First hiking weekend

These kids with their slang and their "butt-hurt." They wouldn't know butt-hurt from butt-numb. I've had what amounts to Montezuma's revenge for the last 20 years. I know from butt-hurt.
I'd never been able to hike for more than a few hours in the past. With a regular need for a toilet, hiking was tricky. I couldn't eat just before or during, so I could never go on a hike long enough or demanding enough to require provisions. Until now.
When surgery was first proposed, my husband was psyched at the idea that we might one day go camping. But more immediately, he was psyched for a wife who liked to hike and who could hike. Because I did like to hike. But near the end of each hike, and for the following few days, I would suffer. My husband didn't quite realize the extent of my suffering until he could see its absence this weekend.
We have often done cycling tours to celebrate our anniversary, and they've been incredible. I'm so grateful to have a partner who is flexible in his expectations and the best cheerleader I've ever known. The idea for this year's hike came to us last autumn, and I was a bit nervous in the initial planning stages, if I'd be able. After surgery, when it was clear that I was not at risk for the worst of the complications, we started planning more concretely. We planned a route, booked the dog sitter and got our hiking gear in order.  The week before, I began to get nervous. Swiss mountain-folk started reacting to our plan with surprise; saying that it was a pretty difficult hike. I wasn't sure that I'd be up for it. I was so unpracticed. On Thursday, I took my new boots and my new ostomy-friendly hiking clothes up and down our local hill to check them out. I went up and down the 400 meters and felt great. So there was nothing to do but pack and go.

The weather looked like it could turn poor, but not dangerous. Folks had gotten stuck in snow the week before and there had been so many violent storms this summer, so we wanted to be safe and sane. We left Falera early Saturday morning, eating our packed breakfast on the Post Auto to Ilanz. We were in time to make the 7:40 bus to Vrin, but sadly the driver forgot to change his sign from Ilanz to Vrin, so we were given an extra hour to have coffee and relax and marvel at the muddied kids returning from the local festival, which had been struck by lightening and turned accoustic early Friday afternoon.
On the bus to Vrin, we were in the company of other festival-goers and a group of people from the East of Switzerland, who were....very energetic and excited (sauglatt). Luckily, they transferred to a smaller bus in Vrin to take them further up the mountain, while we hiked the road 10 km on to the proper path.

                    

We walked up - all day. We went up to the most gorgeous views I've ever seen. We walked over waterfalls, we walked up paths that didn't curve as softly as those other paths that make steep mountains more manageable. We walked up past young men using the last of their cell phone signals. We accidentally walked off the proper path and went along the narrow, steep paths that only cows use, and then we reached steep wet cow pastures, full of poo, just as it began to rain. My legs ached. We'd taken about a break every 45 minutes. Ivo offered to take the flasks that I was transporting along with our food, but it wasn't the weight. It was the effort. This was new for me. We'd been going up for hours and I'd never climbed so much in my life.
Eventually, we reached our peak elevation. "I'm dizzy with success!" I panted. It was an ongoing joke that had begun earlier in the hike, when there was still enough breath for talk of history and politics and told me about that Stalin speech. It had come up when our eyes tried to accommodate the new, incredible views. At the signs for the path markers and elevation, there were a group of hikers with umbrellas and clear, disposable rain ponchos - the Eastern Swiss from the bus!
Surely the Terrihütte was just around the corner? No. We  still had to climb down a super steep trail and cross a river and then climb up a path that involved boulders and helpful chains and then back down a path on which Ivo - with his super heavy pack - slid multiple times. We started inventing dialogue from our cinematic journey - Game of the Rings / Lord of the Thrones - until - at last -we reached our destination (which was, of course, the journey all along, blah, blah.) When we got into the mud room, I lay on my back; so dizzy was I from success.
3 Bernese youths, who had been alternating the lead with us since we went astray from the official hiking path, congratulated us. Once we'd changed and had some salty soups and sweet fizzy drinks, we went out into the sunshine on the wet peak to stretch our muscles and cheer on a family of hikers - drenched and considerably young and exhausted - as they arrived, dizzy with success.
I didn't care that a 13-year-old in skinny jeans had managed the same hike. I was so thrilled that my body had managed the exertion and I felt incredible and so strong. I didn't even have any dehydration headaches. (I've been learning about my different hydration needs this summer, with my new gut length.) I kept remembering my cousin Mike's loathing of hikes that lead to places where cars can go. He seemed to think that hiking up to a peak, only to meet people who'd achieved the same goal with a motor was a bummer. But here, the only way up for people is walking (with the exception of the Terrihütte staff and foodstuffs, which are brought up regularly by helicopter.) 26km, 1300 meters up.
At dinner, while scarfing multiple portions of risotto (food has never been as delicious as it was during this hike), we were gifted with the view of 30+ capricorns availing themselves of a salt lick that had been provided. It was amazing.
Next day, it felt like we were part of a huge group. Breakfast was over at 8 and people got themselves packed and geared up and as clean as the freezing taps in the bathroom would allow and wandered off in their various directions. Our table mates from dinner and breakfast were on our path for a while. We scrabbled down a couple of crevasses together, wondered at some marmuts, who played nearby up-wind of us, and then parted ways as they hiked Vrin-ward and we headed to the Ticino.
We needed fewer food breaks on the way down, but required more water breaks. We had a picnic on a rock in the middle of a waterfall and dipped our toes into the chilly water.

Ivo's heavy pack really taxed his poor feet. But we had hours to go. We began making up our own fake Italian slang. We had to hike an hour and a half farther than expected once we realized that our destination had poor bus service when school was out. But we did it, and we did it well, speeding up to catch our bus in Olivone, by-passing that group of Eastern Swiss hikers again! Then on to Semione, where our dizziness from success made that last 45 minutes of walking to our B&B just exhausting. But we'd done another 39 km of walking and my body was no worse for wear. I had to red marks on my back from the back pack and a bit of leg and foot soreness that night, but no more than my extra-fit spouse.
I am a hiker!!

cut off in Europe

I feel so very powerless. I share grief and shame and frustration with the US, but I am so far away. Every time I contact police stations of areas where I used to live, asking for them to affirm their attempts and plans to improve their policing and stop this senseless killing, I am so aware of the fact that my voice is calling out from very far away.
When I was in San Francisco this spring, I saw a police officer break a young, cooperative black man's arm. I tried to intervene, I took a photo, I took a badge number and I contact the station. Had it been a few years prior, I would have said that I was an SF tax payer, that I was an SF citizen, that I was a member of that community and that I was outraged. But I felt unheard as a visitor from abroad.
Don't get me wrong, I am a tax-payer. I am an American citizen and I pay my federal taxes and I vote in the elections that I'm allowed to. But I feel so helpless. I feel like my words fall flat when I try to reach out as an ally.
So today I'm reaching out and trying to find all the ways that I can help. Seeing where I can donate, what I can share, whom I can contact. In the meantime, I'm trying to be a responsible and involved citizen of my adopted home.
Maybe it's easier to be sad that they people around you are not feeling the grief and outrage you are when you're abroad. I suspect that it'd feel a hell of a lot worse to feel this alone in grief in the US. 

cut off in the countryside

We had my oldest nephew, Luan for a visit this week and it was a real treat. I was excited about our alone time that would precede meeting up with his favorite uncle Ivo, but once we had, when Luly and I were recalling what we'd done that afternoon, he told him "Jessy verzählt nur Kabbis." It's true, I am a silly goose, but it wasn't until Ivo and I were talking about the visit next day, that I realized that he'd thought that all the "gems of wisdom" I'd thought that I was sharing, were lies and hooey.
Luan moved to a farm house before he turned one and his favorite animals are cows, even though they're his neighbors. He's the second oldest of 5 and when we made our plan for his visit, he had all the ideas: He wanted to swim or visit a museum, depending on the weather. He wanted ice cream and to eat in a pizzeria - which he's done before and we're not to think differently. Luan 'speak cabbage' himself and has shared fantastical things with us for years, mostly parroting other peoples' experiences. He's 6 months older than my next nephew and they couldn't be more different. Simon is a city kid, he's curious as a cat and hungry for learning and has big idea. He was verbal and keen to read and write far before Luan, which makes sense as Luan speaks an unwritten language. I know Simon better and am more used to relating with him and so tried to tell Luan things that I thought he might want to know. I asked him loads of questions too, like when he thought that someone had drawn a flag on the rocks with felt tipped pens. (It was graffitied with spray paint, but we'd had a think about it together.)
When Luan and I arrived in the city, he was overwhelmed - as usual - and I tried to give him loving support. When we got in the tram, he was keen to find a seat for just us, but it was all full up and we sat next to a young man speaking arabic into his cell phone. Luan was not keen. I thought that I'd take the opportunity to educate as a way to comfort. I told him that when I first moved to Switzerland, I didn't understand any of the Swiss people when they'd speak their native language. I told him how scary that was, and how it felt to be in such a new and different place, but how I'd learned through experience and am grateful to know many languages now.
When we walked from the tram to the pool, Luan said he'd 'never seen so many bikes in one place' and I taught him that the bikes with the big, hearty tires were mountain bikes. I told him that I'd not ridden one, but that I've gone down a mountain on a push scooter with the same big tires. (I think that he may have believed both of those things to be the "Kabbis" of which he later spoke.)
The line for the pool was 'the biggest he'd ever seen' and he was frightened of the loud and boisterous children. I quite liked the resulting clinging that he did to me, but it also made me nervous. He's always been a shy kid, but he told me he'd never seen so many 'different' kids before. I thought about this last bit when I saw a graphic of the map of who voted what in the Brexit referendum. Luan is a country mouse and is scared of different people and thinks that I'm lying to him when I tell him about different people and or experiences. 

One foot in one land and another on a banana peel

I've been a resident alien in Zürich for 9 years, but it's the 10th anniversary of my moving here this month. This autumn, I can get my C-permit (touch wood) and then begin the naturalization process. I can speak in dialect, I know that I'm meant to hate taking antibiotics and I make all the right sounds of excitement and disappointment while watching the football. You can tell that I'm a proper American Ex-pat, because my English is annoyingly influenced by all the GB Ex-pats around me. But I'll get to that.
The heartbreak over the hate crime in the US last week was felt across the world and it's timing with Zürich Pride seemed to make it more present than it might have been. But I'm only an LGBT ally and I'm not in the States and I'm acutely aware of how different the mourning here is for me.
But today was an online meeting for volunteers for Voters Abroad and I am feeling inspired. On the meeting, the "cheers" and "cheerios" and whatnot made me cringe, when I recognized that we're all susceptible to the English we most often hear influencing our native tongue.
But I'm doing something. I'm involved. And it's giving me strength. Because I'm becoming the neighborhood grumpus. People here seem to think that I might have insight or hope on the subject of the US presidential election, which I do not. As I was leaving my building a couple weeks ago and was in a stressful situation; I'd just discovered that I had an issue that needed to be handled with antibiotics, so of course I was upset. Just then, in my state of stress, with my stinky dog needing to relieve herself, a different neighborhood grumpus approached me with her newly abbreviated greeting of, "So, der Trumpf, gäll?" As the american kids say, I just couldn't. I responded automatically and shortly and embarrassingly with "I don't know! I can't do this now! Leave me alone!" I felt just awful about it (and apologized to her later), but it was a tipping point. I know that I shouldn't have let my pain and fear and painful fear of American politics let me treat a neighbor poorly. But I truly don't know what to say to Swiss people when they want to know my opinions on American politics. I'm clueless. I'm informed as an outsider. I'm missing the context. It's like before the elections in 2008, when European media painted the US as a country saturated with guns and hate and ignorance. Palin was all over everything and I had no context to frame it in. But a visit to the States that summer made me see it very differently.
I feel contextless. But I am an American abroad, with the privilege and  obligation to vote and I'm getting excited to help others more easily do that as well; to give ourselves our own context. What has become the joking "Was meinst du zu den Trump?" has become a more frightened plea for my offer that my motherland will not unleash a reality tv star on the world. Because I'm an American in the context of a continent that was nearly destroyed by hate and north of a country that was more recently negatively effected by the leadership of a reality TV star and failed business man. 

10 years ago today

10 years ago today, I moved to Zürich. Back then I knew about 13 words of German, was fresh from a crohn's flare and had no idea what I should do with my new degree.
I left a couple boxes of stuff in my mom's basement, had bid Philadelphia adieu and flew to my new home with my new (as of 2 days before) fiancé.
I'm at the point now, where people seem less impressed with my Swiss German than they used to be. It's not that I'm bad at it. It's just that previously, my swiss german was good for someone who hadn't been here that long. Now, when I tell someone who's said "You're American and you speak in dialect?!" that I've been here 10 years, their face changes from having been impressed to being...well... whelmed.
I've not been in Zürich the whole ten years, of course. There was a year in the States in between, where I relished being in the same country as my family - though equally far away. While there, we spoke Swiss German at home, celebrated the 1st of August and baked the same Christmas cookies that we would have back home (mailänderli.) I've still live on this block, in this city, in this country longer than I've lived on any block in any city in any country. Which just seems kooky.

Be Optimistic

Sometimes I think that if I didn't have a chronic illness, I'd be the most optimistic person in the world. But then I can't know that, because my practiced optimism (see: at times lying to myself) is a gift of having to get through life with a chronic illness.
My handsome and healthy spouse has now taken on the voice of me 10 years ago. (I'd been ill about 8 years when we met, so I suppose that he's right on schedule.) I'm here, reveling in every bit of evidence of health, embracing every moment that my healthy body gives me and when things go poorly, holding on to the optimism that I'll be that way again. But it takes regular practice.
I've got granulomas and these chronic infections popping up as a result of undissolved self-dissolving sutures and it's a real bummer. Old me's voice pops in my head and worries that it could mean something worse, that it could be the start of fistulas, that my honeymoon of things going well after surgery was short and is over. Ivo's voice pops up in a more actual way and says things like "what the hell" and showing more signs of being bored of me being in pain. Not bored of me, but he just feels the monotony of me being in a painful situation and feels bad for me.
So I'm here, and I've had a painful weekend - but rallied for a nice long walk with spouse and pup, did all the things I needed to to take good care of myself - and I'm waiting on my doctor to write me a prescription for antibiotics and I'm feeling optimistic that the pills will work as well this time as they did last time, I'm hopeful that this problem will stop reoccurring, I can practically see my wonderful, sutureless life...
But if I'd never been ill, I might have never known this kind of positivity in the face of chronic health issues. I had this big massive surgery and I got a little cocky about the long-term positive change it would be. But I have an incurable illness and will always have an incurable illness and I've got some incurable, chronically occurring positivity - with bouts of doubts. 

caregiving

In the lead-up to my mother's death, I gained strength through the support of my siblings. When I saw her suffer, I was grateful for her DNR. I knew that I didn't want anything to prolong her suffering.

But when the time came, oh I wanted her to breathe. I kept fussing over her and my siblings were somehow able to stay calm for her. So I excused myself and left the house. I was beside myself. I had no idea what to do. I'd grabbed my coat and my wallet and I walked to the liquor store down their road and bought cigarettes. (What else would an ex-smoker who was upset about her mother dying of cancer do?)

I needed to call somebody. But I didn't have my phone. I had my mother's phone and every number in that phone's address book were people who were suffering about their loss. But low, my father's number was in there! My father, who'd had an amicable relationship with my mother since they agreed to be good co-parents at their children's milestones like graduations and weddings and whatnots. My father, whose text message to my step-father had given him the strength to call hospice for my mother and prepare for the end. 

I called my dad and plead with him to tell me how to be like my siblings. Quick! Just tell me how to be calm and helpful because I have to go back in there. 

My father told me that it sounded like I did a good job. Just before my mom's death rattle began, I cleaned her up, changed her diaper, changed her bedding, got her comfortable. That was something I could do. My siblings were doing what they could do now. He gave me peace and got me to breath deep and as I hung up the phone, I turned to my husband who'd joined me on the front lawn to tell my that my mother had died. 

The peace my father gave me in that horrific moment is something amazing to me. I've never been more grateful for anything before or since so far. 

Now his partner is dying and I wish so desperately that I could give him peace.