Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

Dear Mom and Dad, A week and two days ago the packers came to your house in Houston.  All your piles of belongings, sorted for “air,” “sea,” or “storage” were boxed up and labeled.  And tonight you will spend your third night in your new home in London.   Your two-day stay with us was wonderful.  I didn’t think about you leaving.  I just enjoyed having you here. As I mentally prepared for your move, I keep thinking about my last sight of you as you left for Vietnam in 2003.  I was seven months pregnant, wondering how you could leave me as my hour of need approached.  But really I knew why.  You went with your husband.  You belonged to each other and I, for nearly three years at that point, belonged to another.  And it was good.   Of course, you could hardly stand not being there when Elisabeth was born.  We called you on the phone somehow, and Dad, newly christened “Grandpère” jumped out of bed in his excitemen...

Laurel, Elisabeth and Grandma Virginia--December 2012 John and I and the kids wrapped up our Christmas traveling with a visit to my dad’s mom, Grandma Virginia.  She’s 96, and losing height with every year, it seems.  But her smile and her wink are as bright as ever . . .if not brighter.  The smile is fine, but that wink of hers, it stabs my heart every time.  It hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve known her. She recognized us, but I said our names clearly just in case she’d forgotten.  I'm never quite sure.  She raved over how the kids had grown.  It had been a year and a half since she’d seen them.  We’ve all changed in that year and a half--the kids and Grandma the most.  Right away she was asking if I’d seen Mother, and when the others were coming. Mother, I assumed, referred to her mother, Nana, who lived with them all the time my dad was growing up, but who passed away a generation ago.   Thoughts ran throug...

There was a bit of worry about the cold weather here in The Woodlands.  Talk of freezing rain that dissipated into nothing.  Friday is Park Day for our homeschooling group, and thankfully, this group is a "whatever the weather" kind of group.  If they can do 95 degrees at noon in July, they can do drizzle and 40 degrees in January.  Because, you know, 40 degrees and drizzle in Texas is, um, very cold.    There was hot chocolate, there were blankets, and hats, but I think my children, lately come from Michigan and before that, Germany, were the best dressed.  Layers, hats, an extra pair of gloves.  Henry even had extra warm knee high socks that John brought him from Hannover. I'm tickled about two things: Henry found that the person he most wanted to play with an 11 year-old boy.  And Elisabeth and a few other kids are planning a club to raise money for a water well through World Vision.  I'm trying really hard, really hard to just sit ...

My daughter has told me repeatedly over the last few weeks that she wants Silly Putty for Christmas.  That should be with a little trademark R next to it. But I cannot buy her Silly Putty.  The stretchy flesh colored stuff of our childhood for me holds a memory, laughable now, but still all to clear, though it is more than two years old. Waiting in line at the Celle train station, trying to figure out what kind of monthly pass I need in order to get Elisabeth to school every day.  Unable to speak in German, still jetlagged, wishing that I didn't have to be there by myself with the kids, angry with John for working and leaving this mess to me, angry that we had to be so far away from the school, drowning in my little sea of sorrows and self pity, adding an additional 100 Euro to the tally of wasted money spent out of ignorance on the wrong train pass . . .and the children are playing with Silly Putty.   Oh first it was good.  Indeed, it was gre...

We’ve reached a new stage of homeschooling, one in which I am seeing my little self growing up all over again.  Maybe this time I’ll get it right. What I mean is this: I remember getting angry and frustrated in math.  What I mostly remember is in high school, but somehow I don’t doubt that I got frustrated in elementary school as well.  I remember sitting on the sofa with my dad, him looking at the book and trying to help me with a problem.  But by that point I was already so closed to the process that I could not open up again to get help.  I would sit there and stew and think, “This is so stupid.  Who cares about this.  I hate this . . .”  Now if only Elisabeth could know that about me, as I sit at the kitchen table and try to help her with long division.  On the one hand, I’m quite excited that she’s gotten to this point.  We are finally to something that is so different from what she’s done.  Related, yes, but new....

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 ...