The Season's Bounty

Tuesday. A market is held in Stockel today. If I grab bus 316 to the Metro and then ride one stop to the end of the line, I’ll be in the thick of things. Stall after stall of fresh vegetables and ripe fruit manned by pink-cheeked women wearing aprons. The clothes vendors will be out as well, with bohemian skirts and gauzy blouses, t-shirts and children’s clothes. Cheap jewelry sits on tables covered with black velvet. Purses hang from awning supports. A man and woman in white sell freshly made Belgian waffles. Women line up to take home whole chickens cooked to glistening perfection on a rotisserie. The cheese man, stout and dark-haired, cuts wheels and blocks on command. The frite shack does brisk business, and a side street is lined with cut flowers and blooming plants.

A man selling brightly colored tablecloths begins to speak to me in Dutch when I stop to examine his goods. I look up at him and ask “Do you speak English?” He smiles and reveals missing teeth, and then launches into his sales spiel in accented English. He asks if I’m British, and with a bit of reservation, I tell him, no, I’m an American, but I live in Belgium now. He smiles so wide I think his ears are going to fall into his grin. He taps his chest and says, “I love America ! I love it!” He then enthusiastically describes his brother in America and how he goes to visit him in Ellie. “You know Ellie?” For a moment I’m lost, and then it hits me, he’s saying L.A . He has traveled up and down the California coast and visited Yosemite . He’s going back in October—he can hardly wait!

I wonder what California looks like to a Belgian. Glass, steel, wood, concrete and smog. This is a place where every building is made of brick, even the barns and the sidewalks and driveways. Belgians are in love with clay and stone, from their ceramic tile floors to their red tile roofs and the cobblestone driveways and byways. It is no wonder their buildings last hundreds of years. The burnished reds contrast with the always green grass and often gray skies. When we first arrived here, my 15-year-old cousin asked me if I had ever been to Beverly Hills . “All the houses there are white, no?” America shines bright with newness to people with thousands of years of recorded history under their feet.

Gardening is a national past time in Belgium, and the yards are bright with color—window boxes of geraniums, climbing vines trained to frame the garage doors, huge beds of fragrant lavender, begonias in bloom, and piles and piles of roses. Everything is hemmed in by meticulously trimmed hedges. From early spring through the fall, the gardens are never stagnant or neglected but vibrant and ever changing.

Every community and village has multiple parks and hiking trails. Go walking in America , and you’re most likely to see youngish women in white leather shoes and hoodies out on the roads walking with swinging arms and determination. Here walking is a way of life, not a daily discipline. No one dons special shoes or athletic gear to walk. Old and young, men and women, families—they all walk and wander through parks and paths, often accompanied by dogs. The best walking routes are littered with what the dogs leave behind—dodging these canine calling cards is part of life here.

There is a tree-lined lane that curves around wheat fields just outside my neighborhood. I love to walk there, occasionally stepping off into the wanderliing that run into the forests. Take the trail around and it comes to a small pond, the surface skimmed with an uninterrupted blanket of green that cloaks the area in magic and mystery. Towering trees and a weeping willow sweep its edges, and I’ve seen baby ducks emerge from a hidden area in the bank and cautiously part the plants as they explore the pond.

This summer I discovered blackberry bushes off the trail, and the kids and I visited often, staining and pricking our fingers as we tried to extricate the tender fruit from the brambles. We’d carry our pickings home, divide them into heavy ceramic bowls, dust them with sugar, and taste summer. Sweet and tart with hints of sunlight and dusk—a pleasure as old as time, connecting us to the earth and all those who have passed this way.

August 30, 2005

Nothing but Blue Skies, Hidden Tears

When I woke up this morning and pulled back the curtains, I was greeted by a cloudless sky. Belgium is notoriously gray and drizzly (think London or Seattle), so when the sky is clear and the sun rules the day, it’s like a benediction. You tilt your chin skyward, inhale deeply, and count your blessings on those rare mornings that don’t require a windbreaker or an umbrella.

My blond-haired blessings were tucked in their beds under the piney eaves of the house. Emily under her pastel quilt, a garden of carpet flowers and butterflies dotting the floor of her room and piles of clothes and baby dolls in every corner. Andrew, wrapped in a blue and green cocoon of flannel, waiting to emerge and read the Archie comic books piled on his bed. Emily wakes up when I put the cat on her chest and is eager to put on her frilly skort and brand new sneakers. Andrew is coaxed out from under the covers when I sing him a silly rhyming song, composed on the spot to entertain and delight him and keep morning crabbiness at bay. The song is accompanied by much tickling, snorting, snuffling, and rabid kissing. He laughs and laughs, much like the toddler I used to lift from a crib in the apple green room in Virginia.

I have carefully packed their backpacks and checked my lists, but I haven’t checked my heart. I’m surprised to find myself sad behind the jovial façade I wear for the children. I’m a veteran of the back-to-school process, I’d been looking forward to this day, and so I’m caught off-guard by my regret as I fix them breakfast, supervise tooth brushing, tame Andrew’s cowlicks, and walk them out the door.

I will miss their laughter bubbling down the stairs, the way they eagerly call to each other all day, the plaintive shouts of “Mama!” which remind me that I’m needed and loved. My freedom has its own intoxications—quiet time, morning walks, less housework, more writing—but love and responsibility feed the soul.

From the moment the umbilical cord is cut, we begin a dance of holding on and letting go, running to and away from each other, feeling smothered or joy-filled with each embrace. Today I feel I’m dancing with two left feet, a little off-balance, out of time with the music.

I won’t cry today. I’ll thank God for the sun that anoints us and never falters in its daily dance, reminding us that eternal things don’t change, that today as always, we carry one another in our hearts.

August 29, 2005

One Cool Summer

(and why I’m glad it’s over)

Unlike my friends in the Southern U.S. , I didn’t spend my summer in an endless sauna, with clothes stuck to my back, a dashboard that could double as a griddle, and enough oil pooling on my face to make OPEC’s reserves obsolete. No, my first summer in Belgium was cool in every sense of the word.

The daylight stretched until 10:30 p.m. , the temperatures hovered in the 60s or 70s most days and in the 50s at night. There were more gray and rainy days than I’d like to remember, and even on sunny days, huge fronts of clouds would come rolling over the flat Belgian landscape and drizzle or dump on our heads. There was an upside to this. We are collectively the whitest people on the planet (or as I prefer to be known, “the fairest of them all”). Yet despite my obsession with avoiding skin cancer, we didn’t even consume one full tube of sunscreen. It will be known as the summer of no tan lines.

And nothing bugged us. Literally. There were no moths congregating around the outdoor lights like a mad crowd threatening to get in or die trying. My white legs were not decorated with pink mosquito bites, and nothing small and annoying was buzzing around my ears (unless you count the kids, but let’s be charitable here). The black flies were also few and far between. Maybe they all summer in the south of France like the rest of Europe .

We visited Paris, marveled over the castles in the Loire Valley, went to a wine tasting, stepped into Monet’s colorful gardens and house, cheered for Lance Armstrong, hiked in ancient forests, saw our first Michelangelo, toured Belgian’s oldest city by canal boat, and consumed too much of the country’s specialties: chocolate, beer, and frites (known at home as French fries—how rude, how wrong!).

But tomorrow I walk my kids to board the big blue school bus (yes, BLUE) and return to a life that does not revolve around food. All summer I feel I’ve spent inordinate amounts of time in the kitchen preparing meals and snacks, scraping food off the table and counters, sweeping crumbs off the floor, wiping spills, washing dishes, and grocery shopping. My children eat like they have tapeworms and act like they were refugees in their last life. They treat every meal or snack as if it might be their last. Conversation revolves around what they’ve eaten and when they’ll eat next, and all social events, day trips, and vacations are judged by the quality and quantity of culinary delights.

No, they’re not overweight. Yes, they’re active, and I know they’re growing. But geez, I feel like a sous chef in Hell’s Kitchen. Maybe I’m just jealous because they’re growing vertically and I’m growing horizontally. Too many snacks with the kids and my stomach looks like a mound of rising bread dough. Really, I’d prefer for excess fat to be stored so that my cups would runneth over, not my waistband. Life is too cruel.

But if I can resist the temptation to crawl back into bed after the big blue bus chugs off into the distance, I can put some miles on my Nikes and some slack into my jeans. And that would make for a very cool fall.

August 28, 2005

Felix, Oscar, and Drugs

This is my chance to sit down. I’ve been cleaning all day and have mopped myself into the corner with the computer. Now I’m justified in sinking into the large upholstered black office chair that serves as Mission Control for my Web site.

E-Man is coming home after an 11-day business trip in the States, and the clean house is my gift to him. Affectionately known as Felix at home (remember the Odd Couple?), he’s a man who really appreciates a mopped floor, sparkling toilet, and kitchen with visible countertops. He likes clean windows too, but screw it, I don’t love him enough to do them on the same day I’m doing the rest of the house. Let his mistress clean the windows. (Just kidding, honey!)

For a long time I shared his cleanliness standards, but then we had kids, and I surrendered to my inner Oscar. The older I get, the less I care, but Felix hasn’t loosened up at all. Like his namesake, he follows the rest of us around with a dustpan and broom, collecting our croissant crumbs, fallen popcorn, tracked in dirt, and loose hair. But tomorrow when he arrives at home after taking the redeye from San Diego, he won’t feel compelled to pick up a washrag or the broom. If he insults me by touching the Formula 409 or the vacuum, I’ll hide his coffee and his razor and he’ll look like one of the guys that collects change for playing pathetic songs on an accordion in the subways. (If I hear Volaré one more time, I’m going to fake a seizure.)

The kids have toiled like peasants today preparing for an audience with the king. They have corralled all the pieces to Mousetrap, fished Legos out from under the sofa, stashed the jetsam and flotsam of their existence into appropriate containers and shoved things into less-than-appropriate hiding places. They’ve been forced to eat their meals outside on the terrace because their mother, in an exhibit of true maternal devotion, said she’d flatten their faces if they got one crumb on the floor. (See what emulating Felix will do to you? Oscar is a jovial pacifist.)

That I’ve been able to slave away all day has been a minor miracle in itself. My stamina is seriously compromised by the medication I take and the doctor’s insistence that I abstain from caffeine. I sleep 9-10 hours a night and often wake up reluctantly, shuffling into the kitchen like a convict shackled by chains. I whip myself into shape mentally so I can make it through the morning and then often succumb to an afternoon nap. It’s shameful, but I can’t stay in the ranks of the vertical masses for long. The drugs have put me in touch with my horizontal axis. I am well acquainted with every upholstered surface in the house, and there’s a flat spot on my forehead from resting my head on the kitchen table. I’m thinking I should get a tattoo there—a replica of the graphic on “May cause drowsiness” warning sticker the pharmacists put on my prescription bottles. You know--the one that looks like a red eye with a drooping eyelid?

That sticker is right beside the one that shows a car skidding off a road—my reminder that driving or operating heavy equipment COULD be hazardous. Thank God, my computer keyboard doesn’t qualify as heavy equipment. The only heavy equipment I operate is covered by my jeans, has me anchored to my chair, and is approaching the size and shape of my computer monitor. Judging by its heft, I should operate it more than I do. Exercise sounds like a good idea. I think I’ll drag my equipment on over to the sofa and plan my next move…

August 27, 2005