Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

Beethoven in Bonn On Saturday we saw a little bit of Bonn, the former capital of West Germany.  In the morning we visited the Beethoven House    where Beethoven was born in 1770.  We walked around the tiny house for almost two hours, listening to our audio guides.  Our son, Mr. Numbers, made sure he listened to every track on his guide, all 32.  Elisabeth stopped periodically to draw pictures: the organ Beethoven played in a nearby church, two of the pianos he owned.  She said she wanted to go home and write music.  I was moved by the account, in Beethoven’s own words, of his hearing loss and his intense inner struggle.   We heard portions of his 5th and 9th symphonies as he would’ve heard them at the time they were first performed.  It was a barely audible muffled sound. Though Beethoven wanted to take his own life, he felt he could not, because of his burning desire to to the work he had to do, to write the music that was in his...

 Kölner Dom I couldn’t help thinking of this little pun while we were exploring Bonn on Saturday, but it was already one day late.  Actually, I think Germans don’t pronounce Bonn to rhyme exactly with “gone”--the short o vowel is shorter in duration somehow.  These days if I’m not sure how to pronounce something, I ask Henry.  He seems to be a pretty good gauge. Elisabeth didn’t have school on Friday, so we took a 2 1/2 hour train ride to Cologne (Köln in German) and spent the day there.  In truth, we spent most of the day in and around the cathedral. It was everything I wanted it to be, and more.  I had heard from John and several others who had been there that it is great to go to Cologne by train because when you get off the train you are right there at the cathedral.  What they didn’t tell me is that the church dwarfs the train station.  The windows of the station are huge, and allow only a portion of the cathedral to be se...

Last Saturday it was time to take down the tree.  I was ready for it to be gone--the needles were beginning to drop and there were spider webs from the top of the tree to the ceiling.  Maybe those are always there, but this time I could actually see them close up because the tree was nestled against the stairs and the top was clearly visible from the second floor. Three Kings Day . . .Epiphany . . .Heilige Drei Könige had come and gone.   John and I pulled the boxes down from the attic and the kids began removing the ornaments from the tree.  But this time I wanted to pack them more carefully than usual because they would be traveling across the ocean again.  And that made me sad.   I thought of Christmas two years ago when we were still in The Woodlands and oblivious to the upcoming move.  I packed the ornaments up quickly and we shoved them in the back of our “closet of doom”--the one you can’t stand up in and goes way, way back....

Yesterday on the way home from Kindergarten Henry cheerfully told me, “Mama, I got to eat in the kitchen and do Tisch Dienst.”   I thought I was Mommy. What is Tisch Dienst? This happens more and more often as our son is immersed in Kindergarten five days a week and I can’t help but think it is cute.  However, being the educator that I am, I usually repeat things back the proper way.  This time first I had to ask what Tisch dienst was.  It means setting the table--literally “Table Service.”  I asked him to tell me what he had to do to set the table and I was hoping he would tell me all the utensils in German, but amazingly his mind made the switch and it came out easily in English.  And so very cutely.  I’m rather enamored by my son lately.  Here’s one of my favorites: “Today Emil was before lunch abgeholt.” In German if you have a verb with 2 parts--here it is past tense--the second verb is always the last word of the sentence...

Our hearts have been stretched, we recently found out, but it happened slowly.   Poverty, food shortage, contaminated water, starvation--these words bring images to my mind of children with bulging bellies and scarred skin.  They were problems a million miles away that I thought could do nothing about, so I put up a mental wall of protection.  If I saw pictures or heard pleas for help, I would ignore them, thinking it was too big of a problem for me to deal with, or I justified my inaction with the idea that the funds were most likely not going to get to those who needed the help, and even if they did, it would be a drop in a bucket.  I had heard for years about “sponsoring a child” from Africa or India or the like.  It never moved me. When I was 33 and our daughter was almost two years old, I suffered a miscarriage of twins.  At the time it was the most devastating event of my life.  My husband and I mourned their loss and couldn’t help bu...

Henry woke up early on St. Nicholas' Day.  John was upstairs so he was the one to talk with Henry and send him back to bed, as it was not yet 6:30 AM wake up time.   “Daddy, I had a bad dream.” “Aww, did you?” “Yes.  Daddy, is St. Nikolaus dead?” John answered that yes, he is dead. “Oh.  Then who will put something in my boot?”  he asked worriedly. “Well, who else loves you?” With a bright smile, “Mommy and Daddy!” Then he went back to bed.  John related the story to me before Henry got up again, and I was relieved that all our uncertainties of the night before were resolved.  I guess I imagined that since he knew we loved him, he knew we had filled his boot. Elisabeth was not such an early riser as Henry, but nor was Henry overly anxious to check his boot.  I had to remind him that it was available.  I managed to have him and Elisabeth get dressed before they went downstairs--it was still a school morning after all....

This evening I was fixing dinner and suddenly Henry cried out, “You have to clean my boots!”  I said, “I have to?  I think you have to.”  “Okay, but can you help me?”  He went and got Elisabeth and I gave them a brush and a rag, and they got to work.  I thought it was a really cute scene, the two of them cleaning their boots for St. Nikolaus.  I’ve never made it a point to foster our children’s belief in Santa Claus, but the St. Nikolaus tradition somehow seemed more grounded in reality, maybe because his name wasn’t changed around so much.  Last year Elisabeth asked if she could put out her boots and I said sure.  So this year they took it for granted that they would do so again, and so did I.  I just sort of figured they knew I filled the boots. Boot Cleaning The kids were cleaning away, and I’ve never seen Henry so concerned about the cleanliness of his boots.  Then suddenly he cried out, “What if my boots aren’t cle...