To The Bear on Her Fifth Birthday

Dear Bailey,

I can't believe it's been five years since we met you.  The night you were born, you came so quickly.  You were suddenly just THERE and before I knew it, the doctor and nurses were all gone, your Dad was asleep next to me and there you were--sleeping in my arms for the first time.  I don't know how many hours I sat there, just staring at your face.  You were a complete mystery to me--one that I have honestly not stopped unraveling since.  Kid, you are so many things all at once; not a day of my life has passed that that hasn't confounded me.  The depths of you--your great feeling and spirit--it just astounds me.  I only hope I'll prove a worthy companion and confidant as you bring that incredible spirit out into the world.

You're five, my girl.  Five.  It's so big.  You've spent these past years just growing into the greatness of your sensibility--a thing that makes your life harder than the average bear's and yet infinitely richer too.  It's hard to look into your future and not see the dichotomy this will create; you are a bringer of light, my dear, which means that in your life, you will often tread into darkness too.  But, I've seen the fierceness of your spirit and the tenderness of your love and I know the one who gifted you with them.  You're going to find trials on your path, babe, but I have no doubt you'll overcome them all with a great abundance of joy and a fierce, fighting spirit.  We are two of a kind, you and I.  You were cast from the same mold as me and, like your mama, you're going forge much of your character in the fire.

This year has been such a big one for you.  From London to Vienna to your "United States Home", you've shown us such joy, such love, such resilience.  I've loved living life through your eyes; there are so many things we've done and accomplished that would have meant so little if you had not been there to shine your light on it, my girl.  In the end, you've become the only happy extrovert in a family of hermit-like introverts and it's made you something of a steward of our hearts. You tread us out into places we think we'd rather not be and show us what it's like to live and love in a completely different way than our own.  You've taught me more about love in your short life than all the years of my toiling youth could manage, so when I say I love you, I know you understand the depths that it can reach.  My love, like yours, will never wane. It's yours--on and on...

Until the end of time, my girl,

Your Mama Gigi

To Audrey on Her Sixth Birthday

Dear Audrey,

In everyday conversation, mothers tend to use their children's births as reference points in the timeline of their lives.  "Before Audrey I worked sixty hours a week."  or "After Audrey I decided I never wanted to go back to work again, even though she kept me awake for a full year."  In the best way possible, your birth was a dramatic turning point in our lives, girlie.  You made me a mother...and your father a Papa...you made so many people so many things--Suddenly there were Grandma's and Grandpa's Aunties, Uncles, and a host of "Grand's" and "Great-Grand's" all out the wazoo.

Your first year was so much work for both of us; being your Mama was such overwhelmingly hard, gratifying work. Your simple existence forced me to morph into something I had never been before.  Now you're six years old--this amazing young girl who is so sweet and accommodating--so full of love and closely-guarded adventurous spirit. I told you five would be a breeze for us and it has been.

This past year, being your Mama, has been as carefree and lovely as drifting downstream. Dear, as a five-year-old, you've moved from one continent to the other and been on countless crazy adventures in between.  I've dragged you all over Vienna, Austria, London, and from one coast of the United States to the other--almost twice over. Somehow you accept it all with a grace beyond your years, a love of adventure and steely strength that many people will never know.

How is it possible that at six years old I can confidently say, without question, that I will always be able to count on you?  That's not even a burden for you--it's who you are--the one who can be counted on.  That's not to say you aren't allowed your struggles or trials or moments of basking in your right to act like a five (or six!) year old.  We've had our skirmishes, you and I, but we both know they're just the stuff skimmed off the surface.  Underneath, there is something concrete that we laid in place those first years together.  Our foundation is made of the same strong stuff that is inside of both of us, and it's held together by unshakeable love from the Universe itself.

I try not to cling to the past, my dear.  We've had incredible adventures together and if I took the time to turn my mind to it, it'd likely make me weepy and sentimental that we won't ever get to go back and live those escapades again.  But I don't.  I look forward.  I look to the present--where you're six--where I'd gladly travel the world with you or spend eternity enjoying the mind-blowing pleasures of the everyday in the way we only can together.

To say I love you madly would be the biggest understatement I could manage, my girl.  In the end there are no words for how much I love you, how lucky I feel to have been blessed to be your Mama.  There is no possible way to explain what it is like to see a piece of my own heart transformed into something beautiful and all it's own--knowing that you are simultaneously a part of me and something so inexplicably new. The world has never seen this Audrey before and I know to my bones that you are here to make "the Universe", as Mr. Happy-Happy would tell you, a place that will welcome in more love.

Lets do this year, kid--let's rock six together.  Let's make the world lovely and adventurous together...and on and on until forever.

Love,

Mama GiGi

Confronting the Myth of Settling and the Reality of Winning the Lottery

The first few months we were back in the States found me feeling almost overwhelmingly adrift.  Every day I woke up expecting to finally feel settled.  Each day that I woke up still feeling like my head was up in the clouds just added to my growing frustration. It didn't matter how organized our new place became, how many old faces or old haunts we revisited, I felt like I had forgotten how to live in the United Sates.  There was a great disconnect of what I could only label as reverse culture shock.

Then one day I woke up and realized I felt normal--totally settled and in my element.  Except I wasn't in my new apartment; I was in my childhood home...and I had been there for DAYS, feeling blessedly normal without realizing it.  The relief of finding I still knew how to effortlessly be ME was overwhelming. It was around that time that I realized expecting to feel settled in Washington State was just silliness.  So I stopped expecting that feeling to come...and things have felt a lot more peaceful ever since.

I've had to allow myself a lot of grace these past six months.  I've made a lot of room for things to be less-than-perfect and we've all endured a lot of physical, emotional and spiritual stress, so where I'm at right now is taking a break from any expectations I had previously about how I would handle this part of our transition.  I'm also shrugging off any notions anyone else might have about where we should be at this point.  At the end of the day, this transition is nothing short of crazy.  I can outwardly approach every day, walking the walk and talking the talk, but inside my brain is screaming that it's coo-coo-banana-crackers CRAZY that I have to stop myself from speaking to people at the Farmer's Market in German, or that I can't just walk out my door and find the veritable World at my feet.  There are car seats and parking lots and lots of buckling and unbuckling in between.  The EVERYTHING all at once is madness.  And don't even get me started on walking into a place like Target.  I think normal people feel like they're drowning when they enter those doors.  

In the end, any time our experiences here or there come up, I think the thing we fail to get across is that there are pro's and con's to living abroad and to living in the United States.  Period.  They are different because they're different.  Not because one is better than the other.  Like anything else in life, it's what we make of our experiences that make them good or evil.  And hands down, we loved Vienna.  Vienna was good to us. We loved the city and we loved how we grew as individuals and as a family while we were there.

And that's another cog in the wheel: we've changed.  Everyone else has changed too, for that matter.  It can get weird, I think.  But the only person I've got any kind of control over, when the fact becomes apparent, is myself.  The solution I've come up with?  "Well, that's ok then."  I've learned to accept that a lot of people are beautiful because they're different from me and I hope that won't change any time soon.

Slowly by slowly, we're adjusting to being in the Tri-Cities. As for our future, we're leaving any ideas about how long we'll be here entirely open ended.  It's surprisingly more comfortable to allow ourselves the range of six months to eternity rather than trying to take a stab at predicting the future. (although I'll admit to publicly regretting the fact I hadn't first consulted an astrologist when we booked our plane tickets back to the US) More than anything, wasting time fretting over guesswork would surely lead to madness.

Not to say it's easy leaving the big decisions up to the Universe; there are plenty of decisions we'd happily make for ourselves if we suddenly won the lottery and were free to do as we pleased.  It's just that sometimes it's difficult to truly believe we've already won the lottery--that there's already a plan infinitely better than any we could devise--that no matter where we want to be and what we want to do, we are already being provided for in the best way possible.  Plans have been made and our real job is to have faith--to cling to our Savior and say: "You are so good. You've got this.  You've always had it.  Even when I was a pathetic mess at the bottom of my barrel or when my emotions became so unraveled, I thought I could see them spilling out of me onto the floor... always, You were with me.  And you were good".

I've got faith that the World will keep on keepin' on.  That our little lives will keep rolling on as well.  I know that if I ever find myself feeling settled in a place, it'll likely come as a total surprise.  And that I've got no real answers to the questions people have for me.  I imagine it'll all come out in the wash and some day I'll point back and say: See?  There's your answer.      

Grandma G's Summer Camp

As soon as it was certain we were moving back to the US this Spring, the questions started peppering in.  Among them: When would the Schweighardts be coming to Mountain Home?  This question took me a long time to even address with a vague answer.  The first four months of this year floored me with work and emotion.  I felt all of it at once and I wasn't ready to think about anything outside moving and settling into a new space.  But, one day I sat down and bought tickets to fly into Branson...and then one day I woke up, grabbed the girls and started a journey to say hello to all my kinfolk in Arkansas.

It turns out it was a good thing I hadn't put too much work into planning things out, because those plans would've gone bust.  After waking up at 3:30am, waiting for two different taxi's to pick us up from John's cousins' house in Spokane, and arriving an hour later than we'd planned at the airport, we learned via the mass of people still waiting in line that our plane to Denver had been delayed...ten hours.  We stood in that line for two and a half hours and learned that we'd actually be able to fly out of Washington that day, but we'd be staying overnight in Denver and arrive in Branson a day later than anticipated...and also that we'd have to wait four more hours before we could check our bags and car seats.

I'm so glad that my girls were healthy for this trip, because when that's the case, they're game for any kind of adventure.  Even the kind that keeps them up for twenty hours and means they have to stand in line for hours at a time.  The end of our first day of travel found us, exhausted, in a hotel room in Denver.  I fed bits of chicken to Bailey as she laid on her pillow, eyes drooping, just trying to get a few specks of protein into a child who had barreled through the day on just snacks.  I had to pry a marker out of the hands of Audrey, who always seems to seek solace in her art. She told me as I put her to bed: "Mama, today was a HARD day.  But, we did awesome."

In the morning I made crappy hotel room coffee and took a much-needed shower while Audrey took up coloring yet again until there wasn't a white page left in her book.  We munched on mini blueberry bagels from our snack back and wondered aloud if Bailey would wake up before it was time to check out.  She did.  And she was happy, which in the world of Bailey is a miracle every time it happens.  We packed up our things and were out of the room in a shot.  We coerced the kid serving us in the hotel restaurant to find us some breakfast menus even though it was already noon and we feasted on our first hot meal in what felt like days.  Eggs Benedict and pancakes. We spent the meal making toasts and elaborating on our excitement at finally seeing Grandma and Grandpa G.  Then it was just a shuttle ride and an argument at the ticket counter until we were welcomed back into the Denver airport.  We blew one meal voucher at Dunkin' Donuts, buying donuts for everyone in line behind us until we'd met our limit and then spent another on food for lunch...because at this point I'd learned not to take for granted when or where the next meal would be. Compared to the day before, it was just a breeze to walk onto our plane and hop a few miles to Branson where we were finally able to wrap our arms around the grandparents.

There are a few airports I don't mind flying into and even fewer that I'll claim I like.  But the Branson airport is the only one I'll claim I love.  It's like flying into a Bass Pro Shop.  And there isn't much at this point that Bailey will get more excited about than a good taxidermied animal mounted on the wall.  Not to mention the Branson airport is roughly the size of a grand log cabin, which makes for a very smooth exit.  We were on the road before you could spit, listening to Bailey tell Grandpa he was running over snakes, bumping into cars and mountains alike.  Those girls chattered the whole way to Gainesville where we met up with Joe and Catherine in the parking lot of a grocery store that boasts a whole "chip and drink" room.  While we were hugging and chatting, someone set off a pretty fantastic Welcome-to-Baxter-County fireworks show a few blocks away and the girls got their first taste of what would be a smashing 4th of July holiday.

We rolled into my parents house pretty late that night and tucked into bed later than usual, but still, I got confirmation from Audrey that this day was a good day--not a hard day.

It wasn't but twelve hours before this that I had realized my birthday was coming...as in, coming TOMORROW.   I'll admit it was kind of a nice surprise--it added a lot to the excitement of the day. There's nothing that could've started off the day better, though, than waking up to hear my Mom making me breakfast.  There are very few people who make me better breakfasts than I make myself and Mom is up at the top of that list.  She even had to wake the girls up so they could do the ceremonial dumping of a bottle of sprinkles in the pancake batter.  Even better, Bailey insisted I have a candle and a chorus of Happy Birthday to accompany those confettied flapjacks.

It sometimes throws John off when we get to my folks' house, but I tend to revert back to my role as the baby of the family--the one who needs to use self-inflating attention-grabbing antics just to be heard at the dinner table.  I strut around a bit like a peacock or while away the afternoons in overblown fits of exhaustion.  It's all very dramatic.  And I'm half-sure everyone knows it's an act, but it's still great fun.  Especially on my birthday.  This was the first time I'd spent it at home in eight years, so, of course I was treated to a Gamelin Family birthday party.  This one was at lunch and included a turkey (with legs) corn on the cob, and all the fixins.  Catherine made me an amazing chocolate cake and mom served it with her raspberry sherbert and peach ice cream.  At this point, it should be understandable how a gal could get an inflated ego.  I received a pile of wrapped birthday presents...probably for the first time in those eight years I'd spent anywhere else.  Even Mother Nature couldn't help stroking my ego; she sent me a classic Midwest thunderstorm that afternoon and I had the intense pleasure of sitting on the porch with my Audrey girl, listening to rain pattering on the millions of leaves in the forest while thunder boomed in the distance.

Meanwhile, Steve, Julie and their three boys had spent the day traveling from Nashville to Mountain Home and arrived just a few hours before the big fireworks show was supposed to start that evening.  It was touch-and-go for quite a while considering the storm that had just passed through, but in the end, we found ourselves seated on the lawn of the Baxter County Library, waiting for the show...which we assured the girls was in honor of my birthday.  Come to find out watching a fireworks show narrated by the one-and-only Bailey Bear should really be on everyone's bucket list.  It was a pretty epic birthday in my book--a fantastic way to kick off a week and a half of nothing but the best of Summer Camp at Grandma & Grandpa's.

Emily couldn't make it out until the 1st of July, so we whiled away the days waiting for her, eating at El Charro's and doing the regular rounds of visiting.  Mom would also tell you we spent days at the table trying to convince the girls to eat food (and I wouldn't contradict her) We were a little worried the girls would be so busy not eating that Em would have to take a taxi from the Springfield airport.  Instead, we set out early and spent a good portion hanging out around Springfield, eating Chipotle *cue angel chorus* for lunch and getting a little shopping done at the mall.  And by "shopping", I mean letting Mom buy the girls early birthday/ I'm-your-Grandma-and-don't-need-excuses presents.  We also discovered that most of these short formal dresses that are popular with teens at the moment actually fit Audrey...the five year old...quite nicely.  We're hoping turtlenecks will be in style by the time A & B are even thinking about prom.  After a pit stop for some Andy's frozen custard (which my children are entirely unappreciative of), we decided to go ahead and make our way to the airport to wait for Em...where I discovered the past three days of feigning fatigue/illness were actually more like actual illness.  So, I slept in the van until the minute Emily's flight touched down.

I was down for the count for the next day or so, while Mom and Emily took on the roles of camp directors.  There was baking and swimming and trips into town.  Once I recovered, though, first Mom and then eventually Emily later came down with high fevers that lasted a little over 24 hours, but apparently we don't let "small hiccups" like this get us down. I don't know if I can adequately put into words the intensity of happy activity that transpired over this trip: boat rides and swimming in the lake, visiting with family, painting in the driveway, one-on-one art lessons between Audrey and Grandma, hot dog cook outs, and gourmet dinners prepared by the most excellent Catherine.  Nights spent playing Catan, having glow-in-the-dark dance parties or just remembering what it was like to grow up with Joe and Emily and Steve and Julie all around. It was the best Summer Camp I've ever been to and I look forward to many, many more--watching these crazy kids grow up, sharing something so special.

We reluctantly left for Branson one lazy afternoon and at this point I was hardly surprised when our flight into Denver was temporarily re-routed to Silver Springs to avoid one of the craziest thunderstorms I've ever witnessed (and that's saying something).  We eventually made it to Denver where John had booked us yet another room at the same hotel we stayed at just a little over a week before.  By this point we were old pro's: Sleep, eat, get to the airport.  Find donuts. Our flight back was easy if the drive home from Spokane wasn't.  But we made it home and that's all that mattered.

My girls are becoming the most amazing adventure-loving travelers and I couldn't be more proud of them.  In the end, I don't really mind the bumps in the road (although I could've done with a lot less standing in line to be honest).  As much as I hate the idea of building character, it really is a blessing to forge some of one's self in the fire and come out stronger.  I am so privileged to live this life with these girls (and we'll throw their Papa in there too) and I can't wait to see
what amazing adventures we find ourselves on in this life.  Even if it's just a trip 'cross country for Summer Camp.

                

Random fact of the day:  Paint in Austria is the consistency of pudding.  Also, I painted for five hours and was rewarded with a new, improved, more pronounced callus on my hand. Yay!

In happier news:  Audrey has yet another wiggle tooth!  I think this one is just protesting since her new tooth coming in is so big.

Puppies are seven days old and they're getting so big!

A Season to Everything

To everything-turn, turn, turn

There is a season- turn, turn, turn

And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

Why is it I so often find myself simultaneously in the time to both laugh and weep?  

There certainly is a season for everything...and right now I am in the season of cleaning.  Not because it is (all-caps!) SPRING, but because I'm attempting to erase two years of wear from our apartment before our landlady comes for her walk-through.  And when I say "erase", I mean literally--magic erasers are my new best friend.  I'm an addict.  I feel like a freak every time I pop into the BIPA to purchase eight two-packs of these suckers.  Every time, I tell myself that these sixteen magic erasers will be the last.  And yet, time and time again, I find myself at the bottom of my magic eraser stash, digging through the trash to find one with a smidge of melamine foam left to magic my way into keeping our three-months-of-rent's-worth deposit. 

That's right.  Our landlady has access to an incredible hunk of money that has been sitting quietly, accruing interest for two years. And just like that, Willian's game face is on.  The amount of wiggle room this gal is going to allow for any of that dough to be put towards re-painting walls or repairing the shoddy excuse for a parquet floor (I'm seriously suspecting it may be the original, because nothing younger than a century old should be looking this worn) is basically zero.  I'm ready to dig my heels in and argue with our sassy (and fabulous) Italian landlady until the cows come home.  

The current plan is to spend my remaining days in Vienna scrubbing and restoring this 170 year-old flat until it shines like a new penny...or as new as a 19th century-minted penny could be.  

I do also want to be able to spend time with my children, breathe fresh air, and actually enjoy our last days in Vienna, though, so this plan has been slowly in the works for a while now. 

Things were going along at a fantastically steady pace, but it was just that when the movers removed all the heaps of clothing, toys and random effects I had spread on the floors in every room, I could finally see the apartment.  ALL OF IT.  The floors that hadn't seen a vacuum in far, far too long, and the walls that had born the abuse of two rabid children, wielding countless new schleich animal figures with perfectly detailed black paws, each prancing across that once-flawless paint job in turn.

So, as soon as those seven strapping Slavic men were done schlepping our things down to the moving van, I declared it was time to vacuum the apartment.  ALL OF IT.  RIGHT THEN. WITHOUT DELAY.  I was serious, so John beat a hasty retreat to the playground with the girls, under the understanding that I would have the apartment floors entirely fuzz and dust free in the interim.

And it started out that way.  It really did.  I was ecstatic. Totally motivated.  So pumped up that I decided to start with vacuuming under the huge L-shaped behemoth couch our landlady inexplicably decided was a perfect fit for this apartment. I pushed the monster out into the center of our now-empty living room and sucked up the fluffle of dust bunnies that had sought shelter underneath the thing for over a year.  And as I rounded the corner, I realized there was a dark stain on the side of the couch that had butted up to our own sofa and gone unnoticed for God knows how long.  So, what would a manic-cleaning girl do, but to flip off the vacuum, grab her trademark magic eraser and scrub that sucker into oblivion?  

Pow!  Stain gone! These erasers are not the only thing possessing mad cleaning skills in this flat.  Oohhhh NO!  I am a rockstar!  A veritable goddess of deep cleaning!!  Wait.  What's this?  

I realized the armrest of our mostly-neglected rented sofa appeared filthy.  And what would any person possessing superior cleaning skillz do, but to apply her genius to that as well?  

I started wiping down the arm rest of our couch, oozing satisfaction at the amount of grunge that was being magically erased.  I completed that easy task, took a step back to admire my work and realized that the arm rest was SO CLEAN that the rest of the couch was now obviously NOT WHITE, but some other shade between BROWN and DEFINITELY NOT WHITE. 

But still.  Not to panic.  I am a professional.  The easy solution of magic erasering the whole couch presented itself as an easy, back-pattingly satisfying solution.  

So, I continued on, seat by seat, exposing incredibly confounding layers of dinge...until I got to the second seat cushion and started exposing what appeared to be the death valley of our sofa...a pattern of excruciatingly visible cracks in the leather that had me wondering if it were possible this couch could be as old as the building we live in.  

I was now at a pivotal crossroads.  Couch half-white, half NOT WHITE, exposing cracks to rival Yzma's cracked visage with every stroke of the (damn, you!) magic eraser.  What was there left to do, but to soldier on, praying to God with each freshly unearthed square-inch that it wouldn't get any worse.  

And that's how John found me.

A photo of the offensive object in happier days

...on the floor of the living room....where he had left me...every floor in the flat still littered with grit and fuzz and a couch that now resembled something that had been baking in the sun for a hundred years. 

To everything there is a season, dear friends.

A season to laugh, a season to weep

A season to clean, and a season to leave well enough alone 

before you make everything exponentially worse.

All this to say, I might not have a future in song-writing, but I sure as hell have learned that some things are better left filthy, especially if I don't actually own them.  And you better bet I'll have some eloquent words for our landlady come walk-through if there's even a mention of that sofa.