200 Years vs. 200 Miles

What’s the difference between a European and an American?  HA!  It’s truer than you think.

The first time I stood inside an Amsterdam building and found out it was older than my country of origin, America, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

In the following years of further travel around Europe, I’m still as awed.  It never really sinks in.  Like recently, in March, when we walked through the above Marksburg Castle in Germany, built in 1174.  It’s over 800 years old…and even has an inside toilet.

But what really takes the cake for me was Rome a few years back, walking around the Forum, following, perhaps, the footsteps of Apostle Paul from 2000 years ago.  It has been called the most celebrated meeting place in the world, and in all history, according to Wiki.  I can imagine how I’d feel if I ever make it to Jerusalem!

I never get used to it.

As for Astrid, who has lived all but one year of her life in the Netherlands (that one year being America), age of these places is simply ho-hum for her.  She’s never known anything other than O.L.D.

However.  The first time we took a one-day trip from where we live here in middle Holland to Groningen in the northeast of the country, just 120 miles away, you would have thought we had driven to the other side of the world.  Seriously.  And it wasn’t just her.  When she told her co-workers where we had gone and come back, all in the span of one Saturday, they picked their jaws up off the floor.

She was never used to anything other than N.E.A.R. here in Europe, but that’s changing quickly.

If I told you it takes us one hour to drive from our back door to Antwerp, Belgium (50 miles), or 1.5 hours to Brussels (75 miles), in case we want to get a good pot of mussels, you’d laugh, right?  How about that it would take us 5 hours to drive from our city to Paris (250 miles) and could easily be done in a long weekend just about any time we wanted?  Yup, you’re picking your jaws up off the floor…while I’m convincing her how doable it is.

Speaking of America, Astrid came to visit me in Atlanta in 2009, 6 months before I moved to the Netherlands.  I wanted to take her to the family cottage in Michigan to meet some of my siblings.  Even by my standards it’s a long trip, 850 miles.  But I had done it almost every year for 25 years and knew the map like the back of my hand:  2 hours to Chattanooga, 2 hours to Nashville, 2.5 to Louisville, 2 to Indianapolis, another 2 to Fort Wayne, and then the “strome hetch” once crossing the line into Michigan.  All in one “swell foop” and usually during the night hours with at least 2 drivers.  In good weather we’d drive it in 12 hours, longer if we stopped at the cemetery to see Mom and Dad.

You could say I’m training Astrid.  She’s getting used to my “long-distance” antics.  In fact, we’re planning a 3-day birthday weekend to Luxembourg come July, 162 miles away, driving all around that wee country and spending a day in its capital, Luxembourg City, founded in the 900s.

She’s getting used to the distance, she says.  200 miles doesn’t make her gasp anymore.  But I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to any place older than dirt 200 years! 

Together We're Strong[er]

Passau, Germany

Not too many weeks ago I tripped over a footstool in our living room and went sprawling across the floor to Astrid, who all but fell down with me.  What can I say:  I’m my father’s daughter!  At age 78, pre-cancer, he was still bounding up and down the stairs.

“Rustig, Rustig!” she often says.  “Slow down, slow down!”

Apparently not to be outdone while on our recent river cruise, out-n-about, she tripped over a dip in the roadway (something I usually do) and went sprawling, almost taking me down with her.  Glasses and camera went flying.  Her camera, actually, even managed to take a picture of the street as witness to the fact.

Miraculously, nothing breaks in these antics, except pride, of course, but I can swear to this:  the older I get, the more my cage rattles!

And thus it is my modus operandi of late to lock my left arm into Astrid’s right, which then clamps me in close to her.  Nothing else makes me feel so strong, safe and secure when we’re walking together.  “Together we’re strong,” she says.

After the Boston tragedy last week, did you notice how we all locked arms together and rallied around Marcie, Elena, Eliza and whoever else was potentially affected.  This is as it should be, of course.  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  

Please tell me the whole is also stronger than the sum of its parts.  To be honest, I don’t like the one where a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, even if it’s true.  I’m afraid that would be me!  So I picture being held up from falling by whatever strong arms lock me in tight on either side.

Just Saturday morning we attended the funeral of a fellow senior here at the complex where we live.  He had been the Chairman of our Residents Committee till the end of January.  Sadly, a faction amongst us had reared its head midst his last months, attempting to oust him and the committee for absurd reasons.  As sunbeams danced across the orchids on his casket and “Spanish Eyes” played in the background, the 10 of us present from our complex (there should have been at least 40!) locked figurative arms together around his widow, to hold her up in her grief.  Together we’re strong.

We need each other.  There will always be those lovely times we celebrate together.  The weddings, childbirths, anniversaries, trips, milestones, graduations, dances.  Sadly, there will also be the divorces, deaths, diseases, depressions, losses, tragedies.

Times like this ain't nothing new
There's one thing we gotta do
All unite and stand together
Together we're stronger
Bring us down don't even try
No use trying I'll tell you why
Cause we will always stand together
Together we're stronger
--59 Times the Pain

Our cages may rattle when we stand together like this, but have you noticed how there’s a brighter, lighter, kinder, stronger side to us midst the perils of everyday life when we do.  How about this to prove it.

And a fine skip to the Lou, my darlin'.  “Rustig,” she says.  “Rustig.”

Short of Eyes

(Seen in front of the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna, Austria.)

“I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.”  Mary Oliver

After 15 days of looking at incredible sights on our European river cruise, with extra days now in Budapest, I am so “short of eyes” I hardly know where to start.

It’s my favorite Dutch phrase:  ogen tekort = short of eyes.  When you don’t have enough eyes to see it all, in spite of looking from morning to night, sometimes you just need to sit back on your haunches and rest for awhile.

That's what Astrid and I plan to do when we return home on Wednesday.  In the meantime, for those of you who celebrate the second Easter Day (Easter Monday), a continued Easter blessing to you.

“Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes.”  Tariei Vesaas

Our Bucket Lists

The sweetest story I’ve ever told is the one when Dad died the Wednesday night before Easter in 1995.   

He had been diagnosed with lung cancer 6 weeks before, a non-smoker preacher.  The nurse said it was in his genes.  I drove to Michigan from Georgia with my children 4 weeks later to say our good-byes.  But when the nurse called us all back within 2 weeks, I wanted to go again, alone.

He was lying in a make-shift bedroom on a hospice bed in the formal dining room of their home.  7 of us 8 children surrounded his bed (Bennett, the one who himself died a year later, had been with him earlier in the day).  We chatted and laughed nervously. 

Then Mom walked in from the kitchen.  In her early stages of Alzheimer’s, with hands on her hips in utter exasperation, she said, “WHEN is the funeral!?!?”

I, sitting at the foot of the bed massaging Dad’s feet, said with a giggle, “We won’t know, Mom, until Dad kicks the bucket!”

HAHAHA!  Even Dad started laughing…and then began:  “That reminds me of the grandpa whose little grandson was visiting him in his study, playing with the old waste bucket.  The grandson,   tossing his toys in and out of the bucket, asked if he could have it…..”  And without finishing the story, Dad trailed off into a 6-hour coma before dying.

We laughed because he hadn’t finished the story, which woke him up with a giggle to start the same story all over again from the beginning.  Each time he got close to the punch line, he’d trail off again, we’d laugh, he’d wake up with a giggle, and start all over again.  This happened 4 or 5 times.  He never finished the story with grandpa’s answer (which we already knew from his sermons):  “One day, yes, but not until I kick the bucket,” to which the grandson replied “Grandpa, could you kick it now?!”

That was Dad’s last conversation with us before he kicked his bucket.

Now, to connect the dots.

We all know that our Bucket Lists come from that kick-the-bucket idiom.  That is, we list what we really want to do before we die!

What I’ve always wanted to do for eons is a European river cruise.  Don’t ask me why, though I’m guessing it’s the castles.  Now that I live in Europe, you’d think it’d be as easy as pie, right?  Wrong, if you have a Dutch wife who doesn’t get it!

Flash back 1 ½ years to when we had American guests visiting us a week before their week’s river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel.  When we drove them to their boat and stepped onboard for all of 10 minutes, said wife immediately whispered, “Oh, I think I could do this!”

Long story to say that this Saturday we leave on a 15-day river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest, the earliest cruise of the season in the cheapest room on board at two-for-the-price-of-one tickets.  Do we care that it will be cold?  Are you kidding?

Some more dots.  Though the above natal chart renders me naked, see that 9^th House of long-distance travel?  One of those 2 planets is Jupiter in his natural home, giving me “Good Luck” and expansion in travel.  In fact, our added 4 days in Budapest over Easter is when I expect Dad will be smiling down on us. 

As Astrid jokingly says, if we're gonna die anytime soon, please let it be AFTER our vacation! 

So…do you know what YOU want to do before YOU kick the bucket?!