Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

To walk in warm rain and get wetter and wetter October 2012 Last week we had a good rainy afternoon.  Earlier in the day I had taken the kids to the YMCA for their P.E. class.  I had asked my friend Wendy if she would walk with me while our kids were at P.E., but then it started raining.  To my delight and hers, we found that we are truly compatible as we could both enjoy a walk in the rain together . . .with umbrellas.  But the conversation flowed just as well as it does on a sunny day, if not better. After P.E. I drove the kids home and they asked eagerly, “Can we take a walk in the rain?  We can wear our boots and jump in puddles.” I chuckled to myself, because over the past 2 years boots were crucial to survival in Hannover, and never did the kids want to go for a walk in the rain.  9 times out of 10 if it was raining it was a cold rain, and we had just been walking in it out of necessity, and we were happy to get inside and dry off and ge...

This Sunday in The Woodlands The weather got a little cooler here in the Houston area . . .for a couple of days.  It was already warming back to the 80s today.  But on Sunday we got to wear sweaters and realize that no, we won’t be able to wear sandals all year long. At church I spoke with a friend who was asking how our transition was going, saying that he felt for us, having to leave Germany after just two years.  It nearly made me cry, but at the same time I was grateful for his understanding.  He knows from personal experience the work it takes to move and adjust overseas.   I’ve been looking over my notes and writings from the last two Octobers and Novembers.  Wow--the seasons are really different!  It does feel like continual summer here and, well, I’m not minding it.  Not right now, at least! The entry below was mostly written on a Sunday in November, 2011, when John was in the U.S. for about two weeks.  It was ...

Editor’s note: I typed this on my iPhone en route from Houston to Hannover in August of 2011.  At the end of this flight, in the Munich airport Henry ran a few steps to sit by me, but ended up hitting his head on the row of metal seats.  A trip by airport ambulance to the airport clinic added an extra stop and meant missing our connecting flight.  That’s another story.  Indulge me in reliving some thoughts from over a year ago . . . Wednesday, August 17 2011 Sitting on airplane at 10 pm Houston time. Both kids are asleep with their heads on my lap. It is picturesque, but it only happened after I refused to get Henry a snack because I had just fallen asleep when he woke me to say his movie was done. "I want something to eat!" It should come as a relief that he is hungry, but I was hoping to regain my sleep state and told him he'd have to wait. Really this has been an easy trip so far. But it started with some anxiety. We woke up this morning at 6:3...

Yesterday I celebrated my 40th birthday.  One of the cool things about turning 40 is that I can now multiply my kids' ages by each other and it equals me.  It will only last for another 20 days or, and then one will be nine.  I wonder--will such an equation happen again?  There's an algebra problem for you. But, since I am not the sum of my children, or neither am I the product of my children, (though they are the product of, well, anyway) . . .I have thought about some other things recently. We have so much.  We had a big cake in celebration and there is lots left over.  We had lots of bottles of wine and sparkling water in the fridge and there are lots left over.  We run the tap to get the water warm and it just goes down the drain.  So much water, and it is all clean.  I am grateful for the sun that shines on us and the rain that poured on us today.  I'm grateful for the time to play and relax, to be busy and learn.  I'm gr...

Stefanie is our new German tutor.  She lives 30 minutes away, but it isn’t a freeway drive, so that is nice.  Instead we drive by farmer’s markets, over train tracks and under huge trees that have been trimmed for years away from the power lines so now they lean precariously over the road.  For the last three weeks we’ve been listening to a book on CD entitled Stowaway .  Sometimes when we arrive I’m wiping the tears from my eyes. On the first day when I asked Elisabeth if I should stay in the room with her she gave me a little push and said, “ Mom , I’ve been to school.”  Her session went by quickly and easily and I thought, “Wow! She knows a lot of German.”  Perhaps it is all about context--now that we are here, it seems like more.  Or perhaps I never gave her enough credit over there.  In any case, she is used to using her German in an academic context,  so this works well for her. Henry’s sessions are a little bit more like a t...

Before we left Hannover she said, “And you really must keep up your blog.  I want to read about your readjustment.  If you don’t write it down right away, you will get used to things, and then forget how it felt to arrive.” Hauling the load from the grocery store She was right.  There were always excuses to not write things down.  First, we didn’t have a computer.  Then we were busy, flying to California, and then New York.  Then when I did try to write, I got so sad, thinking about our last week in Hannover, full of visits to friends’ homes, the kids romping outside with their buddies, parents eating, drinking and laughing together.  I didn’t know it would be this sweet. I remember thinking, as we were preparing to go to Germany, “What am I going to do there?  I don’t ‘love’ Germany.”  I loved the idea of castles and peasants and medieval times, travel, green countryside and snowy mountains, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.  Ap...

I just realized that I was already logged in to Blogger, and the words were all in English.  It didn't say "Jetzt anmelden" anymore. Someone I had just met last week asked me, "Aren't you just thrilled to be back?"  How to explain in a sentence the mixture of emotions and memories and thoughts within? This container traveled over the ocean: Hannover, Bremerhaven, Port of Houston, The Woodlands We're moved in to our new home.  There's a long story there, but I don't want to rehash it anymore, except to say that in the last couple of months we've had too many moments of realizing that lots and lots of things have gone wrong for us.  We took turns telling each other that it is simply part of the process.  It's a big transition.  But often we really felt besieged.  And frustrated and irritated and wanting to blame someone.  Really most of it wasn't our fault.  But some of it was our fault.  And sometimes there wasn't anyone to...