thought she was doing.  

Overall the Deputy Headmistress took it well and I thought she may have actually smirked when I tried to make it sound like I had innocently tripped and haphazardly fallen through a window but she was rarely given to such facial expressions so perhaps I imagined it.  I must have been convincing when I said that no-one was involved in my untimely and unfortunate dive so sentence was passed and I was given the first “detention” ever in the history of the school.  In fairness it lasted about twenty minutes on the last day of school because none of the teachers were interested in staying a moment longer than the end of the school year required.  I was also the local hero for about an hour so at least longer than my detention lasted.  This innocent fun and other episodes I can come back to at a later date did not alert me to the camaraderie of female friendship.  I merely took it for granted that there would always be women who shoved you through windows and for whom you covered when necessary.  I did not truly value what women bring to another woman’s life until I was far away from my family, living in Okinawa, Japan and needing someone to be my sounding board so that I would not worry my parents.  Only then did I realize just how much women need women.  We women need each other to patiently listen to all the details of our woes, we need each other as a conscience sometimes, and we especially need each other to tell us that he’s not got enough for us; our girlfriends are the few we will actually heed in this arena. 

As women we bring warmth and understanding and lack of judgment to each others’ lives.  We seem to understand, even when we cannot explain it, why something made our friend irrationally insane and we share those hurt feelings and want to protect each other.  We want the best for our girlfriends and mine seem to put my best interests ahead of their own in a remarkably selfless way that demands no thanks or explanation.  Women need each other to tell us that we are not crazy or rotten to the core for feeling the way we do sometimes and this kind of understanding makes us want to be better people.  We can live without fixing it but we cannot live without talking about it.  If the women in my life did not know how much I value you and love you, I hope that now you do…thank you!         

Fifty Years!

This is dedicated to love and hope and being with the right person through thick and thin.  This is written in celebration not sadness.  This is my opportunity to recognize the rarity of true love and the miracle of commitment.  This is a confession that I never understood how uncommon the partnership my parents shared was until we faced the most severe of challenges together.  Even then that understanding was not truly cemented until I met my husband and had the opportunity to share that same gift; true love, deep respect, and friendship.  This is a commemoration of two lives brought together by chance.  Two people who barely knew themselves before they bound their lives together in marriage and shared their dreams.  They had two children together, lived in almost twenty homes together, and owned a business together.  On November 4^th 2011 they would have celebrated 50 years of marriage together.

When my husband and I were engaged and busy making plans for our big day and life after that with our new family I decided to read the letters my parents had exchanged when they were engaged.  The letters were a joy to read and showed them young and in love and planning for a life together.  My Mum was rather bossy at times in these letters and my Dad was tender, neither of which I saw very often when I was growing up.  It was a dynamic that I saw more of the older I got and came to realize that my Mum’s quiet strength complemented my Dad’s ambition and big personality.  Equally, men of my Dad’s generation were not demonstrative but his tenderness was always there and he respected my Mum and her opinion with all his being.

One of the most beautiful moments I have ever witnessed, and I say again that this is written in celebration, not sadness, was when my Mum asked my Dad to share with her what he was going to say at her funeral.  Despite him trying to hide it, my Mum had worked out that my Dad had been writing her eulogy. My breath catches whenever I think of it and the bravery they demonstrated, my Mum for asking and my Dad for honoring her wish.  He asked to wait until he felt he had it perfected and then one evening he quietly said, and he was not a shy retiring man, that he was ready.  He had written it down but he did not look at the sheet of paper in his hand, instead he looked into my Mum’s eyes and never wavered for a moment.  He spoke slowly and steadily and before long my Mum and I were holding each others’ hands and had tears streaming down our cheeks.  He soldiered on, missing his partner and friend already but wanting to pay her this tribute, wanting the opportunity to tell her what she meant to him and what their life together meant to him before she was gone.  He finished with a poem by Leo Marks he had found and read to her before:

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause

For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours
And yours

I dedicate this blog to my Mum and Dad in celebration of their 50^th Wedding Anniversary.