Guten Tag!

We're in Frankfurt! I know…I know. Marie-Pierre was getting a bit…tense yesterday. I don't think she had a real grasp of what it would be like, having a family of four staying with her in her tiny apartment. We only planned to stay two days and that was more than enough. Nice lady though. Kind of. 

We found this tiny English speaking community in Frankfurt where my third cousin lives. There are English speakers in Frankfurt! And I have a third cousin! Lise is originally from Minnesota, or so she says. She doesn’t sound like a midwesterner. In a sea of Europeans, American accents stick out like a flame stack. All they have to do is say, "honest". 

Lise has been in Frankfurt for ten years. She speaks German fluently now so she’s been taking us around. We had some beer and the kids ate their weight in German sausage. They love the subway. If I'm having a hard time keeping them occupied and Lise finally has to get some work done, we just drop ten euros and ride the subway for an hour. 

"i look out of the window, but you're not there." Flickr Creative Commons. Web. 22 Jan 2011.

Lise has this HUGE apartment that overlooks the river Main. She works from home but she lives alone and she says she needs the company. But adding a three year old and a five year old in the span of a day isn't an adjustment that's easy to make. She asks us to stay as long as we want. I don’t want to...push that. She loves the kids and they love her back so we’re comfortable to stay for now but by the end of the week I need us to have a plan. Because moving every seven to ten days with no foreseeable game plan is not going to work forever. What ruining this for me is that in the midst of this adventure, I'm the one trying to tie things down, I'm the killjoy. I feel like a stranger in my own mind lately. I feel like my mother. My kids got to wrestle in the grass that overlooks the Seine. They got to sit in a 800 year old British pub and drink Shirley Temples. Amelie rode a Wolfhound that was literally as big as she was. This is my adventure for them. I should make it seem like a gift. 

I feel like this is the first time in three weeks that my chest hasn’t been tight. I fell asleep yesterday morning at the breakfast table and slept (at a right angle!) for three hours. I woke up, having slobbered down the inside of my arm, to see that my kids content playing “repeat after me” in German with Lise. They hadn’t even realized that I wasn’t there. They are comfortable here. They like it here. 

Benj already has a weeks worth of gigs booked. I found a art studio that’s looking for a part-time art teacher. On the railway over I was able to put together some more paintings that I've been selling slowly. Lise brought me ten flyers that she collected on her walk home from the grocery store with local, inexpensive rentals. Amelie has crushes on these twin boys we've seen at the park. Their parents are from Cincinnati. They moved here because he had a job opportunity but also because the health care is better. They send their boys to the English-Immersion school just down the road. And Frankfurt has the best friggin' beer I've ever tasted. I'm not compiling a pro-con list, I swear.  

Frankfurt am Main

"Frankfurt." Flickr Creative Commons. Web. 22 Jan 2011.