I'm reading an adventure book that takes place in the Highlands in the 18th century, and the writing is just sparkling. So much so that I'm compelled to share a couple passages:
"He shrugged, irritably waving off a sudden cloud of voracious midges. Unable to shake their attention, he ducked into the dark, brewery atmosphere of the pub, leaving the midges to mill outside in a frenzied cloud of inquiry."
"The inhabitants of the street scattered before him like geese, startled by the sight of a hurtling Scotsman, kilt flying around his churning knees."
Man! I wish I could write like that. Instead all I can do is chortle appreciatively to myself while the other passengers on the train scootch imperceptibly further away. Ahhh, English.
Friday, February 29, 2008
The Woman with Her Heart in the Highlands
Sooo, I guess it's time to reveal the deeply-hidden secret that there'll soon be another Eggers on this side of the pond. (Er, one that's immediately related to me, at any rate!)
Let me start off by saying that my parents are my role models, albeit in very different ways. In my Mom's case, this is a woman whom the backs of romance novels would describe as an "indomitable spirit".
Most people wonder idly what's "out there." But Mom has never stopped going out to see what's out there. She grew up taking care of her own family, doing all the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping and paying bills and everything an adult does to care for a household... from the age of ten. Mom is no stranger to adversity. If we're talking about novels, this woman's life could easily comprise one -- although it would likely be rejected by editors as too dramatic to be believable. Her biological mother died when Mom was seven, and she was adopted by her invalid grandmother, who then died three weeks before Mom's eighteenth birthday. She married when she was eighteen, divorced, and joined the Air Force to see the world. She married again while her brand-new, premature son breathed oxygen in a tank in the hospital for seven months, finally surviving against all odds and to the astonishment of his doctors; less than a year later, she added some twins; hopped around from base to base; and six years later busily packed up the young family to move to a foreign country. I still remember standing in the dining room in our house on-base in Spokane: Mom was on the phone with Dad, who had called from work, and they were talking excitedly about incomprehensible grown-up things when Mom almost fell out of her chair. They talked a bit more, Mom hung up, and she turned to me looking like someone who has just been told they're actually the emperor of China. "Pickle!" she said. "We're going to Germany!" (I think my response was something like, "Oh.")
Mom's enthusiasm, though, was catching. The night before we left -- all three of us kids snuggled into one bed in temporary base-housing -- she described how magical it would be to see the world, how much mystery and wonder was Out There.
And she was right. Mom spent the next six years soaking up as much Germany and Europe as any single human could. It was not long after we arrived and she got her own bearings that she took over the USO's "Guten Tag" program, an orientation program geared toward introducing other new Americans to German culture. The Guten Tag program was her pet: just as she continued to do for us, she was devoted to spreading the love of discovery and travel to others. She gently encouraged frightened new G.I.'s and their families to explore their surroundings; to meet the people; to learn some of the language; to try new food and experiences; to blend a bit with -- and appreciate -- the culture; in short, to recognize the opportunity for what it was and not be afraid to discover what could be Out There. She was tour guide and language teacher and cultural liaison all at once (though somehow this woman still found time to bake us cupcakes for school birthdays and chaperone every single field trip!).
Mom's involvement only grew. I think, at one point, she held five different part-time jobs. She found herself mixing cement in Belgium, marching in a Karnival parade in the Pfalz, driving a brand-new Mercedes down the Hockenheimring (the most famous Grand Prix track in western Germany), even delivering newspapers in Landstuhl on the weekends. She still laughs when she recounts sitting in the front yard with her best friend, Nena, as the two of them relaxed in the sun with a bottle of wine. "Oh, damn," Mom had griped, "I can't go shopping in Strassbourg this weekend. I have to lead a tour to Paris!"
When Mom and Dad weren't running around Europe for work, they were packing us up to run around it in their free time. We poked through Italy, Spain, Bavaria, Holland; Mom can still tell you the best places for lunch in random, tiny French villages, how salt is mined in Austria, or which trains to hop through Switzerland.
Of course, when you're a kid, you just accept this as life. It doesn't occur to you that any of this could be unusual, because you don't know anything else. It's only later that you recognize your extraordinary luck in growing up with such a multifacted, various, and yet safe exposure to the New. I sometimes complain about the fact that I don't really "come from" anywhere -- especially in comparison to the bogglingly deep roots that anchor Bert to the very soils of his homeland. But to tell the truth... I wouldn't have it any other way. Maybe that's only because I don't know it any other way.
But Mom does. She grew up thinking of Europe as "a place where rich people go." If anyone had told the overstressed thirteen-year-old, surviving off hard work and government aid, that she'd someday picnic in castle ruins in Germany, she would have laughed before turning back to washing the family's laundry by hand in the bathtub.
So you can imagine the guts it took for her to leave it all behind when her marriage fell apart. Mom and Dad finally admitted, toward the end of our six-year stay in Europe, that it probably Wasn't Meant to Be. A few short months later, Mom found herself in the desert in Arizona, 36 years old and sharing a bedroom with her friend's daughter and wondering how she was going to start all over again.
Well, of course she did. And by 2007, Mom had built up quite a life in Tucson. She had learned a new trade, cultivated a successful career, and even actually owned a house -- her first one -- which she then slowly filled with nice furniture. As she describes it, this seemingly mundane detail was what allowed her to finally feel like a grown-up: gypsy no more! She wasn't moving every couple of years! She was established, had friends and a career and a life, three kids grown and through college, and matching furniture.
And she looked around and said, "This is it?"
I should mention that, while Mom has certainly been persistent in attending college off and on again over the years -- even getting her Associate's Degree while we were little and taking night classes at Pima Community College while I was at the UofA -- she's never had the luxury of being able to study full-time. Yet the woman should have. She loves to learn. I think she was as fascinated by the material while I was in school as I was, and we would stay up long into the night talking about history and language and politics. Especially in recent years, her book collection has become almost exclusively non-fiction, and she's grown into a veritable unofficial expert on the history of the British Isles. She especially loves Scotland: I think something about its wild, dauntless spirit calls to her own.
Well, after a lifetime of taking care of everyone else around her, my mom is finally doing something for herself. She sold her house; she left her job. She said goodbye to her friends. She packed up her car and drove to Pittsburgh to stay with her nephew and sister-in-law for a while.
And in August, she's moving to Scotland.
Congratulations, Mom. Let's go explore the wide, wide world again together!
Let me start off by saying that my parents are my role models, albeit in very different ways. In my Mom's case, this is a woman whom the backs of romance novels would describe as an "indomitable spirit".
Most people wonder idly what's "out there." But Mom has never stopped going out to see what's out there. She grew up taking care of her own family, doing all the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping and paying bills and everything an adult does to care for a household... from the age of ten. Mom is no stranger to adversity. If we're talking about novels, this woman's life could easily comprise one -- although it would likely be rejected by editors as too dramatic to be believable. Her biological mother died when Mom was seven, and she was adopted by her invalid grandmother, who then died three weeks before Mom's eighteenth birthday. She married when she was eighteen, divorced, and joined the Air Force to see the world. She married again while her brand-new, premature son breathed oxygen in a tank in the hospital for seven months, finally surviving against all odds and to the astonishment of his doctors; less than a year later, she added some twins; hopped around from base to base; and six years later busily packed up the young family to move to a foreign country. I still remember standing in the dining room in our house on-base in Spokane: Mom was on the phone with Dad, who had called from work, and they were talking excitedly about incomprehensible grown-up things when Mom almost fell out of her chair. They talked a bit more, Mom hung up, and she turned to me looking like someone who has just been told they're actually the emperor of China. "Pickle!" she said. "We're going to Germany!" (I think my response was something like, "Oh.")
Mom's enthusiasm, though, was catching. The night before we left -- all three of us kids snuggled into one bed in temporary base-housing -- she described how magical it would be to see the world, how much mystery and wonder was Out There.
And she was right. Mom spent the next six years soaking up as much Germany and Europe as any single human could. It was not long after we arrived and she got her own bearings that she took over the USO's "Guten Tag" program, an orientation program geared toward introducing other new Americans to German culture. The Guten Tag program was her pet: just as she continued to do for us, she was devoted to spreading the love of discovery and travel to others. She gently encouraged frightened new G.I.'s and their families to explore their surroundings; to meet the people; to learn some of the language; to try new food and experiences; to blend a bit with -- and appreciate -- the culture; in short, to recognize the opportunity for what it was and not be afraid to discover what could be Out There. She was tour guide and language teacher and cultural liaison all at once (though somehow this woman still found time to bake us cupcakes for school birthdays and chaperone every single field trip!).
Mom's involvement only grew. I think, at one point, she held five different part-time jobs. She found herself mixing cement in Belgium, marching in a Karnival parade in the Pfalz, driving a brand-new Mercedes down the Hockenheimring (the most famous Grand Prix track in western Germany), even delivering newspapers in Landstuhl on the weekends. She still laughs when she recounts sitting in the front yard with her best friend, Nena, as the two of them relaxed in the sun with a bottle of wine. "Oh, damn," Mom had griped, "I can't go shopping in Strassbourg this weekend. I have to lead a tour to Paris!"
When Mom and Dad weren't running around Europe for work, they were packing us up to run around it in their free time. We poked through Italy, Spain, Bavaria, Holland; Mom can still tell you the best places for lunch in random, tiny French villages, how salt is mined in Austria, or which trains to hop through Switzerland.
Of course, when you're a kid, you just accept this as life. It doesn't occur to you that any of this could be unusual, because you don't know anything else. It's only later that you recognize your extraordinary luck in growing up with such a multifacted, various, and yet safe exposure to the New. I sometimes complain about the fact that I don't really "come from" anywhere -- especially in comparison to the bogglingly deep roots that anchor Bert to the very soils of his homeland. But to tell the truth... I wouldn't have it any other way. Maybe that's only because I don't know it any other way.
But Mom does. She grew up thinking of Europe as "a place where rich people go." If anyone had told the overstressed thirteen-year-old, surviving off hard work and government aid, that she'd someday picnic in castle ruins in Germany, she would have laughed before turning back to washing the family's laundry by hand in the bathtub.
So you can imagine the guts it took for her to leave it all behind when her marriage fell apart. Mom and Dad finally admitted, toward the end of our six-year stay in Europe, that it probably Wasn't Meant to Be. A few short months later, Mom found herself in the desert in Arizona, 36 years old and sharing a bedroom with her friend's daughter and wondering how she was going to start all over again.
Well, of course she did. And by 2007, Mom had built up quite a life in Tucson. She had learned a new trade, cultivated a successful career, and even actually owned a house -- her first one -- which she then slowly filled with nice furniture. As she describes it, this seemingly mundane detail was what allowed her to finally feel like a grown-up: gypsy no more! She wasn't moving every couple of years! She was established, had friends and a career and a life, three kids grown and through college, and matching furniture.
And she looked around and said, "This is it?"
I should mention that, while Mom has certainly been persistent in attending college off and on again over the years -- even getting her Associate's Degree while we were little and taking night classes at Pima Community College while I was at the UofA -- she's never had the luxury of being able to study full-time. Yet the woman should have. She loves to learn. I think she was as fascinated by the material while I was in school as I was, and we would stay up long into the night talking about history and language and politics. Especially in recent years, her book collection has become almost exclusively non-fiction, and she's grown into a veritable unofficial expert on the history of the British Isles. She especially loves Scotland: I think something about its wild, dauntless spirit calls to her own.
Well, after a lifetime of taking care of everyone else around her, my mom is finally doing something for herself. She sold her house; she left her job. She said goodbye to her friends. She packed up her car and drove to Pittsburgh to stay with her nephew and sister-in-law for a while.
And in August, she's moving to Scotland.
Congratulations, Mom. Let's go explore the wide, wide world again together!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Aw!
You know what makes my job gratifying?
When I walk into a room where the learners are waiting for me, and they cheer, "Oh boy, the best two hours of my week!"
Viva la language teaching. :)
When I walk into a room where the learners are waiting for me, and they cheer, "Oh boy, the best two hours of my week!"
Viva la language teaching. :)
Fructose and spice and everything nice
So because I am a generally food-oriented person, I thought I'd blog some more about food.
I like food. In fact, I tend to be a relatively constant nibbler from the moment I get up until right before going to bed, popping into the kitchen at least every couple of hours to crunch at a Knusperbrot or snap off another piece from our pile of Tembadoro dark chocolate. It's not particularly much at a time; in fact, big meals make me uncomfortable and sluggish. But it's certainly constant. And I've always been this way -- even in second grade, I remember hating being forced to space out my energy intake into three hulking, inflexible, timed, official "meals" within a long day of school and homework and play. Not allowed to eat in the classrooms in high school, I would chomp carrots and string cheese walking down the hall from class to class, and then save pieces of my lunch for the bus on the way home.
Well, consarn it, I'm a grown-up now, and I'll eat how I want. If left to my own devices, the biggest meal of the day will be a bowl of oatmeal in the morning. This is then followed, over the next several hours, by an assortment of rye crackers with cheese, a hardboiled egg, a scoop of herring salad, some peanut butter right out of the jar, a bowl of mushroom soup, half an avocado, a piece of chocolate, some yogurt out of the tub, and, I dunno, a handful of almonds. I certainly get enough calories (especially if you factor in all the beer and wine that gets drunk around here!). I just don't like to take it all in at once. Maybe this supports Bert's proposition that I am, indeed, a bird. (Or a sheep?)
Herr Bert, on the other hand, will go for hours without even thinking of food. He'll maybe have a cup of coffee in the morning at work, and then sometimes not even take a lunch break and come home with nothing more in his system than that bite of cake from his coworker's birthday. I would be famished. Irritable, shaky, unable to think straight. But he's not even hungry! I try to be polite and space out my munching to coincide with his dinnertime; but usually (unfortunately) I'm so impatient that, within the time it takes to select an evening menu, chop the salad, boil the noodles, heat up the leftover sauce, and even -- good lord! -- make a grocery-store run, I've nibbled enough ingredients to be satisfied before he's even drained the pasta. Most of our "dinnertimes" consist of me sipping a glass of wine while he, with unfathomable patience, starts into the first real bite of anything he's had all day.
His way is probably more practical, not to mention polite. It certainly seems to fit much better with the rhythm of the rest of society, to be able to conform to scheduled big-meal times. But I tried to force myself into that habit for twenty-seven years, and finally, I'm done. I'll eat this banana on the train, thank you very much!
However, no sooner had I taken my rebellious, munchy stand than the situation got even more complicated: namely, the discovery last year that my body has a weird little condition (like 30% of bodies with central-European ancestry, actually, except that only some show symptoms!) called "fructose malabsorption." This means it doesn't produce enough of the enzyme fructase. Sort of akin to lactose intolerance, except with fructose: because I've slowly ceased, within the last few years, to be equipped to break down this complex sugar molecule, it simply passes merrily on through without being digested. Hooray! And like many cases of lactose intolerance, fructose malabsorption often develops in adulthood; but unlike lactose intolerance, there's no little pill to take to supply your body with the missing enzymes (probably because the condition is only just now being discovered instead of simply dismissed into the hazy category of "irritable bowel syndrome"). Other symptoms are fatigue, crankiness, and vitamin deficiency due to the inhibited nutrient absorption. Ah ha, I thought I'd always felt weird after eating apples. But who would have thought that fruit would be bad for you??
There are also some other pretty common foods that contain relatively high quantities of fructose, among them being honey and -- get this! -- wheat. Yep, wheat breaks down into long chains of fructose molecules. (So does spelt, which is an older relative of wheat.) I guess it makes sense, though. Continuing the discussion of artificial behavior patterns developed within the last hundred years, we weren't really meant to eat fruit all year round -- sweets, even less so. No wonder some bodies simply raise the white flag.
So now my eating habits are even weirder. Our cupboards are packed with rye and oats, and I've become a huge fan of the potato. Many vegetables are still a go, but apples and pears may as well have a "Mr. Yuck" sticker attached to them. (Remember Mr. Yuck? The green icky-face sticker that warns children away from poison? Ha ha, good old Mr. Yuck.) The fun part is trying to explain this to people -- especially when visiting an unfamiliar baker. I ask if they have anything 100% rye, and the resulting dialogue is quite predictable:
"No, but this one is mostly rye."
"What is 'mostly'?"
"60%."
"Hm. I'm looking for something without wheat or spelt."
They never hear the "or spelt" part. "Why, yes, we have this whole-grain spelt Health Bread."
"Spelt, you say?"
"Yes. Spelt is healthy."
"Wish I could, thanks. No 100% rye or oat?"
Now, they get snippy. It's like, they've been magnanimous enough to carry an alternative for the gluten-intolerant (for whom spelt is still not an acceptable substitute, by the way!), and now I don't want it? Well! "There is no such thing as 100% rye," they huff. "The most you will ever find is 90%!"
I refrain from mentioning that, in this Marvelous Land of Bread (Germany's lesser-known title, behind Land of Beer and Land of Chocolate), I have found quite a number of specimens in which, although the 2% of salt was listed among the ingredients, there was nary a mention of wheat. I thank them and seek my ryedical fortunes elsewhere.
The good thing about all this business, I guess, is that it keeps my hand out of the cookie jar. And frankly, I'd rather know what the problem is and be able to avoid it -- no matter how weird or impractical -- than enjoy that caramel apple and suffer the mysterious consequences later.
At least coffee, chocolate, and red wine are still on the "friend" list! And french fries. Viva la health food!
I like food. In fact, I tend to be a relatively constant nibbler from the moment I get up until right before going to bed, popping into the kitchen at least every couple of hours to crunch at a Knusperbrot or snap off another piece from our pile of Tembadoro dark chocolate. It's not particularly much at a time; in fact, big meals make me uncomfortable and sluggish. But it's certainly constant. And I've always been this way -- even in second grade, I remember hating being forced to space out my energy intake into three hulking, inflexible, timed, official "meals" within a long day of school and homework and play. Not allowed to eat in the classrooms in high school, I would chomp carrots and string cheese walking down the hall from class to class, and then save pieces of my lunch for the bus on the way home.
Well, consarn it, I'm a grown-up now, and I'll eat how I want. If left to my own devices, the biggest meal of the day will be a bowl of oatmeal in the morning. This is then followed, over the next several hours, by an assortment of rye crackers with cheese, a hardboiled egg, a scoop of herring salad, some peanut butter right out of the jar, a bowl of mushroom soup, half an avocado, a piece of chocolate, some yogurt out of the tub, and, I dunno, a handful of almonds. I certainly get enough calories (especially if you factor in all the beer and wine that gets drunk around here!). I just don't like to take it all in at once. Maybe this supports Bert's proposition that I am, indeed, a bird. (Or a sheep?)
Herr Bert, on the other hand, will go for hours without even thinking of food. He'll maybe have a cup of coffee in the morning at work, and then sometimes not even take a lunch break and come home with nothing more in his system than that bite of cake from his coworker's birthday. I would be famished. Irritable, shaky, unable to think straight. But he's not even hungry! I try to be polite and space out my munching to coincide with his dinnertime; but usually (unfortunately) I'm so impatient that, within the time it takes to select an evening menu, chop the salad, boil the noodles, heat up the leftover sauce, and even -- good lord! -- make a grocery-store run, I've nibbled enough ingredients to be satisfied before he's even drained the pasta. Most of our "dinnertimes" consist of me sipping a glass of wine while he, with unfathomable patience, starts into the first real bite of anything he's had all day.
His way is probably more practical, not to mention polite. It certainly seems to fit much better with the rhythm of the rest of society, to be able to conform to scheduled big-meal times. But I tried to force myself into that habit for twenty-seven years, and finally, I'm done. I'll eat this banana on the train, thank you very much!
However, no sooner had I taken my rebellious, munchy stand than the situation got even more complicated: namely, the discovery last year that my body has a weird little condition (like 30% of bodies with central-European ancestry, actually, except that only some show symptoms!) called "fructose malabsorption." This means it doesn't produce enough of the enzyme fructase. Sort of akin to lactose intolerance, except with fructose: because I've slowly ceased, within the last few years, to be equipped to break down this complex sugar molecule, it simply passes merrily on through without being digested. Hooray! And like many cases of lactose intolerance, fructose malabsorption often develops in adulthood; but unlike lactose intolerance, there's no little pill to take to supply your body with the missing enzymes (probably because the condition is only just now being discovered instead of simply dismissed into the hazy category of "irritable bowel syndrome"). Other symptoms are fatigue, crankiness, and vitamin deficiency due to the inhibited nutrient absorption. Ah ha, I thought I'd always felt weird after eating apples. But who would have thought that fruit would be bad for you??
There are also some other pretty common foods that contain relatively high quantities of fructose, among them being honey and -- get this! -- wheat. Yep, wheat breaks down into long chains of fructose molecules. (So does spelt, which is an older relative of wheat.) I guess it makes sense, though. Continuing the discussion of artificial behavior patterns developed within the last hundred years, we weren't really meant to eat fruit all year round -- sweets, even less so. No wonder some bodies simply raise the white flag.
So now my eating habits are even weirder. Our cupboards are packed with rye and oats, and I've become a huge fan of the potato. Many vegetables are still a go, but apples and pears may as well have a "Mr. Yuck" sticker attached to them. (Remember Mr. Yuck? The green icky-face sticker that warns children away from poison? Ha ha, good old Mr. Yuck.) The fun part is trying to explain this to people -- especially when visiting an unfamiliar baker. I ask if they have anything 100% rye, and the resulting dialogue is quite predictable:
"No, but this one is mostly rye."
"What is 'mostly'?"
"60%."
"Hm. I'm looking for something without wheat or spelt."
They never hear the "or spelt" part. "Why, yes, we have this whole-grain spelt Health Bread."
"Spelt, you say?"
"Yes. Spelt is healthy."
"Wish I could, thanks. No 100% rye or oat?"
Now, they get snippy. It's like, they've been magnanimous enough to carry an alternative for the gluten-intolerant (for whom spelt is still not an acceptable substitute, by the way!), and now I don't want it? Well! "There is no such thing as 100% rye," they huff. "The most you will ever find is 90%!"
I refrain from mentioning that, in this Marvelous Land of Bread (Germany's lesser-known title, behind Land of Beer and Land of Chocolate), I have found quite a number of specimens in which, although the 2% of salt was listed among the ingredients, there was nary a mention of wheat. I thank them and seek my ryedical fortunes elsewhere.
The good thing about all this business, I guess, is that it keeps my hand out of the cookie jar. And frankly, I'd rather know what the problem is and be able to avoid it -- no matter how weird or impractical -- than enjoy that caramel apple and suffer the mysterious consequences later.
At least coffee, chocolate, and red wine are still on the "friend" list! And french fries. Viva la health food!
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATIE!
Katie shows me a thing or two about swimmingMy little sister, Kaitlyn, turned six on February 4th! This year, the 4th fell on Rose Monday -- otherwise known as Karnival. So there were parades all over Germany, just in time for one rose's birthday!
I hope you had a great day, Katie!!
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