Postcard from Nuremberg, Germany: Beautiful Fountain

The legendary fountain was a side note. When we went to the Christkindlemarkt in Nuremberg last weekend with our very good-natured German friends, “turn the wishing ring” was not on my list of things to do. Things to do included the following: Eat grilled sausages. Drink gluhwein. Catch up with Carolin and Holger. Listen to Christmas music. Show Josie all the pretty things. Feed her copious sweets.

Finding a current, we swept along with the masses through what may be the busiest Christmas market in Europe. Above us, on the edges of the hauptmarkt, towered the Frauenkirche, which had been rebuilt painstakingly, stone by original stone, after World War II. A choir sang of St. Nick, hope, and climate change. Snowflakes stuck to our knit hats and scarves. Warm mugs of mulled cider warmed our fingers. Josie licked the frosting off a gingerbread Santa.

Caught up in the crowd, we soon found ourselves facing the Schöne Brunnen, an ornate, 60-foot, 600-year-old golden spire rising from the ground. One after another, tourists popped from the crowd to reach an arm up the wrought iron fence at the base of the spire. Pulling off a mitten, they would take two fingers and grasp a brass ring intertwined in the fence. Most gave the ring three turns. Someone near me said something about the ring bringing good luck. With Josie in my arms, I went up to get my ration.

When we returned to Amsterdam, I was curious about the wishing ring. Had I turned it correctly? And what would my reward be?

I began reading legends, which seemed to lead only to other legends. The fountain itself had been built to top the Frauenkirche, but when the time came to move the steeple, decked with 40 masterfully-carved limestone figures, the townspeople demanded that it stay where they could admire it. It would be called a fountain. And the ring itself? One legend said that an ironwork apprentice, wishing to prove himself to his master, installed the apparently seamless ring overnight. Another legend said the apprentice crafted the ring as a symbol of his love for a nobleman’s daughter. Some legends said that turning the ring would bring luck. Others said you would have a wish granted. Then I read that turning the ring a full 360 degrees would bring a baby to a hopeful young wife. I gulped—later, perhaps, but not now!—then remembered with relief that I hadn’t rotated the ring a full 360 degrees. Still, I was glad I had placed my fingers on this ancient craftspiece…until I read it was actually just a brass ring installed a mere century ago, shiny and easy for tourists to see. The original ring, supposedly, was blackened and old, hiding elsewhere in the fence lattice. And speaking of original, this was not the original fountain. The crumbled artifacts of the original are now housed in a museum, I learned. The fountain had been rebuilt in 1912, and restored again after the damage of World War II.

One of the things I love about Europe is the rich history, the medieval, the ancient. I love seeing an original just-about-anything, perhaps for the implication that permanence is possible. But quite often, I find that even “originals” aren’t original in the sense that I hope. They have been shined up, brushed off, freshly painted, carefully epoxied, with most parts replaced.

A few days ago, our friend Jess was playing with Josie in the living room while I fixed coffee in the kitchen. I heard Josie ask, “What’s that?”

Jess called to me, “Should I tell her?”

“What is it?”

“The tattoo on my ankle,” she said.

“Sure,” I answered, laughing. “You can practice for whatever you want to tell your own kids someday.”

“This is Mommy’s mistake,” she jokingly rehearsed.

“But do you really feel that way?” I asked her as I filled our mugs.

“Well, the only thing is, sometimes I regret putting anything permanent on my body.”

That has always been my rationale for not getting a tattoo. (Also, the only thing I’ve ever come up with to truly represent me would be my name, and a “Bonnie” tattoo would be a little redundant.) But on the other hand, hearing Jess talk about putting something permanent on her body reminded me how very impermanent the body is. Recent science suggests that the average age of the body’s tissues is seven to ten years. That means that you and I are walking around in bodies much younger than our birth dates. Many of the body’s cells live even briefer lives. The surface of the skin is replaced every few weeks. Tastebuds, every ten days. White blood cells, overnight. Bone and brain cells seem to have the most longevity—perhaps decades—but they change over, too. So, even when the human body is not stretching itself into an adult form—the work Josie’s body does every day—the original is never exactly original. When I look at the very ends of my long hair, soon to be trimmed, I don’t have to go back very far to remember what I was doing when those hairs first sprouted: I was asking Dan to take my picture next to our Christmas tree as I stood sideways, showing the small bump of our baby girl growing in my belly.

Of course, this impermanence is why we save a lock of baby hair. This is why my mother has my baby teeth in her jewelry box. This is why the smell of my husband’s skin comforts me so: it is the same smell, familiar and soft, even if very little flesh remains from the day I met him.

Jess’s tattoo could be a little anchor of something original and permanent in a sea of constant change. I realized that maybe it doesn’t matter whether the brass ring in the Schöne Brunnen is one century old or six. Maybe it doesn’t matter if the fence around the fountain is the precise fence that the apprentice originally tinkered with. Perhaps it is unimportant whether the fountain was meant as a church spire, or whether water ever had anything to do with it. And possibly, it doesn’t matter if the fountain is a 600-year-old original, or a replica built a century ago, or even a 60-year-old restoration. The pieces are holding a place—in roughly the right shape—of something that would otherwise too soon have disappeared.

Postcard from Amsterdam: Dear Sinterklaas

Dear Sinterklaas,

Happy Birthday! We know you have been watching from the rooftops recently, keeping a close eye on the children of Holland. (Hopefully, you don’t bother with adults’ behavior. From way up there, can you tell I haven’t vacuumed?)

Thank you for the special goodies you’ve been dropping in Josie’s red rain boot this week. The first time she put a carrot in the boot before bed, she said, “Sinterklaas’ horse going to be so surprised!”

The next few times, she didn’t say that.

Still, each morning, she has been surprised by the books and trinkets and crunchy pepernoten in her boot. All that remained today was for her to write her wish list, and leave it with the carrot.

This afternoon, as we pedaled through the Vondel Park in the bakfiets, she wore a festive paper hat in the spirit of your celebration.

“Josie,” I said, “did you know that tomorrow, Sinterklaas is going to come and bring a big bag of presents?”

“What’s he going to bring?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you think he’s going to bring?”

“Candy,” she said. “And maybe… maybe….”

“Maybe a train?” I asked.

“Yeah. A train.” Then she got excited. “AND SOMETHING TO PUSH IT ON!”

“Do you mean a track?”

“Yeah, a track!” Though she pronounced it like “crack.”

“We’re going to have to write Sinterklaas a note and leave it in your boot tonight.”

“Yeah! We gotta tell him to bring a crack!”

But by evening, Josie was too spent to engage in the epistolary arts. As Dan carried her to bed, I promised her I would leave a letter for you.

I want to tell you about a moment earlier this week. In the midst of all these days of wet and rain, the sun came out. Josie’s Grandma Rough met us at the skating rink on Leidseplein after our errands, where Josie tried out her new skates. Her favorite thing to do was to be pulled around the rink by the arms, gliding without effort. My lower back hurt after fifteen minutes of that, so I stood up and stretched. The sun blazed in my eyes, and I had a memory.

At this very time of year in 2005, Dan and I took a long-weekend trip across the Atlantic. We had been living in Minnesota—with Dan working for Northwest Airlines—for just about six months. We were getting into the swing of non-reving. He asked where I wanted to go for a pre-Christmas trip.

“Bruges?” I asked.

“Sounds good,” he said. We had visited this tiny medieval town in Belgium once before at holiday time, and I had been enchanted.

A few weeks later, we flew from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, then hopped on a train to head south. We were slow-blinking sloths as we rocked down the tracks, lulled nearly to sleep with our heads tipped together. Outside, it was cloudy and chilly. The passing landscape was dullish, but I knew soon enough my wonder would awaken.

We stopped in Antwerp to change trains, but just as we started heading for the next platform, we both stopped and looked at each other. There was a foggy-breath bustle in the station, which had big wide doors beckoning us into the heart of the city. We had been in Europe for a few hours now, having left the Netherlands and entered Belgium without yet taking a breath of outside air. Deciding to proceed to Bruges later in the day, we left our bags at the station and struck out, wanting that feeling of feet-on-the-ground. We strolled past diamond outlets around the station. On a busy shopping street, I bought my sister a Christmas present. Then we aimed for the town square. It was time to sit, for coffee and a snack.

On the Grote Markt, a skating rink had been set up. Dan and I settled in at a bruin café on the edge of the square to watch a group of schoolchildren skating. The day was still gray, the air cold and thinly foggy. The kids laughed and chased each other. Some shouted, others ran off for snacks. All around them, ancient buildings held fast, towers of spindly grace and sour-smelling stone. From the café window, the square seemed to be cast in black and white, except for the orange flames licking from barrels spaced around the rink to provide warmth.

Imagine growing up like this, I thought.

Four years later, my daughter would grab my hands, begging me to pull her around the ice again. Soon we would head home, hang up her skates, fix hot chocolate, and listen for you, Sinterklaas, tooting down the canal in your pakjesboot, reminding all the children to keep it together for just a few days until you deliver the mother lode on the 5th.

Really, what more could we ask for?

Postcard of Thanksgiving: Lost for Words

I’ve been frozen. All week, in my head, I’ve been working and reworking a blog post for Thanksgiving. What am I thankful for? My list kept spilling and gushing and unfurling and looping in my head, a catalogue of every teeny tiny aspect of my life, which I love and love and love. This week, certainly, I’ve been grateful for the big things: family, fortune, health, and the icing on the cake this year: a view from the dinner table of a historic, charming, buzzing city that allows us to feel, for the most part, at home.

But what could I write that wasn't already obvious? At a loss, I decided to try to think of something that I’m not grateful for. I’m not at all grateful that my beautiful Grandma Myrt passed away this year—but each morning as I pour my coffee and feel my lips quiver just the way hers did as she anticipated the burn of the first sip, I only feel thankful. Thankful for every moment I spent with her, thankful for the chance to love someone so much that I miss her with a sweet sting, and thankful for each small part of me that came from her.

Little joys kept leaping at me. One day this week, when I picked Josie up from school, I handed her a banana to eat in the bakfiets on the way home. I’m thankful for our bakfiets, I thought. Then I remembered a summer day in Minneapolis, many months earlier, when I spotted a little girl eating a banana in the back seat of the car as her mama drove past. I had been walking down the sidewalk carrying my baby girl, who seemed to want to do everything independently before her arms and legs and fingers were quite ready. I yearned for the day when she could sit and eat a banana, dealing with the peel all by herself. It seemed as big a deal as graduating from high school, as big a deal as anything a person could accomplish. I’m thankful for this banana, I thought as I pedaled off. Josie chewed peacefully, content for the moment with her abilities.

At home, we were greeted by her grandparents, who took over for awhile. I slipped upstairs with my computer, thinking, I’m grateful for Josie’s four healthy grandparents. I’m grateful for time to myself. I’m grateful that I could choose to skip this time to myself, and walk right downstairs and join everyone. I’m grateful for stairs. I’m grateful I can walk. I’m grateful… and on and on it has gone.

I did stay upstairs for awhile, though, puttering on my computer, peeking at something exciting I had recently discovered online: my book, Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA, had just become available for pre-order on Amazon and Borders (and by request from any local independent bookseller). It was yet another thing to be thankful for, amazed by, speechless about. Carrier is a memoir about navigating into family. Given the risk I run of passing a genetic disorder to our children, Dan and I had to make a series of thorny choices as we started our family, listening to science, history, our hearts, and each other. (There's more about the book here.) Though I may never be perfectly comfortable with the risks inherent in sharing our story, I realized something as I thought about the book’s upcoming release: I am grateful for words. Even though I sometimes feel lost for words, I know I would be truly lost but for them. Even when I don’t know exactly what to say, or how to say it. I am grateful, I realized, for the chance to explain.

And I felt especially thankful for the possibility that my story could matter to someone else.

I stared at the book’s cover online for a few more minutes, filled with a mix of hope and gratitude. Then, I clomped down our perfectly good stairs on my perfectly good legs and, without a word, scooped up my perfectly good girl.

Postcard from Tulum: Souvenir

The pattern is always the same. In the lead-up to a kid-free getaway with my husband, I thirst for the break. I crave the long, trouble-free plane ride, wherever it may lead. I consider with quiet joy the fact that even half a globe’s worth of jet lag is easier to handle than a week’s pileup of sleep-disturbed nights.

Then it comes time to pack my suitcase. I kiss my daughter goodnight, knowing I will see her only briefly in the morning. I sleep fitfully. What if something happens? What if our little getaway becomes a disaster?

This time, we were headed for Tulum, Mexico, for a dear friend’s wedding. In the days before our departure, I fantasized about sipping margaritas on the beach, eating real chips and salsa, staying up late by the fire with old friends. But the night before leaving, right on cue, my imagination took its dark turn.

As a girl, when I heard my baby brother cry out from his room at night, I thought pirates were stealing him. When I fell in love with the man who became my husband, my stomach lurched to picture him in a devastating wreck. In my head, I’ve attended every funeral I fear. Now, as a wife and mother, I’m doubly inventive when it comes to possible disasters, and fierce in rejecting those imaginative impulses before they become full stories in my mind. The hardest time to keep them at bay, though, is in the middle of the night, just before my family separates. What if Josie never sees us again? All for what?

In the morning, before going out the door, I grabbed a sticky-pad of lined yellow paper and scribbled a fast letter to Josie—words I had composed in my head while lying awake the night before. I signed it and laid it in my sock drawer. If something were to happen, someone would surely find it.

We kissed Josie goodbye, thanked her grandparents, and left. To board a plane and enter the forbidding thin air. To walk through the airport in Cancun where officials scanned passengers for signs of epidemic flu. To ride two hours in the dark to Tulum, where Hurricane Ida thrashed just offshore. To spend our first night in a room where bats swooped and chattered. To swim in a jungle cenote, its small-pond surface jittering under torrential rain, as friends on the dock half-joked about alligators. To snorkel in a cold, dark cave. To watch wind tearing palms. To sop up the water gushing through the windows, doors, and ceilings of our room. To wonder when the electricity would be back. To body-surf under black skies.

On the last full day of our trip, Ida hurled northward and away. Dan and I found our seats on the beach, which smoldered bronze under a prodigal sun. We sniffled through a wedding between two people whose particular disasters were anything but imagined, yet whose bond created a perfect whole.

It was the most I had ever missed Josie. Which is to say, more than I thought I possibly could. Perhaps it was the nostalgia. When she was nine months old, the three of us escaped Minnesota’s spiteful February and visited Tulum for the first time. We rented a hut on the beach with an outhouse and mosquito nets. On our first night, after Josie went to sleep, Dan and I stepped out into the white sand, awash in blue under a full moon. Sipping beers, we held hands, kept an ear on our hut, and talked over the wave-wash. With each breath, we purged the cold, dry hustle of home, and took in the slow syrup of an easy pace. On that trip, skies were sunny, but the wind blew so hard that the water looked like blades. Anyplace but the beach was insect-thick. I still remember the sight of a black mosquito, spider-legged, on our daughter’s plump white cheek. After that, we never left our patch of shore. We watched iguanas drag their tails through the sand, leaving a dividing line between their footprints. We ate lobster, served Josie her first juice (watermelon), and swung together after each meal in a rainbow hammock. We helped Josie practice sitting up, balancing her on a big coconut for a quick photo. At mealtimes, eating whatever Mayan dish had been prepared, we handed Josie her new favorite toy: a coconut seed, nearly round, bright green, fitting perfectly in her fist, safe for gumming, fun to roll. We took it back to Minnesota, where it eventually rolled under her bed, dried up, and turned gray. I found it when moving day came, just as I now find a letter to Josie each time I dig deep in my sock drawer.

Last week, I wanted to bring her a souvenir from Mexico. I looked in a handicrafts stand in the middle of the jungle. I scoured the beach for a perfect shell. I considered waiting to peruse the airport shops. But, on the night of the wedding, I realized that the answer was obvious.

In Amsterdam, I pulled a green coconut seed from my bag. Handing it to her, I watched her face carefully. “Do you remember this?” I asked her. “From when you were a baby?”

But what I really meant was, I remember you.

Postcard from 28,000 Feet

They are giving us Internet on our plane today.

Airlines are formed, reformed, broken apart, discontinued, and merged. Leg room contracts, then again. Snacks come and go and come back. Smoking sections at last became extinct.

And now, goodbye, goodbye to another era in airline travel: the Great Disconnectedness. That time when I so often have managed to accomplish those things that don’t happen in a wired world: reading a book. Skimming US Weekly. Writing long journal entries. Movie-watching. Eating without multitasking. Inventing toddler games from raw materials: seatbelt-latches and window-shades.

Today, instead of hand-writing a letter or organizing my address book, I post from the stratosphere. We are above most weather, somewhere between Atlanta and Cancun, with light turbulence joggling our MD88, nonstop metallic rush of air blasting my ears. It is hard to imagine more of a no-place. We are in space, and there is nothing here.

But yet, here in our crosshair of compass degrees, are we: 155 souls, including two tired residents of the Netherlands, listening to the pilot announce the weather at the beach. Still chewing our Sun Chips and cookies. Trying not to look as the lady in the red business suit loses her lunch in the lav directly to our left. Unable to read our books, with eyes too wobbly to focus after 10 hours en route across the Atlantic, two more in the Atlanta airport, two more on this last puddle-jump, with just two more to go in a shuttle once we land, to see our friends and celebrate a wedding near Tulum. For three days. Before we turn around and fly again, nowhere and everywhere.

Postcard for Halloween: RIP, Filippe

Huismuis, Filippe A.

Filippe A. Huismuis, age unknown, of a certain canalhouse on the Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, died earlier this week.

He was first sighted in late August 2009, and met his end in an unfortunate accident in the early morning hours of October 25, 2009.

Mr. Huismuis was distinguished among mice by his fatness, his ability to fool people into thinking he was gone for good, and his fluffy-charcoal-gray cuteness, undeniable despite light scarring over the brow. His kinked tail betokened his bravery. A veteran scavenger, he steered clear of boxed poison, Frisbees, soccer balls, and amateurish traps. His eyesight was remarkably poor, which put him in awkward situations from time to time, such as the afternoon when the lady of the house, carrying a hot pot from the stove, “kicked something and heard it hit the cupboard” but saw nothing when she searched the floor.

Those who knew Mr. Huismuis either loved or hated him. Jopie, the black-and-white cat who came to visit for a few days prior to his death, loved him. The adults of the household he frequented disdained him very much. Josie, the girl who first saw him only after the building owner had caught him in a cage, cooed, “Don’t worry Filippe, you’ll be okay, we’re gonna help you with your tail. Go to sleep awhile. You need to rest.” The building owner loved Mr. Huismuis so much, even before meeting him, that she opted for a live trap instead of deadly methods, and, in a kindhearted plan, intended to turn a city mouse into a country mouse.

In a sad turn of events, however, Mr. Huismuis never saw his country home. Intending to drive him deep into the polderlands the next morning, the building owner nestled him in a shoebox and placed him outside for the night. There, starving after many days of crumb-stinginess by the humans he depended on, stung by the insult of having his tail caught in a trapdoor leaving him unable reach the peanut-butter cracker that lured him, exhausted from his undignified confinement, stunned by multiple camera flashes, and terrorized by loud voices and human handling, Mr. Huismuis died peacefully of old age.

Mr. Huismuis is survived by dozens of ex-wives, over a million children, and his most recent girlfriend, Pinda, who is still on the lam.

He was preceded in death many, many, many times over, but still not enough, judging by the Rentokil free-estimates van, which has been zipping up and down the canal in recent weeks.

A celebration of his life will not be held.

Interment took place on garbage day.

In lieu of charitable donations, lavish gifts may be sent directly to the human family who suffered his presence.

Please sign the guest book.

Postcard from Croatia: Lingering

On our last day in Croatia, I sat outside Pile Gate in Dubrovnik, waiting on the drawbridge with our suitcases. Dan had hiked up the hill with Josie on his back to collect our car, and would soon be back to pick me up. I had been mopey that morning, and even shed a few tears.

“I didn’t get to go to the pharmacy museum,” I had said to Dan earlier, trying to explain my mood. He looked at me, dumbfounded. I was the one, after all, who had spent our entire last morning in Dubrovnik showering, packing, and generally dilly-dallying, not even coming close to leaving our hotel room.

“I’m just sad we’re leaving,” I said, clarifying, both for him and for myself. I do not, as it turns out, much care about pharmacy museums.

Sitting just outside the city walls with our luggage, watching fresh tourists entering the Old Town for the first time, I took a deep breath and grasped my last few moments. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a spiral strand of my hair catch the morning sun as it floated from my head into the air. It stuck to the gray pant leg of a twenty-something man, who wrapped his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulder and carried a tiny bit of me back inside the city walls. In my funk, I thought that would make a magical detail for my writing. But I soon realized I was being over-sentimental. I was not some young scholar leaving the city where she studied and left her heart. I was just a tourist who had spent two nights. I wasn’t, actually, bereft to be leaving Dubrovnik. I had certainly had my moments with the city, and found many glittering things to admire. There was one moment, as we descended the stairs back to the streets after a gorgeous morning spent circumnavigating the city atop its ancient walls, when I felt a pang: What if I never climbed those stairs again? Had I lingered long enough?

But the truth was that I was just sorry that our vacation—our family vacation—was ending. For us, family vacation differs from our many other trips and travels. On a family vacation, we stay in place longer. On a family vacation, there is almost no itinerary—at least not with set times. Therefore, on a family vacation, there are fewer moments of frustration. If Josie wants to wait another hour to get dressed, so be it. We have all day. And the day after.

After leaving Split, we had spent three days at the beach in Orebic, then another three days swimming and hiking in Mljet National Park, before ending our ten-day trip in Dubrovnik.

There were things that made our trip uniquely Croatian: Pomegranates, mandarins, walnuts, olives, and grapes, all ripe and ready at the same time. A particular bony, buttery type of sea bream. Slavic affricates echoing through Roman ruins. Serious dance music piped onto the upper deck of Jadrolinija car ferries. Grk wine, Karlovacko pivo, peach juice always on hand for kids. Traditional costumes and song-filled wedding marches on the Stradun in Dubrovnik. Basketball courts, slick and new, bent to fit against crumbling fortress walls. A morning swim alone, it seemed, in the Mediterranean, syrup-smooth and clear.

But in other ways, our vacation could have taken place anywhere. Anywhere, Josie could have watched and watched as a cat toyed with a grasshopper. Anywhere, Dan and I could have stayed up late eating chocolate and watching movies, knowing that only another slow, easy morning awaited.

We could have been anywhere for all the times the two of us stood arm-to-arm, heads cocked, smiling at our daughter as she chased pigeons, or answered her imaginary phone, or “read’ the map, or demanded another bite of fish “from the tail!”, or danced to street music, or fired a bouncy ball around the hotel room, or tackled a creaky playground, or played with her tiny horses in the sand.

We didn’t have to be on St. Mary’s Island for Josie to take off on a lizard-hunt, hiking straight to the top of the hill, demanding, “What lizards eat, Mommy?” (I answered “Bugs!”, wondering what she’ll ask when she turns three, and whether I’ll know any of the answers.) Indeed, we didn’t need to be in Croatia to eat ice cream every day. And it didn’t have to be the Peljesac peninsula for me to sit in an open-air restaurant, watching Dan and Josie throwing rocks into the sea, and seeing our daughter spotting a moonrise with a first-timer’s squeals.

But those were the things I loved the most about our trip to Croatia. As we drove to the airport, Dan glanced over and caught me teary-eyed again. But I wasn’t just sad. I was more thankful than I had felt in a long time. The surprise for me was finding, when we returned to Amsterdam and I saw the canals reflecting the evening’s first twinkly lamplight, that I still felt that way.