When I was a little girl...

I watched Little Women and dreamt of naming my future daughter Josephine. "Oh! what a lovely name," I would think to myself.

I wanted to be a cashier. As I put away the groceries at home, I would pretend to ring up each item.

I couldn't wait to grow up. I wanted to wear make-up, shave my legs, wear high heels and long fancy dresses to parties where we would poke our little pinkies out while we drank tea and ate little cookies. As I sat in Sunday school, I would pull out a little mirror and apply my plastic tube of lipstick.

I thought the noblest thing was to be a fireman.

I wanted to be a horse trainer. I dreamed of horses day in and day out. I read about them, I collected the figurines. I yearned for the day I would own a Bashkir Curly or a Lipizzaner.

I read The Land by Mildred Taylor and cried. A half-black child was whipped, and the whole situation was so unjust, it really affected me.

I was obsessed with "go-together" outfits and being independent. In many ways, that last part has not changed at all.

I was constantly living in a world that was not my own. I wanted to play restaurant and be the waitress. I played "house" with my sisters and declared myself as the mom, the person in charge who got to boss everyone else around. I played with my dolls and Barbies, creating another world full of homemaking that I would submerse myself into. I read books and longed to go back in time.

My hero was Harriet Tubman.

And the best part about it all? My mother indulged me.

When I wanted to play restaurant, she would tell me what was on the menu for dinner or lunch that day and send me into the dining room with my note-pad and pencil to take orders. (Once, after serving my father and brothers lunch, my dad tipped me with a stack of quarters, and I was elated.) When I wanted to be a dog, she would place a bowl with water on the ground and let me enjoy my world of make-believe. When I wanted to plan a party, whether it was a birthday party or an end-of-school party, she let me. When I stubbornly refused to let my mother pick out my outfits or do my hair, she shrugged her shoulders (albeit after many attempts to convince me otherwise) and let me be. When I wanted to play dress-up, she gave me access to her high heels. When I wanted to curl my hair, she would tie my hair up in rags the night before, untie them in the morning, then arrange the mess of curls in a neat manner. She encouraged my love of books and contemplation. She watched Little Women and Pride and Prejudice with me, and we bonded.
She loved me throughout all my stubbornness, awkwardness, crazy plans, independence, and even those inexplicable teenage years, and she's never stopped.

"Oh the comfort ... The inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with another person. Having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together. Certain that a faithful hand will take and sift; keep what is worth keeping and, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away."


A line of poetry as quoted to me by my mother. 

I absolutely love it. 

On my way to class

Nathan insists on walking me to school every morning. And we usually have adventures.

Class doesn't start until nine, but we take the 8:07 train. This means that we have some time to kill. I love the city at this time of day. It is quiet and still and so peaceful as the city wakes up.

We come out of the Hauptbahnhof and walk along Europastraße for a bit. Then we take a left onto Wilhelmstraße and we go over the Neckar bridge and look down at the water, seeing the reflection of the city. We walk past as the city workers are watering the flowers along the bridge rails and the ones that hang from the lampposts. We continue along, cross the street, and stop at a bakery. 

Most of the time we wake up and rush to catch the train and hardly have any time to eat breakfast. We might kinda sorta do this on purpose. It gives us a reason to walk into a German bakery and admire the diversity of breads and pastries that are laid out before us. I just want to go in there and stare at it all. It blows my mind how the Germans have evolved bread into an art form, and I want to taste it all. So we buy a Nusschenk, a Kirschtöpfle, my favorite, or something covered in bacon and melted cheese and wander into the Altstadt. 

We wind through the Altstadt, looking at the quaint architecture of the homes and businesses. We look in store windows, we admire, we muse, we sigh, and move on. We go up the hill and as we near the top, the faint sound of organ music can be heard from the church. And we go into the very center of the city, the Holz Markt, and the fruit, meat, and vegetable vendors are all there, selling some of the region's best with regards to homemade. 

By this time the Kirschtöpfle is gone, and we make our way over to the Brechtbau. Nathan hugs me good-bye, and I go to class. 

The train, the bakery, the organ music coming from the old church, the German architecture, the cobble-stone streets...this I will all miss when we go home. 

I dream of you. 

Update

I'm really quite bad at updating my blog more frequently. I just forget about it until I read someone else's blog, and I think, "I should be a better blogger like them."

This is what happened just now, on the blog of someone who I don't really speak to in real life, but I follow them on the interweb. Such is my life of social encounters cushioned by the silence of the internet.

Perhaps an update is in order.

This summer has been quite eventful! I went to Tennessee, Michigan, New Jersey (the airport was quite big!), and now Germany. For three months, Nathan and I were separated due to my work in Tennessee and his research internship at the University of Michigan. Oh the sacrifices we make for the future. I can summarize the long distance in two words: it sucked. It was quite an interesting summer. I learned what it means to be a boss, what my managing style looks like, became really good friends with my sister Leah, put together two binders worth of paperwork for an ACA Accreditation visit, and drove a tractor for the first time. In the meantime, Nathan was being super academic researching methylase and taking a GRE prep course.

So we met up in Tennessee after those three awful months and flew to Germany. It was a long day of traveling. We got to Germany at 8 AM in the morning, exhausted from our travels, but unable to sleep if we wanted to adjust to the time here. After three days we finally got adjusted. We usually go to bed around 9:30 or 10, so basically I'm on my dream sleep schedule. I'm speaking a ton of German, and I'm getting used to it/getting better. I used to be extremely shy about speaking German and would even refuse to speak in my German classes. I'm getting over that out of pure necessity. The other students in my program are from Russia, Ukraine, Italy, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan, China, Kyrgyzstan, and so many other places. It's actually a really cool experience. Meanwhile, Nathan gets to be a "housewife." He cleans and shops for groceries and sometimes even cooks. It's so nice coming home with the bed made. He's learned some German, and he can now order food and gelato. Two very important things. We've visited so far one castle, the Schwarzwald, Freiburg, and explored alllll of Tübingen. Such a cute, quaint city.

So anyway. Here we are in Germany, and all we can talk about is how we miss our home in Provo. I'm excited for the semester to start.

Confession

Sometimes, I enjoy feeling sad, melancholic, or nostalgic.

I think these instances allow me to feel the complexity of human emotion, its depth and intricacy, its possibilities and strong influence.

Besides, one can't appreciate sunny weather if it didn't rain every now and then. Enjoy the rain while it lasts, ya know.

In Love with German Printmaking

The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, Holy Family, 1500

The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, Old Bulldog Scratching Himself,1485

Albrecht Durer, Self-Portrait at 13, 1484

Martin Schongauer, Nativity, 1470

The Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, Christ Bearing the Cross, 1480-90

Albrecht Durer, St. Jerome in his Study, 1514