Child of the Wood

I had lunch with the expat ladies today, at one of the local restaurants. The food was delicious as usual, and nicely presented, as all our dinners and lunches out have been. I still felt conflicted and homesick and slightly guilty for wanting the house we had seen earlier. The first house--the white house, was what I call it--was perfectly serviceable for our needs, and had two extra rooms we could use as a guest room and a place for an office.

But I had already furnished the wood house--I kept thinking of it as the wood house--in my mind, and saw my spinning wheel in that small sitting room area with the traditional German fireplace, and thought of hanging tapestries on one of the walls, and an oriental carpet on the rich cedar-colored tiled floors.

I told the ladies of the house, and how it was very big and very beautiful, and they all agreed we should take it. AnnaMK repeated Toni’s concern: there were very few houses for rent now, and there was no guarantee at all that there would be any for more than a few months--April, May--if we didn’t take one of the two left.

I felt a little weepy after that, but the ladies also brought home one fact: I would be the one who would be in the house the most, and I would need to be comfortable in it more than John. I thought of the adequate white house, and how it seemed cold to me. I knew I wanted the wood house, even though it was farther out than we had wanted, and more than we needed. I gritted my teeth, thinking of the possible objections John might have. Well, if it were up to me, I would take this house. I would, I would, I would!

I have taken pictures of both houses; you will know what I mean when I say one is the white house and the other is the wood house.

As I looked at both again, as I thought about all the houses we had seen, the villages we had gone through, the landscapes we had driven through, I realized that much of what I had experienced here in Germany so far reflected something of my very rootless childhood, but that the common denominator of that childhood had been the comforting enclosure of wood, of trees, and of the mountains I could see surrounding me at all times, like hands cupped around a chick. The drab and functional military housing I had seen as I visited the base was home to me as a child, and I accepted it as a child would: knowing it was home because my parents were there, but that it was no more than that, and that it would change, sooner than later. But the constant was mountains and trees, and the one time it wasn’t--California--there were still mountains in the distance, where I felt safely held by the earth.

I don’t think I mentioned that Germany is flat, very flat around the western border where we are, and there are almost no forests. There are what I call stands of trees, or small woods, and these seem so very neat and tidy compared to our very wild Northwest forests that will go on for thousands of acres. Our trees are tall, taller than the hotel I’m staying in right now, and very close together, so close that there are parts where a normal sized person can’t go between the trees that are so thick in trunk and undergrowth. Old growth forests. Eastern Washington is flatter, but even there you see mountains in the distance, or at the very least, the land is made of rolling hills and high plateaus.

When I lived in the Keyport Bangor base in Washington, there were trees in back of our house and trees in front, and there was rarely a day when I didn’t run off, literally run, into the woods and play, or just run along the deer paths just for the sheer joy of running and discovering secrets that the forest would reveal if I looked carefully enough. I knew there were bear, and there were cougars, but there were also the squirrels and the deer if I walked quietly enough. I had learned from some children’s book or other that Indians often walked toe first so that their steps would not disturb the animals, so I did this too when I saw squirrel or deer, so that I could get close enough to them.

I don’t run through the woods any more; plump middle-aged women tend not to. :-D But our homes in Washington are made of wood, rather than the masonry here in and around Geilenkirchen, and there is still something in me that understands wood or at least the mountains mean home. I can’t see mountains from here. But a home with wood in it...that is home.

I realized also that my conflicting concern--it was too big, it was too grand for little ol’ me--would not have been a concern back home. Had John and I decided to build such a home on our own property, I would not have thought twice about it, although i might have been wowed at how fortunate we were to be able to build one like that.

But on the way to the NATO base, all the strictures of Navy life came back to me; unconscious strictures of hierarchy, where enlisted personnel did not fraternize with officers, and this extended down to families and children. I remember once the Chaplain’s son walked over to the enlisted quarters--chaplains were the exception--and I was so alarmed that I yelled at him to go home, that he was not allowed in our neighborhood. I even remember throwing things at him to make him go away. It was that ingrained. I looked at the drab, ragged enlisted housing surrounding the base, and remembered I used to live in housing like that.

I had thought it was all in the past; I’m a woman grown now, and have not lived on base since I was in high school, decades ago. I am, most definitely, a civilian. But John made a comment about how the wood house was one in which a colonel might live, and something inside me stepped back from the notion of living in that house and that something said, “you are enlisted personnel; this is not for you.”

That evening, after John and I had dinner, we walked back to the hotel, and he asked, “well, have you decided which house you want?”

I thought of the objections, the practical considerations, the potential objections he might have. I gritted my teeth and said, “I’m sorry if it messes with your plans to bicycle to work, but I want the wood house, the house in Schöndorf. I’ll be the one spending most of the time there, and I think I’ll be happier there than the white house closer in.”

John nodded and grinned. “All right then, I’ll call AnnaMK and let her know.”

I blinked. That’s it? No objection?

“As you say, you’re the one who will be spending more time in it than I will, and I think it’ll be a great place for you to write. I’ll see if there are any shortcuts and bike paths to work, and it’s not like I can’t just ride around every day just for fun.”

I have a really nice husband. :-)