A very long travel day. Goodbye to Jen and Oscar. Drive to Minneapolis. MSP to KEF to CDG to DUS. Waiting for flights. Various trains. Getting a message to Steph that I’ve arrived at the station a few miles from their house. And then she is there, opening the door to the kebab shop, with month-old Luisa Maria wrapped in her coat. We are together in her car, the same one we rode in three years ago from her wedding in Cologne to Annalisa’s wedding in Pantelleria. She is giving me a tour of her house. I am sitting on her couch drinking peppermint tea with Portuguese honey and brandy. My long day is over and I am so happy to be here. I sleep upstairs in a nest of blankets. Wake up wondering the results of the election, and am a little worried that I don’t have a celebratory message from anyone. Take a shower and then go downstairs where Steph is on the couch, nursing Luisa. “I am so sorry, Magdalen.” She says as I come into the room. I send Jen a message. Begin a scroll through Facebook, to see what people are reading and sharing. Spend most of my morning on a collection of Opinion pieces from the New York Times. Steph is on her phone too. We read aloud the bits that resonate: “For now, we need to breathe, stand tall and adjust to this new reality as best we can. We need — through writing, through protest, through voting in 2018 and 2020 — to be the checks and balances our government lacks so that we can protect the most defenseless among us, so that we can preserve the more perfect union America has long held as the ideal. We have to fight hard, though I do not yet know what that fight looks like.” I am glad to be with Steph. She has always helped me see American politics from a different perspective. (Years ago, expressing embarrassment about having Bush for President, she succinctly replied, “We had Hitler.”) This time though it really does feel like we are in it together. Comparing the shock of Brexit, to the shock we are feeling now. Returning to conversations from previous visits with Steph and Martin, Annalisa and Mattia, all frustrated with the anti-immigration/racist thinking that has been building in their countries as well. Germany, worried about a population decline, gives money to German families that have children, and yet maintains a strict immigration policy. Immigrants and refugees arrive daily on Italian shores and only the very minimum of support is provided to house, and feed, and integrate them. Annalisa provides counseling to immigrant and refugee women for free two days a week. Mattia, her husband, works as the director at a refugee center, but the working conditions are so stressful and underfunded, he knows he needs to make a change. I hold Luisa, smell her new baby small. Roll it all around in my head--- the possible consequences for my family, for other Americans, for the world. Try to find a bright side: Elizabeth Warren 2020? Or someone I haven’t heard of yet, the best person, to lead after this, that we can all get behind. Steph chops potatoes and salad. Luisa sleeps. We play briscola. Think of going for a walk, but then it is raining again. Facetime with Jen and Michael and Oscar. I had texted Michael earlier: “Thank you for holding my wife and son when I can’t.” Now he reads aloud words from his fiance: “The world shifted last night. Some voted for it, some voted against it. Some didn't vote. But we are all responsible for how it works. And we are better together than we are separate…” The next morning, I make us an “American” breakfast of eggs and leftover potatoes. We pick up Annalisa from the airport and then drive into Cologne for a few impromptu hours in the city: walking past the cathedral on our way to a free concert (Luisa’s first), a stop at the bookstore so Steph can nurse, and I can find a map of South East Asia, and then kebabs “on the hand” to eat on our way home. The rest of our time together is exactly as Annalisa had predicted in the email/poem she sent to us the week before (with my pics added and elaborations in italics). US! meeting luisa maria hugging you and seeing your beautiful faces...hair...bodies...hands seeing martin and hearing his bursting laugh walking around steph and martins home smelling it lying on their coach chatting for hours drinking tea holding luisa maria seeing steph breastfeeding her (maybe?) yes, and seeing my bloody nipples, steph adds waking up at night with luisa crying loud (maybe?) the parents yes, but not so much their guests cooking and drinking wine afternoon walks around their neighborhood their homemade bread for dinner looking at old photos and taking new ones listening to steph and magdalen speaking their funny Italian steph and martin’s marital bickering in German, all of us conversing in an evolving English, in translations, in body language, and so much laughter talking about life, lives, and about meanings remembering and dreaming looking at maps planning wisconsin winter january 2018 australian reunion 2020-something? talking about luisa maria and oscar for hours listening the 2 mamas sharing mamas experiences all of us sharing our challenges, joys, and heartbreaks of tracking ovulation, fluctuating hormones, AI, IVF, miscarriage, birth always always dreaming the days of our kiddos growing together maybe listening to a trumpet? or two? posing our butts sleeping under the same roof and seeing your pajamas making breakfast together laughing and crying This time, I totally don't care about places (except for "The Home"), but only about US!!!!! Now it’s Sunday and I’m on a train to Paris to meet Leslie and her Aunt. Unlike the first long travel day, this trip is not exhausting, but exactly what I need. City center to city center. Four hours to reflect on my time with Steph, Annalisa, Martin and Luisa, on my time away from Jen and Oscar, on my time to come with Leslie and her Aunt. I scroll through the pictures I took and the pictures Jen sent me of Oscar. I am so grateful that I can have this time away and that they can have this time together at home without me. Animals in the house and all.
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AuthorsMagdalen Dale and Kaite Sweval grew up a layer apart, overlapping and paralleling. Belonging to the shores of Lake Superior and yet not quite belonging. Laughing and dreaming on the bench outside the ferry booth as Mag passed the time and Kaite chose her time. Left to explore as soon as they could. And then as adults returned home, perhaps to their surprise. But glad to have each other... ‘cause we know there is strength in the differences between us and comfort where we overlap. Archives
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