risky transition with no risk of spoilers.

Adoption.
We're treading water in the unknown. Every little teeny plan feels like a victory because there are big massive things that we cannot know until we know them. It appears that the process of adoption is akin to surveying a land of bridges and being told to ignore them. The wonderful, beautiful, terrifying things that are possibly in the future can not even be contemplated, without the hubris of assuming that we will be permitted to encounter them.
It's just the normal day-to-day unknown, but there is a whole lot unknown all at once. There is this place in my agenda where plans just stop, nothing is written and nothing is known. Before that, we have adoption forms to fill out that lead to an unknown, my certification course, the outcome of which is unknown and my fluency exams which are two days of scary testing that lead to yet another unknown.
One fun unknown is the world cup. It's lovely to have one unknown that doesn't mean life-altering scariness. Plus there is an end date, so we know when the result comes out.
I hesitate to blog about adoption, for fear that it will lead to blogging about little else. That may become inevitable at some point, but I think that I want to postpone that. It's a big topic at the moment and it's nice to think and talk about the good parts while we're ensconced in paperwork and the minutia and bureaucracy.
Even writing this has been a helpful reminder that not knowing what's to come is horribly banal. Even when we have our kid and wonder what that kid will look like, our lack of genetic influence won't make that wondering any different from an average parent. The possible heartbreaks awaiting us during this process may be different from the heartbreaks of natural parents, but we'll all have heartbreaks, in one form or another.

proud to be a.....

Yesterday morning, I had an irrational response to Ivo's saying that "Poisoning the Pigeons in the Park" was covered by Tom Fuller and was originally a German song. He searched the Internet and found that the song was Fullers and, like a gentleman, said that he was wrong. But it was too late. I was worked-up. Worked-up like I was when Steff tried to convince me that the tune of Yankee Doodle was not an American song, but a "Universales Lied" (Universal Song). They were singing football songs to the Yankee Doodle melody at the time. They'd just finished a song to the tune of a Bon Jovi song and another to the tune of a White Stripes song. I may have frothed at the mouth.
Living abroad has exposed me to how dearly I hold my American Myths. When a small German man told me that Germans had invented the automobile and the airplane. "But, but, but....Kittyhawk!" As a result, I seem to be super sensitive to the claims laid to things that I consider American. I'm not talking blind belief, (I knew a certain young girl who believed that Washington invented colors and the alphabet.) but happy belief of certain "truths" that I hold to be "self evident"; not just to me, but to the world.
When I first moved here, people would say "You don't act like an American!" The fact that I smoked, didn't drive a car, never ate at McDonalds and was interested in learning a foreign language, confused them. This didn't really upset me at the time. I'd roll my eyes and get over their stereotypes and misconceptions. I find, however, that I am especially sensitive now that I am considering raising a child abroad. I have, perhaps irrationally, not considered my decision to live abroad as an out-right rejection of my homeland. Now, though, I am struggling with how to teach my child the myths of the country what made me. That child will have intelligent American relatives to help, but I am currently newly aware of what my decision means and the work ahead of me, if I want my child to know the good bits that their mommy loves about America.

this too shall pass

As a teenager, even though one understands that other people have felt "like this" one imagines that noone has "ever felt quite like this". Like the Madonna lyrics "Romeo and Juliette, they never felt this way I bet", there is a loneliness and pride to the teenager's thinking that they have invented love/melancholy/happiness/friendship that had yet never been discovered.
I am holding on to this knowledge today and reminding myself that I am not even the only one feeling the way that I am feeling. Not only have these feelings been felt before, there may be someone experiencing them at this very moment. As I washed the breakfast dishes and thought "but doesn't the universe understand how ready we are and how great we'll be as parents?" one can be guaranteed that another person out there was having the same thought possibly while washing lunch or dinner dishes of their own.
So ready are we for the adoption process, that my husband can utter the mantra almost automatically. When discovering this morning that the agency with which we really wanted to work was not Hague accredited, his response was "that is not our agency". We have named hypothetical women who do not want their child to be raised in Switzerland/ do not agree with our idea of "optimal contact to birth-parents"/ do not approve of our religious beliefs as "not our birth mother" and their future children as "not our baby". We've thought so long and hard about the method and means that we want in order to build our family and are now whittling down the paths that are "not our path"s.
Oh it hurts. Every stumble brings the question "doesn't the universe know how ready we are?" Nevertheless, even in my sadness, I know that I will be looking back some day with an understanding that this was all necessary to find our child and build our family. Even now I know that there are other deserving parents who are sad that they have to wait but will eventually be blessed with a family of their own. We are not alone. In communion with them, I wash my dishes and wait.

take part in the BART or get to know CHARLIE

Moving to any new city comes with a various assortment of tasks of acclimation. One task in particular is unique to each city: getting to know your public transport. When, where and in what form do you pay? Where are the zones and in which one do I live/learn/work/shop? How late do the various modes of transportation run?
I will be moving in autumn and become acquainted with the BART. Luckily, I can use the Internet and local friends for help. More advantageous is the fact that the information will all be in English. I have been controlled by Parisian Metro controllers, I've nearly been brought to tears by Zürich tram controllers (my month pass had expired the day before!) and made the mistake of not having change ready only once while riding RIPTA. Now on to the Bay Area.
Accomplishing being transported publicly is not the largest milestone, but it's one of the first. When I was in Paris last April I was made accutely aware of just how integrated I truly am in Zürich. Not only do I know when tram service stop and night bus service begins, I also have preferred "short-cuts" on foot and bike paths (I'm a nervous city cyclist). Beside knowing the VBZ and SBB. I know jokes about their advertising. I know to ask "Ist da noch frei?" on the train and to merely nod my head on the tram, when taking a seat next to someone. I know that if I want to help a person with their pram I need to be fast and throw elbows to beat the other people who are sure to volunteer. I have learned the perfect way to scold youngsters who are letting their Handy's music play too loudly ("must we all suffer from that sound or could you do it alone?").
That's right: I'm integrated! I've got Zürich down pat. It takes me 5 minutes to leave a shop for all the "thank you...have a nice day....same to you....no, thank you.....goodbye....you too....thank you....goodbye"s. I don't get freaked out by the way swiss folk stare. I know by heart the tri-lingual announcement on trains and know how to decode announcements on trams. I feel quite local - that is, until I walk into a drugstore and ask if they have dandruff shampoo made with tar and pine. I will always have been raised in America.
California here I come, right back where I started from. Open up your golden gates......

Can't get there from here

When folks visit me in Switzerland, they will say something about the States, but refer to it as "here". I do it when I'm in the States too. I'll say "Here we have..." or something similar. I was just in Berlin with my brother. He doesn't live there. I don't live there. During our week there, when referring to our perspective homes neither of us said "here". It doesn't sound like a big thing, but it struck me as odd.

too early?

I mean no disrespect to anyone by what I am about to write and wish that anyone who becomes offended recognizes this as my typical stream-of-consciousness gibbering (which I have been afflicted with since leaving Rhode Island, it seems).
When talking with Ivo last night about Haiti, I said that I was surprised by how many people were talking about Haiti. I don't mean to be-little the country in any way, but it has been suffering for a very long time, and this suffering is often unnoticed.
I thought back guiltily to a current events project in the 7th grade. That would have been 1991, just after the coup and capture of Aristide. Haiti was in the news and was the topic of my current events presentation that week. (Our history teacher made us read a newspaper article and write a summary and opinion on it, weekly.) I stretched my little 12 year old mind as far as it would go and then wrote that I thought that America should not come to Haiti's aid because there were Americans who needed aid every day and we should think of ourselves first. I'm inclined to feel guilty about having had this opinion, but my current knowledge of developmental psychology and an oft remembered story of one of my sister's high school classes remind me that this 12 year old paper was what it was. (The story that my sister told me was one of a civics class, or something, in which a fellow student proposed ending poverty by giving everyone a large sum of money. Shame, that in the past few years I have thought "This politician is no smarter about economics than that classmate of my sister's".)
Years and years later, when a New York times front page showed a Haitian woman making a cake from dirt and a bit of flour and water to feed her family, I was working at a diner on a college campus, where many of our patrons read the Times. There was much talk about Haiti and it was so sad and difficult to read in a place that served food. By the afternoon I hadn't eaten much and had heard the same conversation over and over again. A former waitress came in for a late lunch and I took the opportunity to sit and have a chat. She was listening in to a nearby table's conversation.
"My parents go to Haiti every few years to volunteer for an aid organization." she said
"That's wonderful!" I said.
"Well, yeah, but how they started this tradition is a bit ridiculous" she admitted.
It's like this: When her parents were preparing to marry, her father was in charge of booking the honeymoon. It was going to be a big surprise. She set out the things that she would need for a hot or cold place and he secreted them into a bag and they were off. They flew to their honeymoon destination, where her mother discovered, they would be staying in Haiti for two weeks. "Haiti?" She asked, shocked. "Yes." Her father beamed with pride. "You've always said that you wanted to go to Haiti!" "To TAhiti! Not to Haiti!!"
But they stayed and found that there was actually some good works that they could do and they return often as 2nd, 3rd, etc honeymoons.

This story pops in my head every now and again as a buoy against some of the more upsetting (and down-right hateful) things that I have heard on the subject of Haiti after the earthquake. It may be inappropriate or it may be helpful but hopefully it won't stop any important dialogue about this unique and suffering country.

...if you just smile

Olivia Judson has a theory that language may affect mood. She wrote about it on her blog at the NY Times. Many of us know that smiling can affect mood, so she wants to know if languages in which the mouth is positioned in a smile or frown more often would affect mood. The same way that saying "Cheese" makes you smile and the french "fleur" makes you pout. The theory has not been tested, but I would be interested to know.

When Ivo and I were first dating I was surprised to notice that when he spoke Swiss German, his voice was deeper than when speaking English. My first theory was that he'd been nervous when first speaking English as a student and had thus learned it in a nervous or higher register. My theory was disproved, however, when I discovered that I too spoke Swiss German with a bit of a deeper voice as well. So now I don't know what the cause is, unless it's the languages themselves.

Perhaps not even just the language but the social circle. At a book club last month we discussed the fact that there was a slur in our book that the Chinese characters used for white people. It referred to their noses. This got a started about the term "Honky" which is also used by the Palawa in Tasmania, to refer to white people, who stereotypically speak through their nose. I find this all fascinating as a woman who spends her time mumbling. I'd like to think that I speak like those people from whom I've learned my language, but I don't.
I race through sentences in all of the languages that I have learned and tend to mumble or speak softly at times. Speaking softly was born of an idea that "a mistake made quietly is not a mistake". Ivo once remarked that most people were unaware of how good my language was coming along, because they'd never heard me speak it at an audible level. Oh, if only it were in my languages learned in later life that I did this, but no! Even in my mother-tongue I tend to default to: a mistake made quietly is not a mistake.

I am now speaking in English to my niece A.J. as much as possible. This may not seem tricky and, truly, it is almost automatic for me to speak with a child or an animal in my mother-tongue. It only becomes difficult when I am switching back and forth and back and forth between saying silly things to A.J. and speaking to people around me in another language. She has, of course, been hearing Bern-Swiss-German for almost a year now and science may have you believe that she even cries at a certain pitch so as to parrot the rhythm of her mother's tongue. Nevertheless, I am convinced that she is coming along in her English amazingly well. I have no real evidence for this, but I've chosen to take a few of her cues as clues. For example, from the age of one week, whenever I speak to her in English, she always makes an "ooo" face. I'm not saying that mine is a language with an inordinate amount of "ooo" sounds, but the fact her face arranges itself in this way when I am speaking to her in English suggests a certain cause and effect. Also, she typically reacts to my English with one of those baby smiles with the squinty eyes and turns of the head.
Ivo can be our control group for my theory. When he speaks to A.J. she typically sticks out her tongue. It's not an insult or anything. It appears as though Uncle Ivo's speech seems to make A.J. want to explore that particular control of that particular body part.
Of course, A.J. is only 5 weeks old and it is entirely possible that whenever her eyes are open and she is interacting she is simply hungry and thus moving her mouths in nursing ways. The grin may also not be from my language but my mouth that can't help but smile stupidly at her while speaking to her in my language. I, however choose to believe that she will love English and will smile because of it.