The narrative

   

     (Every bit as exciting as the topic: the fact that I could read the article! A story for another day...)

Germany won the World Cup at about midnight this past Sunday. The minute it was official, our apartment complex exploded. Balcony doors flung open, screams and cheers, fireworks popping, and one guy running from one side of his balcony to the other, Rocky arms flying, screaming "WELTMEISTER!" again and again. Cars on the street started honking and hadn't stopped when I fell asleep at 2 a.m.

Gah, I love a good frenzy of shared excitement.

Oliver and I have been watching the German national team play since 2006. 2006, that was the summer we were living in Toronto and Chicago, respectively. Engaged to be married, taking turns visiting each other over the long summer. Before one of my visits to Toronto, Oliver gave me a heads up that we would be watching a soccer game in a bar. World Cup half final. Germany versus Italy.

"Soccerrr?" I think I said. "Um, okay. How long is the game again?"

Oh Oliver! The patience this must have required! He calmly explained to me that the World Cup was being held IN GERMANY, and that the nation was in a collective state of hysteria. This was the game! The game to see who would play in the final!

"Okay, sure. I can do anything for 90 minutes."

Oh, Allison. If only you knew.

*     *     *

Somewhere in the middle of this tournament, about the time Germany was getting ready to play the U.S., I dug about as deep as I go these days and thought about why I would root for Germany over my own country. A narrative started forming. There was 2006, young and giddy and getting ready for our wedding. There was the 2008 European Championship, when we were brand-new to New York and found a billion German expats to cheer with. 2010 was Saturday mornings in a Park Slope sports bar, Oliver with a beer and me with a water, Nils kicking around in my belly. Then there was 2012, toddler Nils in his little Deutschland jersey, his little sister maybe hearing some of the screams from inside the womb.

And 2014? I get a little choked up thinking about how we'll add this one to the narrative. "2014! That was the year they won it all. We had just moved to Frankfurt...

Thanks

   
Oh, this blog.

I've always enjoyed writing it.

I love being able to share it with friends and family.

Sometimes I think about it and wince. Did I really write that? How stupid / obnoxious did I sound?

Sometimes I'm boring.

Sometimes I think I have a nice perspective on things.

Often, writing things out helps me figure out just what my perspective is.

I could also find that perspective in a journal.

At the risk of sounding like I'm fishing for compliments, can I ask you a favor? If you read this from time to time, and like hearing from me, can you email me and let me know? I can't tell if I should keep blogging or not, and the knowledge that a few friends / relatives get a kick out of my posts could swing things in the direction of "stay."

I'll wait for several weeks, since I'm guessing you don't wake up each morning and check my blog for new content. Smiley face.

Cool!

The Kahns lived here

   
My Grandpa Erickson served in Europe during the Second World War. He never talked about it with anyone, apparently, but it was obvious that the experience meant a lot to him. Uniform hanging neatly in the basement. Carefully created scrapbooks. And this beautiful desk, this glass-topped display desktop. Foreign coins, pins, and an oversized photo of Grandpa's group - battallion vs. regiment vs. corps vs. platoon always escaped me.

The story in the family was that Grandpa had been a jeep driver for a general, and that he had spent an entire winter without once sleeping in a heated building. As far as World War II hardships go it wasn't an especially dramatic one, but it was more hardship than any of us had faced so there it was.

For years now, I have wanted to make a copy of the photograph in the desk. Look at that. Deadly enemies and two generations later husband and wife. Their kids are buddies with the descendants of Holocaust survivors. Everything changes. Don't forget that.

I've heard there are many beautiful Holocaust memorials here in Germany. I've seen a couple here in Frankfurt, though the language barrier sometimes keeps me from getting to the details. I imagine that living here for a long time, and seeing memorial after memorial softens the impact, but things are all so new for me. You know what I think is just beautiful? These:

I'll be walking down an ordinary street and suddenly there are these stones at my feet. The closer I look the more the story reveals itself. Leopold and Johanna Kahn lived here. They were deported in 1942... about 50 years old, each of them. They spent some time in Theresienstadt, then died in Auschwitz in 1944.

They lived right here, right near Holzhausen Park! And as they approached their golden years they were taken away. They spent the last two years of their lives in concentration camps. How long were they able to keep up with the younger and the stronger? How frightened were they?

It's nothing new, I know. How many films have I seen about all this? How many books have I read? For some reason, this little reminder really reaches down into me.

We have moved to a decidedly smaller city

   
There is a park near our apartment, maybe 10 minutes by foot. Gunthersburg Park. It is beautiful. Big and green, with different sections cordoned off for this and that, and surrounded by the beautiful houses of the neighborhood of Bornheim. Nils, Liv and I visit the playground once or twice a week, and today we also stopped for a greek yogurt and a coffee at the park's outdoor cafe.

     

There's a lot of this here in Frankfurt, we are finding. Lots of parks, lots of beautiful houses, and lots of brilliant things like outdoor cafes near playgrounds. You can really live a good life here.

We were guardedly optimistic about this possibility when we moved here. "Germany is great for families!"we heard. "You can live a good life in Frankfurt." Really? We had been here once before and weren't all that impressed. My 2010 visit to Frankfurt stands out in my memory first and foremost as the way I finally understood the energy of New York - after the dullness of Frankfurt it stood out like a fluorescent graffiti mural. For this reason and that though, we ended up here with our cautious optimism. We didn't expect too much, but we also figured we didn't need too much. How much do you need when you're stuck at home every night?

Did our needs change? Did our perspective change? Did we not get the full picture after visiting for a mere weekend? Who cares. It is wonderful here. Wonderful.

You can get anywhere in 20-30 minutes with minimal hassle.

You can bike anywhere you want to, even driving the wrong way in the middle of a one-way street.

You can stumble upon park after park after park.

You can have a car... but who needs one? Bike lanes everywhere, public transit.

It's manageable, it's international, it's full of stuff to do. It somehow seems deliciously finite but full of possibilities at the same time.

We went to Lohrberg over the weekend, a park up on a high hill overlooking the rest of the city. Green sloping hills full of milkweed and sunbathers. When a table opened up at the biergarten we sat and ate red cabbage, schnitzel, and potato dumplings. The food was delicious, and Oliver's beer was just as it should be. "Ah!" we kept exclaiming to each other. "This is so nice!" "Don't you think it's so nice here?" "What a beautiful spot!" "So glad we came here!" "Perfect afternoon!"

From my vantage point, it looks like Frankfurt does simple things really well. Is it lacking in other areas? I don't know. I don't know when I'll figure that out. I don't care. The simple stuff... I'm thrilled.

compression compression compression Expansion

I read somewhere once that Frank Lloyd Wright used to use compression and expansion in his architecture. You walk through a small room into a small, dark hallway, then on into a large room that's all windows and light and desert views. That sort of thing. Compression compression compression... expansion.

Compression compression compression expansion - that has been running through my head for more than two weeks now. We have two weeks before we can get into our permanent, "for real house" (as Nils and I like to call it), and we are feeling a bit, shall we say, compressed.

This place is even smaller than our first, teeny-tiny Brooklyn apartment. Most of our books and toys are still on the way, and that's hard for the kids. Nils especially, begs us to stay with him until he falls asleep "because auto blanket isn't here with me." Oops. Probably should have kept that one with us at all times. Everything is unfamiliar, everything takes extra work (credit cards! internet! phone! mailing a letter! getting cash!), and I keep trying to wholeheartedly enjoy this neighborhood but get routinely stopped by the angry Turkish dudes who stare us down because they think we're gentrifiers. (We're not, man. We're out of here in two weeks.)

You know what comes after this, though? Expansion! Our own place! Bigger and nicer than anything we've had before! With outdoor space! And our bikes will be here soon! We'll bike around our fabulous neighborhood and be happy! Look at those windows. Look at that desert view.

When you get down to it, I am hoping that Frankfurt itself will be our place of expansion. Frankly speaking, this last year has been hard. Going from one kid to two, for me, has been like a daily body slam into a brick wall. I've lost count of the number of times I have fought tooth and nail to keep from absolutely. losing. it. I won't tell you how many times I failed. I'm a different mother than I was a year and a half ago - and I like the old me much, much better. I know I know, two kids are harder than one. Obvious, right? Just trust me, this is different.

I'm praying it had something to do with our situation in New York. A husband who never saw his kids during the week. The sky high cost of everything keeping us from doing things like hiring a babysitter or putting Nils in preschool a couple mornings a week. A charming but small apartment that had few doors - this is actually a big thing for me. Did you know that Liv slept in our bedroom? And that our bedroom had no door? And that the wall with her crib (again, with no door to close) was right up against our kitchen? Essentially, once Liv-the-lightest-of-sleepers was out for the "night," we could do nothing but sit quietly. Not so terrible, but Nils-the-miserable-screaming-toddler-from-post-nap-to-bedtime didn't approve of me ducking away to take care of the dinner cleanup and dishes before she went to bed. Sooo... it all sat there. Every night. And when I woke up each morning to the dulcet tones of children howling for food, there were the dishes. Piled high on our 6 square inches of counter space and keeping me from as much as setting down a butter knife for toast. There was a voice too, and it said "you'll never get a handle on any of this. Just flail, woman. You will never do anything else again." Not the best way to start your day.

Our new place has a bedroom for Liv and a kitchen located far from the sleeping quarters. This has allowed me to fantasize about my future evenings. After the kids are in bed, I'll slip into the kitchen and turn on my internet radio. NPR, WNYC to be specific. If I'm cleaning up at 8 or 9, what will that be... Fresh Air? Maybe the beginnings of All Things Considered? I'll clean up the day's mess while listening to those soft voices talk about interesting things. Maybe I'll even get a little jump on the next day. Pack some snacks for an outing. Cut up some fruit for breakfast. And the next morning, in the rush of all those things that need to be done every morning, maybe I'll get to breathe a little more. Breathing - that's expansion, right?

There and here

   
Last Friday was a big day. It started out at my parents' house in Wisconsin, moved on to the airport and a flight to New York, jumped next to a few hours at our empty Brooklyn apartment, then ended with another trip to the airport and another flight - this one to Frankfurt. The whole day I kept thinking "this is big, isn't it," but I couldn't put it all together. I saw nothing but fragments. I'm on a plane right now. I'm in a cab right now. I'm saying goodbye to some people right now, and in a few minutes I won't be saying goodbye to them anymore.

This whole move has been like that. I was out with a friend one night - my very last night in New York - and I told her that I felt like Mr. Burns in an early episode of The Simpsons. Mr. Burn's doctor took a handful of rubber toy "germs" and tried to stuff them through a little model doorway. You have every disease imaginable, was the message. They are all trying to get through the door, and they are blocking each other. For weeks I waited for the panic to come and the real tears to flow, but the germs were all blocking each other. I carried on.

And now we're here. Frankfurt. We have a temporary place in a crummy-ish neighborhood, and a lease on a for-real place that starts April 1st. We're living out of suitcases, washing the same 4 plates over and over again, and looking forward to the day we again have conveniences like a hair drier, pens, a coffee maker, and a place to call our own. All in good time. 3 weeks time, that is.

The little ones are handling this so much better that I thought they would. We are all sorts of out of sorts, but dangitall if we aren't doing okay.

These first days in a new place are so raw. Experiencing them reminds me of my other big moves and how I woke up bawling in the middle of the night, night after night in Beijing. I cried myself to sleep my first night in New York. Nighttime is a beast, am I right? Your guard is down and everything comes at you like a hammer. I spent a full 30 minutes last night - say from 2:00 to 2:30 - mildly panicked that I had never made one last trip to Coney Island. And to be honest, I still feel a little terrible about that. Oh, New York! Maybe I'll be able to write about it sometime, how much I loved it and why it was okay to leave. How amazing it was to be a young mother there - how the friends I had more than made up for the challenges New York throws at families.

For now though, I'll just think about Nils and I as our flight took off from JFK. I wanted to distract him, and we ended up with a pad and pen in our hands. I started writing letters, and it quickly turned into Nils wanting me to write the names of all his friends. I did that for him, big block letters. JOEY. ELIZA. JACK. WOLFGANG. It was an 8 o'clock flight and the lights of the nighttime city were in full force out our window. I looked out at them occasionally with tears in my eyes. MATEO. MADELINE. The lights gave way to the darkness of the ocean. Was that Coney Island beneath us? AVI. JACKSON.

And we were gone.

This is the view we will miss

This is the view out our living room windows. Do you see the snowy courtyard fountain down below? So peaceful, right? And look at those lights off in the distance! Jersey. Maybe Bayonne? I've never figured out exactly what it is.

I love this view. The night view, especially. I've always had a thing for the lights of a city at night, and those Jersey lights make me feel calmer when I'm anxious, more inspired when I'm blah, and luckier when I'm frustrated. Look at those lights out there. Are they twinkling? All that humanity in this great big city. Millions and millions of lives worth. What a world.

How can we be leaving this magnificent place? We are leaving, and more importantly we want to leave... but how is this possible? What about our amazing friends? Our playgrounds, our museums, our subway, the energy... the views?

Off to Frankfurt. Language, home (for one of us), adventure, (ironically, at a time in my life when I have never placed a lower value on adventure) here we go. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that we are doing the right thing, and I say goodbye with no hand wringing. But oh...