A Flower Within a Flower

I like being here with Crystel in her dorm room on Oahu. She lies on the air mattress eyeing her computer. She’s researching how to replace her lost passport. She hasn’t been able to find it since applying for a job near Waikiki Beach. Her plans to travel to Japan and Guatemala are in jeopardy.

I break the companiable silence. “How’s it going with the lost passport?”

“After I’m done eating,” she answers.

I laugh. Of course. Our sense of urgency is not the same. She’ll let me know when she needs help.

Her dorm room is spare. The University of Manoa campus is empty. Jody and I had previously thought that other families would have done the same as we did: vacationed in Hawaii with their national student exchange family member for holiday break. Instead, students had only stayed a semester and had already returned to the mainland. Crystel would be alone for New Year’s and the following week before school started. Her friend, Allie, who had visited from Minnesota had also returned home.

Lanikai Pillbox trail with Allie

Jody and I had worried about Crystel being on a vacated campus and returning to her empty dorm room in the evening from her new job. We also didn’t want her to be alone on the holiday.

During the Maui part of our vacation when I told her our concern she said, “Why don’t you come stay with me?”

“You should,” Jody agreed.

It didn’t take a moment for me to know that was exactly what I would do.

32 years ago, when I went into the Peace Corps, volunteers received their initial training for the Kingdom of Tonga on Oahu. During the plane ride from Minnesota to Hawaii, tears flowed down my cheeks. In the airplane bathroom I tried to stuff them back in. With each mile I flew – watching the dot on the large airplane screen move closer and closer to Hawaii – I shed layer after layer of my life until I knew this to be true: I had been abandoned. I was that child, that teenager, the one who had been left to fend for herself against the sexual abuse that raged in our home. To protect my three younger sisters, I reported the abuse to the police when I was nineteen years old. My parents disowned me.

I was abandoned.

Hanakapial Falls

I didn’t want Crystel to feel abandoned. To be alone. I didn’t want her walking on a deserted campus. Spending a week with her and seeing her life would be a gift. An adventure.

Hiking Lanikai Pillbox Trail with her and Allie, visiting beaches, an arduous 8-mile waterfall hike on Kauai, and kayaking were a few of the things we did.

It was on the Pillbox hike that Crystel asked me what I was thinking. I told her that I had been on this island before. How my past influences my parenting. She pointed a blossom out to Allie and me, “See that flower within a flower?”

My children are a flower within a flower. They have the holding space – love – to be beautiful and a landing spot – their mothers – to feel safe and flourish.

Unexpected Joy

Trips are an adventure.

I plan. I research.

And yet…anything could happen. In the not knowing moments, the unplanned, I feel the most alive.

I often don’t do enough research to understand that I should be afraid. Such as driving to Whitefish, Montana for a family Christmas ski holiday with friends. Whiteout conditions forced us to spend extra days in a hotel. There was dog sledding, snowmobile driving, and skiing Whitefish Mountain. Those activities seemed tame. Checking off the boxes. The drive itself was the adventure. Funniest was the holiday mix-up where I didn’t receive a gift. Names had been drawn. Presents packed for the trip. Obviously, someone forgot they had my name and thought they had someone else. Life is funny like that sometimes. Hands you an unexpected letdown and how will you respond? For me, an opportunity to be gracious and see the humor in the unexpected all while moving through a range of emotions.

Our family has made many trips to Guatemala. I planned the paintball outing in the mountains but not the deep circular bruise in the middle of my forehead. I forgot to research protective gear and the speed of paintballs. On this same trip, to disembark from a boat in a squall, I threw myself on a swaying homemade dock in the pelting rain when the a lancha got near. That’s how you arrive in port in a secluded Mayan village. I’ll never forget that. I’ll also remember my son reaching his hand out time and time again to help me climb the mountain above Santa Cruz La Laguna to reach the next village. He became a man that day, looking after his mother.

I plan. I research. Yet, sometimes, I’m not even aware of the task I’m taking on. I just go forth. Bringing my family with me.

Backing our rented 32 ft. RV into the driveway after arriving home from the Grand Canyon, I thought to myself, “What chutzpah Jody and I have.” To think we could rent an RV and drive it to the Grand Canyon having never driven anything bigger than an SUV. This feeling of triumph trumped the planned Grand Canyon helicopter tour and mule trip down the canyon.

I certainly didn’t research the driving fear factor on our trip to Mount Rainier National Park and Crystal Mountain Resort. The drive required us to drive at a height of 6,681 ft. with no guardrails. While driving, I came to view our RV as a weapon that could kill us all with one wrong move. Later, one of our dogs tumbled down a cliff. This was unplanned. When we figured out he was going after rocks that were being kicked off the hiking path, we walked more carefully.

Our five-week stay in Florida brought me unexpected deep joy. When I was in Tonga in the South Pacific for the Peace Corps, the ocean scared me. I couldn’t figure out how that tiny island stayed afloat. I was familiar with the solid earth of Wisconsin cornfields. I never did get comfortable in Tonga. But in Florida, I stared for hours at the ocean, losing myself in the sound and strength of the water.

Our family has an upcoming trip to Yellowstone and to Maui.

I’ll research. I’ll plan.

It’s the unexpected that will touch me.

Peace Corps Volunteer. Tonga, South Pacific

Somewhere on a Beach

February 2021 brought the 5th coldest ever 10-day period of weather to the Twin Cities going back to 1873.

Our frigid Minnesota temps were being blasted on the radio.

“Let’s leave for a month next year,” I suggested to Jody.

She was working remotely. What would be the difference if she was managing projects from a home office in Florida? 75+ degrees. Sunshine. Heat. Warmth.

What surprised me is how much I’m enjoying all of it. My heart beats faster. I don’t want to be inside.

The Atlantic Ocean is a 1 ½ mile walk from our AirBnB.

I’m driven to be immersed in the sunshine, heat, and warmth.

Sitting sedentary on the beach listening and watching the fits and starts of the waves, takes all thoughts from my head. Nothing else exists for that moment as the waves rush in.

I stay another moment, and another, and another.

I don’t want to miss a thing.

Je M’appelle Frisque

My grandparents’ families came from places like Walhain-St. Paul, Incourt, Nievelles, Tourinne-St. Lambert, and Huldenberg in Walloon Brabant, Belgium. Impacted by the same potato famine that brought many Irish to the United States, the Belgians made their way to Wisconsin communities with names like Brussels, Tonet, Namur, Luxemburg, and Walhain. The homes they left had been clustered in an area about forty miles wide. The farm towns they carved out of tree-covered land, almost four thousand miles across an ocean and half a continent, were about the same distance apart.

When I was a child I spoke some Walloon, a nearly forgotten language, with my Belgian-American great-grandmother and her friends as they quilted in our living room. We ate Belgian farm food like jut, a boiled cabbage side dish, stoemp, a mashed potato and cabbage dish, trippe, a bratwurst-type sausage, booyah, a chicken-based soup with many ingredients, and Belgian pie, a sweet dough tart filled with prunes and a cream cheese style top. Our Catholic church held a Kermis celebration in autumn. Beyond jokes about how much Belgians sweat or drank or were short, maybe stout, that’s about what I knew of our heritage. All the amazing accomplishments of the Belgians or their art or chocolates were from a different socio-economic part of the country.

My mother’s cousin and my father’s cousin researched family trees. Through the Frisque genealogy I discovered that my family was related to many, many people in Luxemburg, Wisconsin, the small town where my father grew up and we lived through part of my childhood. The Nockaert family information uncovered that my mother was mostly Belgian although she believed she was German. Names, dates, locations, relations fill pages. That’s it. The Belgian Heritage Center in Namur, Wisconsin may provide information to further the cousins’ research.

The histories of these people, who permanently left all they knew for 40 acres of land and a better future, are probably lost forever. But this summer we are going to visit Belgium, specifically Walloon Brabant, and trace what is left of our Cravillion, Frisque, Nockaert, and VanderKelen ancestors. They were all small farmers who left Belgium in the mid 1850s so there is probably little left of their lives beyond cemetery headstones.

We have nothing physical from their lives in Belgium and little expectation of connecting with other great-great-great grandchildren of the original immigrants. But one can always hope.

 

 

 

 

 

7 Things That Surprised Me about France

My recent trip to Paris, Chartres, Bayeux (near D-Day landings), and Versailles was wonderful. A lot has changed since I visited decades ago—much of it in good ways.

Building across from cafe where I journaled one afternoon.

1. Parisiennes don’t mind speaking English.

When I visited France years ago, I would attempt my poorly accented high school French, and whomever I was speaking to would wince and reply in heavily accented, rudimentary English. Some people would shake their heads and speak rapid French in a scolding tone, which didn’t improve my understanding. Consequently, I downloaded several phone apps, including one that would say phrases in perfectly accented French, before this trip.

During our recent visit, my “bonjour” was met with a smile, and the person I was speaking to would offer to speak English. Young people, who often staff hotels, restaurants, shops, and tourist sites like museums, were particularly fluent and gracious. Some wanted to practice their English and make sure they were speaking correctly. Wow. I never used my French app.

2. American fashion was widespread.

I expected to be surrounded by stylish Parisiennes who wore the height of fashion. Instead, I blended in, especially on the days I wore my skinny jeans. My clunky walking shoes were also mainstream. Most women wore comfortable shoes like sneakers on the metro. Maybe they had dressy office shoes in their bags? The guys wearing t-shirts branded Levi’s or U.S.A. were native French speakers, not Americans.

The small hotel where we first stayed was quite a distance from popular tourist areas, so the people I saw on streets and in the metro were natives, not tourists. It was a little dispiriting to realize how pervasive American fashion is.

3. The scale and craftsmanship of “neighborhood” parish churches was astonishing.

St. Sulpice, one of the “neighborhood” churches we saw

We made brief visits to several neighborhood Catholic churches (my husband loves architecture). Inside were soaring Gothic spaces filled with intricate mosaics and stained glass windows, elaborately carved pulpits and choir stalls, along with altars and candelabra trimmed with gold. Some dated from the 1400’s. Many took several hundred years to complete. Along with the gilt-edged art and stained glass were announcements about parish activities—in other words, these are parish churches, not just historical sites.

4. Order and geometry reign in many French gardens and parks.

We wanted to spendlots of time outdoors enjoying the September sunshine so we visited several gardens and parks, and a distinct French gardening philosophy emerged. Nature is meant to be tamed and organized, preferably into geometric shapes. I expected that in famous formal gardens like Jardin des Tuileries and at Versailles. There, short, narrow boxwood hedges enclose long strips of flower gardens. Gardens are laid out in severe, straight lines, contrary to what’s natural. There’s grass between flower beds, but walking on it is forbidden!

At Versailles, even the trees are squared off.

However, that philosophy was also apparent in Paris’ ordinary city parks like Jardins des Plantes and Jardin du Luxembourg. A vegetable garden displayed espaliered gourds trained over arches to form a green tunnel. Trees were trimmed into rectangular boxes! Perhaps in Provence gardens are looser and more natural looking.

Shrub tortured into vase shape at Versailles

Espaliered gourds and cucumbers at Jardin des Plantes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Traditional French cooking was harder to find in cafes and bistros than I expected.

When I’d visited before, every meal I ate consisted of traditional French cooking—interesting sauces, tender meat or fish, and creative sides.

This time I was surprised at how often burgers with pommes frites appeared on menus, even when we weren’t in tourist areas. Whoa, I didn’t come to Paris for a burger! Or smoked salmon on a bagel. Perhaps Parisiennes get bored with traditional cooking and want something different. We did find several classic restaurants and ate wonderful meals there. No matter where we went, the bread, pastries, coffee, wine, and cheese were excellent.

6. My high school French resurfaced.

I expected to know food words like “poulet” for chicken and “fromage” for cheese. But after a few days, I began thinking long-forgotten words and phrases: “maintenant” (now), aujourd’hui (today), dejeuner (lunch), “moi aussi” (me too). I grew comfortable smiling and saying, “Je ma-appelle Ellen” (Myname is Ellen) to waitstaff who tried to hand credit card receipts to my husband for a signature. We were using my card since it waives fees on foreign transactions. And there’s all those miles, baby!

7. Apparently, there’s no end to the number of photos of stained glass I can take.

Well, that really wasn’t a surprise. Despite my limited faith, I love churches’ stained glass windows.

Bayeux Cathedral

 

Bayeux Cathedral