Some of my friends keep jabbing at me, trying to persuade me to sign up with Facebook. My brothers have succumbed to it now too. One invited me, and I shot back an email asking him to give me 2 good reasons why I should do it. He answered that he's still trying to decide why he joined. Which convinced me even more that I don't need it.

 I already spend a lot of time online, and I don't need any more reason to do so. Xanga keeps me in touch with some friends, and is manageable for my techie-challenged brain. Google Reader gives me all the blogs I need. Wordpress gives me another venue to blog. Why do I want FB? Besides, opting out of what 'everyone else' is doing has been sort of a way of life for me, and it would be out of character to change now. Someone may yet come up with some persuasive reason to sway me.  I'm not saying NEVER, but I'm saying that the day I join Facebook will be an amazing day.

Today it's a year that my doctor sat in front of me and worriedly played with her curls and called the hospital to say her patient has 2 palpable masses in her abdomen. It turned out to be multiple massive fibroids, benign, painful, but only a nuisance, not life-threatening. 

It has not been a fun year. I would never have asked to be poked and prodded and sent to more doctors and taken all those pain pills. I would not want to repeat the year.

But during all the yuckiness, God took special measures to love me well. My life still has more questions than answers, but this I know: Jesus loves me.

 

So the mom and the dad and the four sisters went to Germany and Switzerland for 10 swift days and came back yesterday. Today the fear came to me that this child will never grow up, and she'll always prefer going abroad as opposed to washing windows or the million other routine, repetitive things of normal life. I don't think I've ever been on a trip when I was ready to come back. I don't know what homesickness means.

Happiness is a bag on your shoulder, sandals on your feet, a ticket in your hand, and your eyes on the horizon.

I experienced the genetic memory again--of looking at people in southern Germany and northern Switzerland and recognizing them to be distant cousins of people I grew up with. We were amazed with the tidiness of the streets, houses, fields. Every inch is immaculate and the houses gleam inside. We guessed that housewives spend half of every day sweeping and washing and cleaning. Too bad the clean gene didn't find me.

To those subscriber friends who were on the FB Chorale tour in '05: we spent about 15 minutes in Thaygen and went into the church and looked around and delighted in the fountain outside. ahhhh, it was special, and a bonus, because we just 'happened' to be passing. I hadn't realized it was so close to the Swiss/German border but it came back to me--how we were all hyper after recording, singing wild songs, and even our conductor graced us with "I'm Crazy" while we were sitting at the border--remember that?!

Every day the staples were bread, cheese, and whatever else was at hand to put on the bread. It was fantastic. We hunted up some historical Anabaptist sites. My favourite was the Funkhouser place, where Simon Funkhouser and his wife Regula farm and host visitors to see the place in the big barn where, 13 generations ago, Christian Funkhouser made a secret room in the barn to hide Anabaptists. Having always wished to be part of the Underground Railroad with its secrecy and intrigue and mystery, I was esp. glad to see this place and hear the amazing stories.

We walked around Gimmelwald for a few delightful hours. Between the strong recommendations from a friend and Rick Steve's guide book, we chose to ride the cable car from Lauterbrunnen and stop at the quiet little farm village that is zoned as an avalanche zone, which keeps developers from encroaching on it. The young lady we talked with in her Liliput shop said she knows Rick Steves personally! I read somewhere that it was him who made Gimmelwald famous. We sat on a bench and ate chocolate and breathed in the crisp, fresh mountain air and I declared I shall return.

We took the train to Kleine Sheidegg where the sun was bright and it seemed like we could walk to Jungfrau, but it was only because it was so clear and the mountain so enormous. Then one bright morning we four girls went paragliding, and it was glorious and wonderful and beyond words to fly above the trees and lakes and town, riding the thermals that push up the clouds and breathing in the pine fragrance that rose on the breeze. I looked down on a baby eagle that was gliding over the forest, and revelled in being as close to his world as I've ever been. In my next life, I would like to be a paraglider pilot.

In Germany, we spent time with new Russian German friends who showed us what hospitality looks like. Our hosts had taken care of an old man for the last 3 years, and his funeral had taken place the day we arrived. His widow lives with them still and takes a lot of care. If I'd have been in their shoes, I'm sure I wouldn't have been as calm and gracious and treated my guests as royally as they did. I'd like to take some pages out of their book in that regard. I had great fun with the young people who eventually discovered that I wasn't too scary for them to try out their English.

There were some glitches: on Monday we drove 3 hours out of our way to tour Dachau, only to discover that it's closed Mondays. sigh... We came upon at least 3 closed roads in the middle of nowhere. We drove round and round in Zurich to find a parking garage that had space. BUT the majority of the time was MORE than amply good. The last night, the hotel we'd booked had upgraded us to a nicer hotel due to renovations. How we cheered! And of course, we girls stayed up til the wee hours that night, talking about everything we'd neglected to talk about during the past 10 days.

I owe a lot to my parents who have always shared their love of new horizons with us. Whenever they go away, they come back with exotic-sounding words like Bariloche and churasquedia, Krakow and matriska dolls,  Notre Dame and Thursk. Then when I get to go to those places too, I discover why they'd been so enthused about it, and that they hadn't told me half of what was so wonderful about it.

Sometimes I think I'll never grow up and be content to stay at home for ever. There's a certain level of resignation I have yet to come to, accepting the futile, monotonous work resulting from The Fall. Which may be one reason why heaven will be so wonderful--the discovery and horizons and wonder will never end! Until then, my shoes will always have sand in them.