Birthdays and English hospitality

Hosting people is a favorite. Hosting them in a country they’ve never been to or have only traveled to a time or two? Even better. I wasn’t quite sure what to think when she called. I didn’t really know her. We’d had a conversation at a family gathering or two. One phone conversation when she was in the thick of cancer and politics and life with a sick loved one. So I was surprised when she called and said that it was her birthday, and could she please spend it with us in England. Sure. Absolutely. See you soon. 

She arrived the day after we returned from Celle. A near-perfect vacation filled with good food and good people and good scenery and good culture and everything that is so wonderfully Italian. So I was primed to be hospitable.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Bring wellies I had recommended. She showed up with the world’s largest suitcase. Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I’ve got grace--it’s tricky to know what to pack when you’ve never really been somewhere before. (To be fair the same suitcase travelled back a few months later, but with everything she needed for herself plus her two kiddos). 

During the days we walked with Kelly and the dogs. Kelly can make anyone feel like an old friend rather than a stranger. We took the kids to school and my friends kissed her cheeks and made her feel at home--they’re good like that. In the evenings we sampled English beer--she’s a big fan and a bit of a connoisseur. We sat on the floor and talked and laughed and cried and discovered that we shared a mutual and somewhat odd and obscure favorite snack of popcorn with salt and brewer’s yeast. We talked. Then talked some more. Then talked and talked and talked a little more. 

She came for her birthday. So we gave her the choice of dinner locale--both pubs of course. One to drive to and one to walk to. We gave her a good-natured ribbing at her choice of footwear when she decided on the walk-to pub. Heels seemed a bit of an odd choice for a path through an ancient churchyard and behind the horse pastures and over rocks and mud. She’s appropriately stubborn and strong willed for a survivor. For a widow. For a single mom. So she stuck by her choice. And looked great. And didn’t complain once. And always wore wellies to the pub after that. 

It’s funny how a person can go from an acquaintance to close friend in only a week. I no longer disbelieve the possibility, but it still definitely surprises me. A year later, I’m homesick for the hospitality of the English countryside, and for my friend. My good friend. Happy Birthday!

Today it feels like Fall. Misty-rainy and overcast hoody weather. We traipsed off to school and back without the usual drenched-clothes get-me-to-the-shower-asap feeling as soon as I got home. After my appointment today I ran in for a Starbucks treat and oh so appropriately Pumpkin Spice Lattes made their yearly debut this week. Maybe it seems trifling or silly, but it awoke so many deep emotions in me I had to go to the car and listen to the rain and cry...

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are the Starbucks in Idaho Springs on the way to or the way home from the mountains. Aspens in their full glory in September. Snow scenting the air in October. Crazy roads in November and December. Windshield time and holding hands and life-changing conversations.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are Scott’s annual Fall Mix. Playing on Saturday mornings and in the car and weaving its way into an anthem for the coming year.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are Rob gutting pumpkins on our back porch at the condo. Chili in the crockpot and gluten free pumpkin bars in the oven. Everything set up for the annual pumpkin carving extravaganza.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are Race for the Cure with my sisters. Coming around the bend at Invesco Field and seeing thousands of women ahead and thousands stretched out behind. The pink shirted survivors dotted here and there and the bib on my back commemorating my own mom’s victory over breast cancer. 

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are finding out my gran died in the Jardins des Tuileries outside of the Louvre in Paris. A train home to London to discover our car stolen and our house ransacked. A flight to the US alone with two little boys and my sisters meeting me at the airport with just the right treat to cheer me up.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are rainy London days feeling homesick for Colorado and the Portobello Road Starbucks barista’s indignant exclamation of “Ew! No!” when I asked if they maybe? possibly? carried Pumpkin Spice flavoring in the UK.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes are the Colorado barista who wouldn’t sell Scotty any Pumpkin Spice syrup, but gave him a cup of it for free which he poured into a rubbermaid container and duck-taped close. It made it all the way to London without spilling and made my day!

But this year it was something different. The quintessential ‘Colorado Fall’ thing became an amalgamation of homesickness...a little puddle of sadness and loneliness in the Starbucks parking lot. The grey rain making me positively ache for England. For wellies and romps in the woods with Kelly. For pub walks with the gang. For cups of tea in Loulou’s living room and trips to London with umbrellas in tow. But then there was the crisp weather and pumpkin yumminess making me look very much forward to a Colorado Fall. The kind of Fall I’ve been pining for the last three years. To golden Aspens and hoodies and pumpkin carving and the fall mix. Homesick. For all of it. All because of a Pumpkin Spice Latte.

How about you? What makes you wax nostalgic?

Brunchish medicine

You know what is absolutely and wholly restorative? To body, mind, and soul? 

Brunch. 

Brunch is a beautiful thing. Especially when eaten on a small neighborhood-joint patio with mismatched vintage furniture on an spectacular September-in-Colorado day. Especially whilst consuming a fresh squeezed grapefruit mimosa served in a cutie-pie vintage mini milk jug and sipped through a straw. Especially after strolling through a European-ish market searching for just the right table--all by oneself. Especially while friends who love your children nearly as much as you do volunteer to take the lot of them to the zoo. And especially when it follows an hour-long pick-up-where-you-left-off conversation with one’s best girlfriends who live halfway around the world and for whom you positively ache with loneliness. 

Brunch. It’s just the thing.

Ahhhhhh...

How about you? What’s been the surprisingly restorative medicine for you recently?

The Sound of Summer

Flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flop. $5 at Old Navy and our summer is complete. Flip-flop to the pool. Doing the duck-waddle as they strain to learn how to keep them on their feet. Flip flop home and a complaint that their legs (aka calves) are tired. Flip flops lost whilst peddling hard on their bikes. Flip flops lost running across the grass at the pool. Summer feet protected by squishy rubber flops across the burning pavement. 

“If you’re wondering why I’m wearing them inside it’s ‘cause I really like the noise.”

Flip-flop. Flip-flop. “Mama?” he says, “Don’t you just love that sound.” Yes, my sweet boy. I do. That is the sound of summer.

Destination KNOWN!

Countdown to departure: 11 days.  

After many months of “maybe Singapore/maybe Hong Kong no, scratch that!  Maybe Singapore/maybe Sydney.  Sydney. Singapore. Sydney most likely. No, Singapore most likely. No...where in the heck are we moving?!?!” We finally have our destination!  Drumroll please...we’re moving to...DENVER!  Yep, it was door number three apparently.  

To be honest we’re still in shock.  It’s so totally not what we were expecting.  Bridger summed up how all of us were feeling quite well.  After a fist pump and an excited, “YES!” in response to our location announcement, his face clouded over and he proclaimed “But I wasn’t quite ready to be done with our grand adventure!” We tried to help him see life as the grand adventure.  Life lived anywhere in the world.  We reminded him about all the adventures to be had in the mountains camping and skiing.  About baseball and American schools. About the yummy foods he’s missed and all of the friends and family waiting there.  In the end though he cried quite a bit.  “Why does the COMPANY get to say where we live?  Why can’t we live anywhere in the world that we want to?  I love Colorado to visit for a holiday, but I’ve lived there before. I want to try out a new country!”  When we asked what country he’d choose if he could live anywhere he wanted he sighed, thought for a moment and exclaimed, “I don’t know.  Denmark?”  

I sure can relate.  I’ve taken a fancy to this world traveling stuff.  I struggle with feeling like there’s still SO much here we haven’t seen or done.  So much close by in Europe that is so worth exploration and time.  Leaving here seems hard on a lot of levels--but the friends we’ll miss and the adventures still left to be had are the two biggies. Somehow it seemed easier--I’m not sure why--to leave and head into another great unknown.  Going back to what is more ‘known’ feels like short circuiting the ‘grand adventure.’  

At the same time I’m so stoked to go back to Denver too.  I’ve started a ‘Top 10 Things I’ll Miss About England” list, but in honor of our move and finally having a destination here are the 

“Top Ten Things I’m Looking Forward to About Denver”

(in no particular order)

1. Buffalo Burger. Red meat in general really.  The English specialize more in lamb and pork.  Having grown up in the Western United States I had no idea we had it so good when it came to beef.  I cannot wait for a really good burger.  Mmmm...makes my mouth water!
2. Country Music. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl. I know I will lose some of your respect with this admission, but boy howdy do I miss me some country tunes!
3. Mexican Food. Green chilies from the Farmer’s Market frozen and used for Green Chili Stew all winter. Tacos from D' Corazon. Blue corn tortilla chips.  Good salsa. Tamales with mole. Lola’s. Chipotle! All of the food my mom cooked growing up I would describe as ‘Mexican Fusion’. I have REALLY missed the Mexican food!
4. Margaritas.  The Brits are really good at beer. I adore PIMMs.  But I haven’t had a decent marg for ages.  Are you noticing a food-based theme here?
5. Baseball. Especially the Rockies and the Anderberg boys. We had already decided to spend 5-6 weeks in Denver in June so I had signed my boys up for Little League.  I can’t wait to be THAT mom in the stands!  Yippee!  Plus we’ll be in town with our beloved Rockies.  Baseball games at Coors Field or on the couch (perhaps with a hamburger and a margarita thrown in!) I can’t wait!
6. Good haircuts. My sister is an absolute genius. I have so missed her artistic presence in the hair around here--mine, my husband’s, and my boy’s.  I’m going to be cute again!
7. Date nights! We’ll have babysitters close again! WOOP WOOP! Here in England almost everyone has their parents or family members watch their kiddos. So no one I know knows anyone to pay to do the job. I can’t wait for both the paid and the grandparental types of babysitters. YAY!
8. The mountains.  Not just because I’ll now know which way is west again either.  There’s nothing like the Rockies on the horizon.  It just makes me feel safe and grounded.  It’ll be so good to have them in the distance but even better to get up there as often as we can!  Camping anyone? Hiking? Skiing?
9. My Friends! So many friends to go back to there. I am so looking forward to beers around the backyard firepit. 
10. MY FAMILY! I can’t wait to be near my parents and my sisters again. Lunches. Movie nights. Being able to call my mom when I’m sick. Watching baseball with my dad. Plus I’ve had two cousins and their hubbies move to Denver while we’ve been away. I. Am. Stoked.

So there you have it. We finally ‘know.’ Watch this space as the adventure continues!

The Countdown Begins...

Countdown to departure: 13 days.  Whoa.  Could barely drag myself out of bed this morning in spite of the fact that the baby slept through the night.  Half of me was super-motivated, “I’m going to blitz the house!  Tidy things up, wrap up the organization, and clean one more time before the movers get here next Monday!  It’ll be great!”  Then  I was going to go traipsing about in London and the countryside for the rest of the week.  Alas, in spite of working my butt off all day I didn’t even finish the kitchen.  Perhaps I should have done what the other half of me wanted and gone back to bed and pulled the covers over my head.  

This is hard.  I don’t do well with this unknown stuff.  It’s so clear I need a lesson in being in the moment.  Or...well, I’m getting a lesson.  So far I’m pretty sure my grade is a D minus--not an F perhaps, but pretty darned close.  I keep living in the moment we arrive.  The moment we find a house.  The moment I get schools squared away.  I live in the moment where we can’t find a good house too.  The moment the only school is a crappy one where the teachers are mean and the lunch lady tries to poison the kids.  I live in the moment where we end up on the streets.  Or worse--a tiny 2 bedroom basement apartment with a leaky ceiling and no heat. Yes, I am a touch dramatic.  But dude, the internal monologue is a real doozy these days. Sure, it’s silly--I have a oodles of evidence that the world is a friendly place and that everything will work out swimmingly.  The bottom line is that I’m over it.  I’m tired.  I’ve been cheerful and chilled-out and cool about this whole ‘we’ll get there when we get there and we don’t know where ‘where’ is but it’ll be grand!’ thing.  Cheerful and chilled-out is one thing--brave is quite another. My inner-control freak is freaking out.  

Scott asked me today what would be gained by knowing.  What would it change if I knew?  If I knew where we would live.  If I knew where the boys would be going to school.  If I knew...how would things be different right now? How would I be planning or acting or what would I be doing differently? After I told him I sort of wanted to punch him in the face I considered what he said.  I don’t know...I’d stop obsessing I guess.  I’d stop worrying. I’d work on plans for the one scenario instead of making wildly obsessive plans about the 784 fabricated scenarios running through my head. I’m sure knowing would make me stop obsessing.  Right?  Right?  Don’t you think? Come on, back me up here.

Bridger came in a little bit ago--still up nearly two hours after he went to bed. “Mom?  My brain is too full.  I can’t shut my mind off.”  Poor kid. I have no idea where he gets it.  

Boys

Sometimes my sons make me feel crazy.  We’ve had a bit of attitude going on at our house.  Is there anything more hateful than the small person you birthed and whose bum you wiped and puke you caught in your own bare hands rolling their eyes at you?!?!  I ask you?  What’s a mother to do.  It tempts one to smack them and I am not that kind of mom!  

Today I came downstairs after my shower to a sobbing Bridger.  I have this red chair, see.  It’s my favorite ‘thing.’  I own lots of stuff and am not particularly attached to any of it, but this piece of stuff has rank.  In a discussion of what to sell, give away, or move on to our next destination the one thing that always makes the ‘it goes where I go’ list is my red cowboy chair.  I bought it out of a girl’s garage a few years ago.  Found some fabulous red pleather and some cherry-red paint and had my favorite furniture gurus in Denver make it over.  It is a fabulous piece of furniture, and today my son wrecked it.  Well, not really.  It’s not wrecked.  He just picked a bunch of paint off of the arm of the chair.  There was a tiny bit pealing up and he did what any self-respecting eight year old would do.  He started picking and pulling and messing with it.  I can’t blame him.  It does not make him a horrible person.  I once pulled the brail sticker off the inside of an elevator because it was pulling away and I couldn’t resist peeling it off.  That, I’m pretty sure makes you a horrible person.  But a little paint off a chair?  Even if it’s your mother’s favorite ‘thing’?  It just makes you a point of frustration.  Even that I didn’t let out in front of him.  He was genuinely heart broken and sorry.  So, I couldn’t be angry.  Just really bummed.  Then even more bummed when about two seconds later I found one of my vintage turquoise bracelets had been bent and mangled by the other son who ‘wanted to see how it worked.’

What with the recent snotting and eye-booger sickness, the demanding (as in I want it not now, RIGHT NOW) breastfeeding, the eye rolling, the constant bickering, and the el destructo boyness in general--between you and me I dream of weeks away from my children.  Still sometimes, they do or say or be something that simply melts me, and I am able to regroup and not smack them and even love them an extra lot.  Caid has lost his two front teeth and the lisping and toothless grin are so stinkin’ cute I can’t stand it.  Asher has started giving the most spectacular hugs.  Just wraps his little arms around you and presses his little head against you and mmmmm...it’s so nice!  Then there was the conversation around the dinner table the other night.  One of those moments that reminded me that these little beings around my table are from some other place.  Full of a life and light that is a gift to me and blesses me constantly. 

Bridger started a conversation a few nights ago with “Dad?  If you could raise money for something, what would you raise it for?”  Neither one of us were certain what he meant.  So we asked him what he would raise it for.  “A baseball field.  I’d build one for kids who don’t get to play baseball.  Maybe in Ubie’s [Ubaldo Jimenez--his favorite pitcher from the Dominican Republic] country.”  He then proceeded to line out all that he would do to accomplish this.  Find a field.  Ask the local people whether we should do it in a meadow or cut down some jungle.  Ask what sort of field they would want.  Decide how much it would cost.  Not forget to include equipment like balls and bats and helmets.  “Do you think they would want uniforms?”

Then he talked about how he’d write to schools and see if other kids would want to help him raise the money for the fields.  “I think kids in England and America would want to help.”  He went on and on.  Outlining different components of a very well thought-out plan with passion and clarity and excitment.  

He may be hard on my furniture, but I wouldn’t trade him for the world.