Well, we’re a month and a half into our six month German
adventure, and I can now say with certainty that I’m really glad we’re doing
this. The first few weeks were rough for me. In fact, right after we moved into
our apartment, I told my dad that I really didn’t see how I could possibly stay
here until February. Everything was just
a little too foreign for me. Not unmanageable, but difficult, and definitely
more of a change than I had been expecting. Life in Germany—at least for me—is
slow. There are no shortcuts here, and I am only now realizing how important
shortcuts and instantaneous results had become to me since my kids were
born. I was one of the last people I
knew to get a driver’s license because until Lucy was born, I really didn’t see
a reason to deal with the hassle of a driving. But as soon as I got my license,
I couldn’t imagine how to live without the convenience and freedom afforded to
me by having a car. So when we moved here, the adjustment from car to public
transportation was a really rough one. It was hot and I was always tired and
cranky, and walking to and from the grocery store was an almost unendurable
chore for me. The absence of a microwave drove me crazy, and so did the fact
that I was going to have to hang all our laundry on a line to dry, which I had
never done in my life.
Those things still bother me every once in a while, and a
day has yet to go by when I don’t miss driving. But there is something to be
said for doing almost everything the slow way, especially for someone with a
lifelong history of anxiety and depression. When I go to the store, I have to
have some idea of what I am going to get, and there is never any extra room in
my bags for impulse purchases. There’s no bus to the closest grocery store, and
making the walk there and back with the girls takes at least an hour, and that
bit of extra effort makes me very careful not to waste anything. When I cook, even when it’s something small,
I have to stand at the stove to make sure it doesn’t burn. I can’t just pop it
in the microwave. Then, because we have such a limited number of dishes and
utensils, I can’t let dishes pile up in the sink for a week before I get around
to washing them. If I know I am going to want to wear an article of clothing, I
have to be sure to wash it two days before I need it, because sometimes the
clothes take that long to dry.
They are such minor changes—such minuscule inconveniences—but they can seem like a big deal to someone for whom it’s sometimes hard to find the energy to just
get out of bed. They can seem like a big hassle, but at the same time, the
little chores are a huge blessing. I can’t rush through these little day-to-day
activities. They have to be done deliberately and daily. And it’s good for me.
It’s good for me to have little things to focus on during the day. Hanging the
laundry, cooking the eggs, getting outside even when I don’t want to be because
otherwise we won’t have any food for the day. And the fact that we try to save
as much money as possible for weekend trips means that I am much more
appreciative of the little luxuries during the week. I now savor my weekly
Starbucks latte. I appreciate the coconut scent of the bubble bath Thom bought
me. It’s the little things.
It was also really difficult for me to adjust to our
drastically downsized living space, and to living in an apartment, which I’d
sworn I would never do again. There are definitely some real drawbacks—less
privacy (both in and outside of the apartment) and more awareness of and
anxiety over the amount of noise the kids make during the day are the big
ones—but there are good things too. The best thing about living in a smaller
space is that I can always hear the kids playing. It can be annoying when I
want peace and quiet, but it enables me to get to know the girls on a whole
different level than I did when we lived in a three-story, 2000 sq. foot house.
I can never get away from them, and they can never do anything in secret. I
hear every word they say to one another during the day, so I’m aware of what
they are thinking and talking about. This week, for instance, they have been
using their Barbies to create different configurations of families.
Step-parents, half-siblings, single parents, and LGBTQ families—figuring out
the similarities and differences between different kinds of families has been
at the heart of each of the “stories” they create. Having the opportunity to notice this theme
and the ways they discuss it when they are “alone” together has been a real
blessing. Lucy’s biological father is coming from England next Wednesday and
will be staying with us for a week, and knowing that they have been talking a
lot about how to make sense of nontraditional families, I’ve been able to ease
some concerns or worries I don’t think they would have brought to me if I
hadn’t known to bring them up. We’ve
been able to talk a lot about how every family is different and there is no set
rule as to how a family has to operate. Even families that look like ours from
the outside won’t necessarily interact with one another in the way we do, and
that’s okay. It’s been a huge weight off Lucy’s shoulders to learn that she
isn’t required to think of any particular person to fit a clichéd, static
character. Mommy is just Mommy, Daddy is just Daddy, and Will is just Will. We
all love her, we all want what is best for her, and that is really all that
matters.
Speaking of learning, we found out last week that the girls
aren’t actually required to attend school while we’re in Germany because we are
here for less than six months. Thom and I decided to let Lucy decide what she
wanted to do—after all, we weren’t going to be the ones sitting in the
classroom every day—and after a lot of pro/con lists, she decided to opt out of
school and begin homeschooling now instead of when we get back home. We worked
really hard not to encourage her one way or the other, but Thom and I both
agree that she made the best choice. This way, we are free to travel without
having to take the school calendar into consideration, she will be home when
friends and family come to visit, and she won’t have the anxiety of trying to
learn in an environment where the teacher and other kids all speak a different
language. If we were going to be here longer, it would have been great for her
to go to school and learn the language and socialize with the other kids, but
since we’re already almost a third of the way through our time and she speaks
only a few words of German, it really didn’t seem worth it. Plus, there are so
many educational opportunities available while we’re living here and it makes
me happy that she will really be able to focus on our weekly trips to museums,
historical sites, etc. instead of zoning out because she’s spending her week
desperately trying to understand what is going on in her classroom. This way, she can continue to work on her
reading and writing skills in English, learn new math skills without having to
translate the new information to English before she can work on the concepts,
and spend her weekends learning about science and history (while also having
fun). We can use this time to figure out what we’re doing and what works for us
before we get back to Atlanta and get involved with the homeschooling community
there. It’s a nice little emotional and mental transition to a different kind
of learning and a very different lifestyle.
We miss everyone back home, but we are really having a good
time. So far we have toured a palace in Ludwigsburg, spent the day at a natural
history museum and art museum in Karlsruhe, explored a medieval
hospital-turned-history museum in Bad Wimpfen, and spent a very exhausting
weekend at a technology museum, Andy Warhol exhibit, and Marianplatz in Munich.
We’ve also spent hours and hours at the parks in Heilbronn (amazing
playgrounds), eaten a ton of gelato (one euro for a cone—can’t beat it!), and
adjusted to daily life in Germany. I can’t wait to see what the next few months
bring. Maybe I’ll even update this blog again!
P.S. We are always ready and willing to have visitors from
the US stay at our apartment. Come on over, friends!
