It was a bad day. It was actually one of those days that my mom and I would talk about call a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day" (one of my favorite children's books by Judith Viorst). But luckily, I was heading home and I knew that my day would be getting better. When I walked in the house, the stress headache pounding to the rhythm of my steps the kids all yelled "Mom's home." It was nice to get such a great reception by my headache kicked up another notch on the pain scale. I knew exactly what I needed to make this day go away. I headed into the kitchen. Hubby was standing by the stove nervously prodding the contents of the pan. I knew that he hated to cook something outside of the realm of boxes with directions printed on them, but he was gamely giving it a shot. He glanced at me as I walked in the room. The look on my face told the tale of my day, and I suppose that he knew what I was looking for, since he turned down the heat on the stove and walked toward me, arms open wide for me to step into.
The world ceased to exist once his arms closed around me. I felt their warmth through my jacket, soaking into my stress-knotted muscles of my back and shoulders. I leaned my cheek against his t-shirt covered chest, a warm cotton wall in front of my face. The only noise reaching my ears was the steady thump of his heart, a metronome to steady my own racing pulse. Standing here, in his arms, burying my head, there were no phones ringing, no crazy or reckless drivers to avoid, no arguements, bills, kids, worries, cares... just me and him. This was my favorite place, the place where it was just he and I, where the world could not touch us. Where the rhythm of our heartbeats were the only sound.
The tall grass swished against my legs as I walked. Past the barn and down the fenceline I went, to the swimming hole where I spent most of my childhood summer days. The trees leaned to the side right where I remembered and I slipped past the gnarled trunks as I had so many times long ago.
The edge of the stream was lined with smooth rocks still, the sun changing them from brown and black to bronze and gold. The water was still cool and dark though. A startled gasp escaped my lips as I dove in, cutting beneath the surface and popping up near the big old tree. The tree was smaller too, I could almost reach the branches that hung over the water. The branches that shaded the beach from the afternoon heat. Wasn't the beach bigger then? There was the depression in the rocks where we built our campfires, once we were old enough to convince our parents that we could stay out after dark. Maybe that was why I still loved grilled hotdogs, and yet couldn't stand the sight of a boiled one. It's amazing that we didn't give ourselves food poisoning, since anything we could stab with a stick was fair game for campfire dinner.
Jutting out into the stream, just as I remembered, was the long flat rock where we would lay after swimming. How many times has I sat there feeling the sun-warmed granite beneath me? It wasn't quite a big as it used to be, certainly not big enough for me to stretch out completely upon it. Looking upstream and downstream the familiar boughs of much larger trees arched over the stream like a curtain of green. The stream might not even exist past those boundaries, but it was still here, in the same place where I stumbled upon it so many years ago.
It was the one place where I had gone from my childhood that was exactly the same. This was a small bubble of my past, where nothing was new, shiny, or touched in any way by the dirty fingers of progress and modernization.
I didn't want to go to Germany. I didn't want to go because my ex-husband lived there. I didn't want to go because I was taking my oldest son with me to see my ex-husband, his biological father. I didn't want to go because I had not seen or heard from my ex in over 10 years until recently, and that was just fine with me. I didn't want to go because it was a million miles away from my family, my kids, my home. I didn't want to go because it was his home, his place, his territory.
I had heard all about how great it was, how old the buildings were. I had heard all about how nice the people were, since tourists were there all the time, and they didn't hate alll Americans on sight, mostly. I heard how great his house was, where we would be staying (what in the world was I thinking??), and much his wife was looking forward to meeting us.
I did some research, looked at books and websites to figure out a little about where I was going to be for a week. I saw pictures, and learned important phrases like "where is the bathroom" and "do you speak English?" I packed carefully for the weather, proposed to be chilly but without much snow, perfect weather for sight-seeing. I brought along every phone number that I could concievably need including the US Consulate, a couple of friends in Europe, and every country code within a hundred miles or so of Germany, just in case.
We landed just in time, just before I had completely decided to turn around and go back home. We collected our luggage and passed through multiple security and customs checkpoints, declaring again and again that we had nothing to declare. Finally escaping the maze of the international terminal of the airport, we walked out into the bleak cloudy day.
As we stepped outside, the sun peaked out from behind the clouds. The sun bounced off of the rough stone buildings, sparkling with ice. The passing train whooshed by, stirring up whirlwinds of dusty snow. The people chattered with a musical lilt as they passed us by. The open shops in the platz offered the aroma of delicious handmade baked goods and freshly ground coffee.
Looking around I spotted my ex standing near a petite blond woman. She stepped forward and offered her hand.
"I am so glad that you came."
This wasn't going to be at all like I thought.
