Hever Castle in the Spring

Some are wearing fancy sundresses with sandals. Some have on the summer uniform for around here—capris and flops with wrap around sweaters and Bodin tshirts. Some of the men have manpris or jeans and tennis shoes with ragged tshirts. The other half have linen shirts tucked in to freshly pressed kahkis and funny ‘Indiana Jones’ sun hats that don’t do them any favors I’m afraid.

The whole place is ablaze with daffodils. Thousands and thousands of daffodils. Daffodils beneath the ancient groves of trees. Daffodils like carpet in the orchard at the base of the castle just this side of the moat. Daffodils with pink flowering trees among them. Some look like delicate stars. Some are big and fat and look like the sun itself. Bridger says the ones with orange middles look like faces, and I giggle as he imitates what they would sound like if they could speak.

Two hours chasing one another through the wooden maze and up and down the long metal slide. I sit in the sunshine. A tad uncomfortable but immeasurably happy. They try the zip line. Spend ages on the swings as Caid has discovered that this year he really doesn’t need a push and continually shouts, “Look how HIGH I am!” as if he can’t believe it himself.

We run to the bathroom and discover that the playground is nothing compared to the rhododendron trees. They teach the English brother and sister pair the term ‘hide-out’ and climb as high as they can and play pirates. Soon the game is disrupted when Caid’s sword—his BEST sword, the one he plays with every single day and carries with him everywhere—breaks. I can’t stand to see him so very heartbroken and we run right away to the gift shop and buy him a new one. Best £2.50 I’ve spent in ages.

Time for snacks. We choose a place near the field and overlooking the daffodiled orchard and the castle. I splurge—it’s a splurgish kind of day—and buy us a gluten free brownie and juice and crisps. Yum. We sit and chat and the boys get gooey-chocolate faced. Then they run and test out the new sword with ferocious duelling in the grass. I get a look from the mom at the table next to us because she has just yelled at her two to not wrestle, and I don’t make mine stop.

We walk to the Italian gardens. Turn a corner into the ‘blue garden’, and it instantly stops us in our tracks. Caid is climbing the rocks to sniff the blue polyanthus. Bridger kneels right down on the ground and sticks his nose into the flowers. Informing me it’s the hyacinths and not the violas that smell so “lovely.” I stand in the middle transfixed. Breathing in the delicious smell of hundreds of hyacinths and thinking I live an amazing life.

We walk back to the car the long way. Exploring a cave and a little sheltered area that Caid likes. I start to get tired, but I wouldn’t have traded the day. Sunshine. My boys. The flowers.

I sure am blessed.

You know you’re 40 weeks pregnant when…

I grab my robe. Finally convinced by the 3 AM rumblings in my tummy that sleep will not return without a little smackerel of something from the kitchen. I walk downstairs in that hazy half-sleep place. Only turning on some of the lights. Noodles and sauce from the fridge. I head toward the bowls in the cabinet when—squish—foot meets slug. I scream. Then feel a bit silly as I turn on the light and reach for a paper towel. Had the paper towel been right there and able to wipe of the foot with no trouble that might have been the end of the story. However, on the way to the paper towel I spotted not one, but SEVEN more slugs. Seven 3 inch, nasty orangey-colored English slugs.

What’s a girl to do? Run sobbing to her knight in shining armor of course. “Scotty? Scotty? Nothing’s wrong. It’s okay. The baby is fine. But I’m hungry. I couldn’t sleep. I need a snack and there are slugs everywhere in the kitchen. Will you please come help me-he-ee-ee-ee?”

My mind races to that obsessive crazy place. I start imagining giant slugs eating my children and covering my world in slime. “What will I do when I have to feed the baby in the middle of the night? What if I need something from downstairs? How will I go into the kitchen if there are slugs everywhere? Last year there was only one slug occasionally. SEVEN slugs? Where are they coming from? This is too much! I haven’t even seen any outside yet. If there are seven now what about when it’s full-on slug season? Maybe they’re breading underneath my cabinets? There must be a hole in the wall? What else could get in from outside? What if Scotty is gone on a trip? How will I stomach cleaning up all of the slugs? Maybe we need a cat. Do cats capture and eat slugs? A dog? Maybe there are slug traps like mice traps. We only went to sleep a few hours ago. How did they get in here so fast? Aren’t slugs supposed to be slow? What if they get upstairs? I want to go back to Colorado. Oh NO!!!!!” I’m a sobbing, blithering idiot falling to pieces on the couch while my husband dutifully and sweetly not only cleans up the slugs, but also takes the trash out to the garage. I’m guessing he knew I’d be picturing them multiplying in the garbage can and bringing their armies to attack us.

Scotty calls me into the slug free kitchen and cracks a joke complete with hilarious slow-slug impression. “At least they don’t scatter when you turn the lights on!” he says and then moves slowly, slowly across the floor. I’m reminded of a story my mom told about living in married student housing on the New Mexico State campus and finding a cockroach when she unwrapped me from my baby blankets one night. I start to get the picture. Maybe I’m overreacting? I tell Scotty I’m sorry—that I’ll try to laugh as soon as possible about all of this, and that I’ll reconsider packing my bags for Colorado first thing tomorrow morning.

children are amazing

Children are amazing. Unpredictable. Infinitely more interesting than most adults. “What would you like to do today boys?” A museum! WHAT?!?! I shouldn’t be surprised. These are the boys that insisted we go to the Louvre in Paris (Scott and I weren’t thrilled—we’d been) because they needed to see the real album cover painting of Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. That was one of those moments when you realize your kids are cooler than you are and they aren’t even teenagers yet. Ah well.

Today was wonderful. We met friends at my favorite London locale—Borough Market. Drank coffee from Monmouth. Ate our chosen snacks standing up under the central structure since it was ‘chucking down’ rain. More proof that our children our cooler than us? Out of all the options at Borough Caid wanted cucumber and tomato salad with roasted sweet potatoes. Again, WHAT?!?! Then we sat at another coffee shop and visited for a while. The boys explaining their favorite aspects of various European cities. It was one of those I-can’t-believe-we-get-to-live-this-life moments.

Our friends left and the boys weren’t ready to go home. So at their request we walked to the nearest museum, the Tate Modern.

Art museums are amazing places with children. A gigantic steel sculpture is experienced with every sense. It’s brilliant to run underneath. Dark and creepy inside. Makes a fantastic hollow-echo sound when you run on it and should really be classified a climbing structure! I don’t know how the artist or the curators would feel, but I love to watch them assess artwork’s value through all of their sensory grids.

To my boys, what’s outside the windows is just as interesting as what’s inside the frames. They sat beside the Jackson Pollack and just across from Monet’s Water Lilies and sketched St Paul’s and the Millennium Bridge and the Thames outside the window. Bridger’s of course included people and animals. Caid’s was drawn on a grader scale and much more technical.

The sun had come out by the time we left. Blue skies over St Paul’s. We ate bratwurst and looked at daffodils in Southwark Cathedral’s gardens. Then we took the train home. It was one of those magic days. Made all the more interesting and rich and wonderful by the two little men who accompanied Scott and I. Children are amazing.

of falafel and bad attitudes

It’s a well known fact amongst aficionados that the best Mexican food comes from either a hole in the wall grubby restaurant (often located in some obscure strip-mall) or the ever popular ‘burrito wagon’ parked in an equally obscure parking lot. I think it’s a reasonable conjecture to include hot dogs and Philly Cheese Steak Sandwiches in this rule as well. Hot, authentic, greasy and wrapped in thin paper that sticks to the food and stinks up the inside of your car for weeks. All washed down by an ice cold coke. Side note: I’ve always wondered how those wagons get the coke so stinkin’ cold. It’s like magic.

I live in England now, though. No burrito wagons. No hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants either. It’s a sad, sad state of affairs, and quite frankly has been a thorn in the side of this whole pregnancy.

I took a little trip to Forest Row this week. A cute, hippie village about 35 minutes from here. What was scheduled as an hour-long acupuncture session ended up being a much needed 2-hour heart to heart and an attitude adjustment.

See, I feel like a beached whale. A glimpse of myself has me thinking ‘fun house mirror’ these days. My maternity tops no longer cover my belly. Anything that isn’t knit or draw string cuts into my skin and makes it difficult to breathe. My poor feet can only be squashed into my Uggs. Even my nose and lips are larger than their usual proportions. Then there’s all the fun that comes with this 38 ½ week size. The jerking/ rolling/ propelling movement to get myself out of bed or the front seat of the car. The rests at the top of stair cases. The million trips to the bathroom. Add to that the intense emotional stuff and let’s just say I’m over it. I’m more than over it. I have a bad attitude.

So this week, the acupuncturist asked the right question. I poured my heart out and it helped. Disappointment. Pain. Frustration. This has been a hell of a pregnancy in the emotions department. People I love have died and are dying. Pain and trauma of years past finally brought to the surface to be dealt with because it can’t be shoved back down—there’s no room for baby and pain. Baggage agitated by people letting me down. To top it all off there’s no effing Mexican food. What’s a craving pregnant girl to do? How does one comfort eat when the correct comfort food isn’t available?!?!

Turns out, eat falafel. There’s a great health food store in Forest Row. I bought the difficult-to-find-elsewhere booty just in the nick of time before they closed and headed to the car. And there it was. The falafel wagon. Parked in an alley behind the store. Like manna from heaven. Greasy, wrapped in nasty, sticky paper. Sold with an ice-cold coke and damn if it wasn’t—of course—the best falafel I have ever eaten.

I sat in the car in the pouring rain and admired the hundreds of daffodils blooming in the grass all around the parking lot. I mmmm’d and ahhhh’d over the ridiculously good falafel and felt so much better. And a paradigm shift occurred (or at least began to occur). One simple word change that helped. Instead of waiting around for this baby to come. Disappointed. Huge. Grumpy. I switched to anticipating. Waiting is what we do in angst and boredom. Anticipation is the thing that makes the falafel wagon jump out at us in all of its culinary glory. We see it because we are looking for something good. Eager. Excited. Expecting the best. And boy did it deliver.

This baby will come. I won’t be huge forever. The pain and disappointment will heal. And as it does, thank GOD I now know where to get the good falafel.

insomniac hotel musings

My tummy is tight and the room is loud with heaters blowing and OH MY GOSH I’m thirsty. I felt my way to the toilet at 2 something with no light and then stood at the sink afterwards grasping around for the tiny glass with the paper hat. I did get a small drink, but all I could think about the whole time was that YouTube video you forwarded me from Scott Chadwick a few years ago about the housekeepers giving each glass a squirt of windex and wiping out with a cleaning cloth before replacing the hat.

It’s 3 something now and this time I turned on a light instead of peeing in the dark and decided to find your water bottle for my drink. My belly is tight and my hair is fuzzy-wild and ticklish from going to bed with wet hair. You are very warm and snoring pleasantly. Wish I could be so lucky. But alas, here I am. Big, tight belly. Thirsty and wide awake at 3:25 am in Bristol, Avon, England, on March 6^th, 2010.

I’ve been thinking about that beautiful brown line. The one pregnant ladies get from the top of their bellies, down the middle, past the reminder of their own birth—their belly button—to the bottom of their round bump. I’ve never understood what this is for, this line. I love it. Beautiful. Sensual. An outline? An arrow? A journey mapped? Mine is crooked. It veers off and breaks up a bit at my belly button. The casualty of belly button scar tissue and it’s hilarious stretchmark repercussions.

How very apt this seems. The journey never follows those beautiful straight lines. Nah. It’s a veerish sort of thing. Profoundly affected by decisions that seemed so beautifying and exciting and innocuous at the time. You look back later and wonder if you should warn others. “Belly button piercings might ruin your dark-brown line later on!” And you realize the absurdity not of the warning, but of the statement itself. The meanderings of my dark-brown line are my testimony. My path. To life. To motherhood and womanhood and to myself. It has never ever been straight. Nor have the meanderings been ruinous. Quite the contrary. They are my banner. The ‘interesting’ to my story. The tears and laughter and wonderful fodder for thought at 3 something in the morning lying next to your snoring self and obsessing about water vessels whilst dying of thirst.

Tiny socks

There are very tiny socks in my washing machine. Just two of them. A white pair with the Rockie’s ‘CR’ in purple on the front. They’re for Opening Day—a day revered like Christmas in my family. They’re in there with the bigger boy’s muddy baseball pants. Spring Training is in full swing at the Anderberg house. Soon there will be Sunday baseball days—an afternoon family baseball game at the park, followed by Scott’s famous grilled burgers and then the Rockies game on MLB.tv . If it’s anything like last year Bridger and his daddy will stay up as late as it takes to catch the very last inning and Caid and I will be asleep by the 5^th.

This year though, there will be another person along. A person who wears very tiny socks. It’s hard to imagine. I can hardly wrap my head around it. There will be another little boy in my house by Opening Day. That’s only a little over a month away. Whoa.

It’s funny. I am a doula now. A childbirth educator. I’ve done 2 extensive trainings about birth and pregnancy. Completed one certification and am well into another. Read literally hundreds of books, articles, studies, accounts, blogs, etc. All about birth. Yet somehow, I still feel overwhelmed. Surprised at how apprehensive and uncertain I am.

This feeling has ebbed and flowed throughout this pregnancy, but welled up inside of me intensely about 3 weeks ago. I panicked. There were all these…THINGS I wanted to do before this little person arrived. I had communicated my expectations and wishes. I had bought journals and pastels and made lists and well, PLANS. You know, PLANS!! Then three weeks ago when it hit me just how close we were to the end (cue music, duh duh duuuuuuuuhhhhhh) I realized that my plans hadn’t panned out and I panicked. Completely panicked.

I cried. I threw fits. I moaned and sobbed about how this was my last pregnancy. About how IMPORTANT these things had been and now it was too late and I’d never, ever get tot do them ever, never again. Okay, so maybe I wasn’t quite that dramatic. Or actually, probably I was.

In truth, I know I really did need to let all that out. There was genuine disappointment there. Disappointment from not one, but three pregnancies. Let’s face it, disappointment is an incredibly heavy and ugly thing to carry around. It’s a thief. If we let it, it robs of us of enjoying the wonderful blessings of the moment as we struggle with the very real and at the time ignored pain of the past.

There was some genuine baggage to be sorted out too. That’s been a present process all throughout this 9 months. My first pregnancy and postpartum experience was not a walk in the park with a husband having and recovering from major brain surgery. Throw in the fears and expectations (real and imagined) of friends and family members, my desire to make it all right for everyone, and the sheer immaturity factor and well, let’s just sum it up with baggage, shall we?

So several tears, fits, yelling, sobbing, sobbing, and lots more sobbing and somehow, I am sitting here. In my sunny kitchen. Listening to the big boys upstairs with their friends playing knights and princesses. Watching the tiny socks go around in the washer and thinking, “Wow, I’m having a baby soon.”

See, I do know an awful lot about pregnancy and birth. I am a great doula. I have read and learned a lot. However, sometimes ‘ignorance is bliss’ wins out over ‘knowledge is power.’ Or perhaps it’s neither. Perhaps it’s all a lesson in letting things go. Expectations. Plans. Ideals.

I am having a baby. A tiny little person who wears tiny little socks. A precious little boy who will be here, watching the game with us on Opening Day. I don’t know exactly how it will go. Surely there will be stories to tell and the pain will be mixed with the ecstasy and excitement of new life. Maybe we didn’t get to the things on my List. Maybe all my Plans didn’t quite pan out. But I’d say letting go of all that disappointment and baggage was work enough for the pregnancy. I’m going to let it trump the list. I’m not going to carry that disappointment—from this pregnancy or the former ones—into this birth. I’m just going to trust my gut. Trust my body. Trust my husband. Trust the God who made us all and knows the depths of our pain and hope and disappointment. I’m going to trust this little person who has already brought so much light and life. And enjoy. Enjoy whatever comes. Enjoy it free of the weight of expectations and plans.

And really enjoy putting him in those ridiculously little and adorable Colorado Rockies socks.

Simple Blessings

I’m sitting in a beautiful puddle of sunshine on my bed. I am alone in a quiet and relatively clean house. Baby boy is doing alien stretches inside my belly and sweetly responding to my words and pats. In a world where there is much pain and difficulty and confusion and in a year that has included many of these for me and those that I love, these simple pleasures mean the absolute world to me.

There is so much in my life to be grateful for. I live in a beautiful village as an expat in a foreign country. Sometimes this poses aggravating and even angst-inducing episodes, but mainly it provides adventure. It provides opportunity to think outside my ‘normal’ and begin to adapt to life in a truer, realer way. A way that honors my family more. Honors myself more. Honors life’s natural rhythms more. Besides, foreign though I may be, I have some of the greatest friends ever here.

Life doesn’t always afford opportunity to reach outside of our comfort zone. When it does, it can be quite lonely. Every once in a while—there are angels seen and unseen who swoop in to smooth the transition and welcome our hearts. ‘The Gang’ as they’ve come to be affectionately known in our house threw me a baby shower last night! Never mind that they don’t really do them here. Never mind that none of them had ever been to a baby shower until a South African woman at their school had one a few months ago. My friend Kelly decided that if I would have had one at home I ought to have one here! Louise and the rest of the girls pitched in and it was beautiful. We had traditional English tea foods—sandwiches and cakes and scones all served on red and white polka dot doilies with matching napkins. We drank wine (me just a little J) and of course tea. We played celebrity name matching and guess whose baby picture is whose (my mom was even contacted and brought along a baby photo of me on the sly). There were touches from my consulting sister. A card from a friend back home. And what Scott aptly dubbed ‘a haul’ of presents.

I would have never imagined any of this those first miserable months in South Croydon. But here I am, a year later feeling full and blessed and loved and included and really happy and content in my puddle of sunshine in Warlingham, Surrey, UK.

I remember a number of conversations with Scott in the early days here. They went something like, “How could God do this to us?!?! He really screwed up this time! What have we done to deserve this misery?!?! Why can’t we go home?!?!” and other uplifting and cheerful variations on that theme. I remember Scott saying, much to my complete annoyance and frustration—maybe this IS exactly where God has us. Maybe this IS a blessing and we just can’t see. To which my inner response—and even my outer one a few times—was, “I kinda want to punch you in the face right now, asshole!”

But you know what? He might have been on to something. Sometimes I wonder if we have to be brought completely outside of our comfortable, contented selves in order to be able to fully embrace the coming blessings. Sometimes the loneliness has to drain all the preconceived notions and former habits and assumptions away so the new, clean water of blessings and friendships can come in.

I’ve never loved snow so much as I did this winter. I had never been away from it long enough to know. I never enjoyed an hour or two stolen away to hang out with my mama until she wasn’t always available to get away with. I never loved shopping so much as when I discovered new little hole-in-the-wall boutiques in Portobello Road and got to take my shopping queen sister when she visited. I never enjoyed girlfriend time so much as when making girlfriends wasn’t automatic. Never gloried in the sunshine and baby-shoots of spring bulbs like I have after a winter of rain and grey skies. Never appreciated a hamburger so much as when my hubby stood in the rain and made me one because there wasn’t a hamburger joint on every corner nearby.

I’m learning that sometimes the things that are missing have to be missed long enough. Long enough to say goodbye. Even tearful, fit-throwing goodbyes. Sometimes they have to be missed long enough to allow us the creativity and openness to say ‘hello’ to new things. And somewhere in there, we find a contentment and gratefulness that doesn’t so much fill, as supersede the longings we felt before.

The sunshine is fading a bit, my boys just returned muddy and pink cheeked from their first session of ‘spring training’ at the park. I hear they’re looking like World Series contenders, but that’s another blog. I’m smiling. A content, happy smile. Not in any way ignoring the pain and difficulty of the world around and even in me, but also thoroughly enjoying the simple blessings of the right now of my life.