forgive me father, for i have slacked

There’s just so much I haven’t written. I want to, but I haven’t, and I probably won’t, so this will have to suffice.

I never wrote about Lausanne. I never wrote about the cross-country drive we took in our last week in Switzerland, a drive prompted by Mia’s need to see – and Sarah’s need to show Mia – one last real live castle. So we drove to Lausanne, and then down through Montreaux to Vevey and beyond, to Chateau de Chillon, the 800-year-old castle set hard on Lake Geneva. The castle is gorgeous, as were Sarah’s stories, complete and fabricated memories of where the princesses stood, where they danced, where they slept, where they greeted their people.

The kids loved it, especially Mia, but neither of them loved Chillion as much as they loved Broc, which is where the chocolate is made. That’s why we went there, to see the chocolate get made, and to smell the city, and we did both, and then they left us alone in a room with bad lighting and about 50 pounds of fresh chocolate, with and without cream, and with and without nougat, and with and without milk.

When we left, Mia jumped up and down in the parking lot and told us, “This is the best day of my whole life!” and at five, she may be right.

***

I never wrote about the trip to the wild animal park, a couple weeks earlier, with JY and the kids. It’s a zoo with no walls, and the deer and whatnot roam the same pathways you do without pause, as if they were expecting you. Which of course they were, because you’re the people with the food, and you’re there every day. Max fed a ram, and the ram looked Max in the eye, and I watched the ram. Very closely.

On the way to the park, JY noticed the kids’ shorts and sandals and stared at me, agog, wondering aloud at my foolhardiness. That’s when it occurred to me: we were on our way to a wild animal park. In the rolling, wooded hills. On a hot day. In the spring. Which is high tick season. In maybe the tickiest region on the planet.

I turned and looked at Auxane and Andrielle. Long pants. Closed shoes. And socks…socks pulled over the pant legs.

We didn’t bring home any ticks that day fortunately. But I did get a World’s Greatest Dad trophy.

***

I never wrote about the Monday before we left, after the packers came and took everything, when we walked down to the lake and rented a paddleboat. I’d been waiting all winter for that, and I’ll miss it all summer. Not the paddleboat, per se, but the lake – the chance to do something with it besides fattening its duck population. Sarah sat in the back to make sure Max didn’t take up swimming, and Mia and I sat in front and paddled, and from our lazy vantage point, we watched the paragliders spin in endless circles above our house.

***

Did I write…? No, I never did. I never wrote about Mia’s birthday party. We invited everyone in her class, about a dozen 5-year-olds, maybe more. We invited siblings, too. We even invited the parents to drop off their 5-year-olds and their 5-year-olds’ siblings and just go shopping. And then we gave the kids sweets. And we went to the schoolyard across the street for a treasure hunt, and to slide the slide and spin on the giant rope spinner. There’s a reason I didn’t write about that party. I’m still too tired to write about that party.

***

I didn’t write yet about the marathon we’re running. We’re doing it to honor Leanne, and we’re doing it to raise money for the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society, and if you want to help us out, we’d be thrilled.

***

I never wrote about the morning of our flight home, when Max walked up the stairs with a huge smile, his eyes wide and his eyebrows high. “Daddy!” he shouted. “Daddy, Mommy said we can go on the airplane!”

“For real?” I asked. “Today?”

“Yeah!” he said, still shouting. “And it’s so big!”

***

I know I didn’t write about Noel. He’s our neighbor, and he may be the Greatest Neighbor Ever. I know he’s mine.

While we were gone, the couple next door cared for our plants, watched over the house, and took out our trash, and they were wonderful.

While we were gone, Noel came over every day and
• opened the sliders to get some air circulating
• flushed all the toilets
• opened all the faucets
• flipped lights on and off at different hours
• checked the sprinklers to make sure they weren’t geysers
• occasionally opened the doors to the cars to air them out
• opened and shut the refrigerator doors a couple times to air out the empty fridge.

Oh, and on Sundays? He raced the next-door neighbors over to our house for the privilege of taking out the trash.

I know you wish you had a Noel.

***

I never wrote about the 24-hour milk barn.

***

I never wrote about two days at Disneyland for Mia’s 5th birthday, about the singles line that lets me run through the roller coaster twice while Sarah takes the kids on a single spin around the Ferris Wheel. I never wrote about the lunch with the Disney Princesses at Ariel’s Grotto, about the fact that we were chosen from tens of families to be the royal family, and to announce the presence of the princesses to the whole restaurant. I think we were chosen because we were more sophisticated than all those other rubes, but it could also have been random.

I didn’t write about the button Mia got for being a birthday girl, or about the utter elation that followed throughout the day as stranger after stranger wished her a wonderful birthday and asked how old she was. Honest to a fault, she explained carefully that she was four, but that her birthday was on Monday, and that she would be five years old then. Stranger after stranger nodded, and moved on.

***

And I never wrote about Memorial Day weekend, when we walked to the Vons with the kids in a little red wagon. We removed the kids and filled the wagon with groceries – probably 40 pounds of groceries, maybe more – and started walking home in the heat, but Max insisted that the wagon was his to pull. Never mind that the whole contraption surely weighed more than him. He grabbed the handle behind him, put his head down, and leaned into the thing, starting slowly and getting a head of steam and pulling the wagon, all told, at least 70 percent of the way home. At least – I tried to help speed things along, but he threw a fit. The Max wants what the Max wants.

Stubborn kid, right?

That night, we cooked S’mores in the microwave and made brats on the barbecue and slept in the backyard. Sarah and I had a proper tent. Mia had her Barbie castle. And Max slept in the giant ladybug. The dew made us wet, and the air made us cold. And the ground made us sore.

Well, it made me sore, anyway.

***

Wow. That was a long time coming.

 

everything i need to know about the swiss i learned from canadians

Today marked a bit of a breakthrough in the daycare situation, which is essentially this: I have no daycare for Max. Not that I need him anywhere full-time – I can’t work anyway, so I may as well take care of my boy, and anyway I like my boy. But I also like buying milk without constantly having to play defense, and besides, Max has to be sick of me. Really, a little separation now and then is in everyone’s best interest.

It hasn’t been easy, though. As expected, the English-speaking facilities are full up, and the local centers give priority to locals – if you can find them at all. Once, I stopped by city hall because they supposedly keep a list of daycare providers, but the woman I spoke to didn’t understand English, so I just let her instruct me in German. From her body language, I’m pretty sure she told me to “walk up this street, then left, then look for a woman wearing a brown overcoat, and ask her about the babysitters.”

I may as well have asked Max.

Eventually, I found a place – a little storefront where I can leave him for two hours on Wednesdays to play with other short people – and today was his first visit. I was right, too – he’s totally been waiting for this. When I dropped him off, he didn’t cling or cry, as I’d feared. He ran. Away from me. Laughing.

(But, you know. I’m still his hero and all that.)

Anyway, I bring all this up for a reason, and it has nothing to do with my son. It has to do with this: I met a Swiss person. Her name’s Monika, and she runs the Spiel center over at Feldhof 14. She’s not the first Swiss person I’ve met, but she’s the first one who wasn’t scanning my groceries or serving me a croissant. Or shushing me. Or some combination of these things.

We’re here two months now, and everyone I know is from somewhere else. Not all are from the States – most aren’t, actually. They’re from Germany, or the U.K., or Canada, or Belgium. But they’re not from Switzerland. Maybe it’s because the parents I meet at the park don’t speak English. Maybe it’s because I spend most of my social time with other expats from Mia’s school or Sarah’s office. Or maybe it’s because you just don’t get out much when you’re minding a toddler full-time.

Whatever the reason, it hasn’t stopped me from learning about the Swiss. I know plenty about the Swiss.

Like this: I know that the Swiss are in shape. They run along the lake in groups and they bike up narrow mountain roads, slowing traffic without compunction. And elderly men and women cruise the sidewalks with ski poles in their hands. It’s some kind of cardio exercise – they call it Nordic walking – but it just looks like old people pretending they’re skiing.

I know that the Swiss are way into their hair. Coiffures outnumber gas stations here two to one – maybe three to one. Still, every cut looks the same to me: a Judi Dench crop with a color palette ranging from deep strawberry to light burgundy. (For the men: faux-hawks all around!)

I know they’re also an insular people. Grüzi is their word for hello, and they’ll grüzi you to death, but they won’t invite you over for dinner until you marry into the family. I’m told it takes a personal introduction from a Swiss before another Swiss will trust you in business. It’s like joining the mafia.

Other things: I know they like rules, and they have a lot of rules, and they’re always up for new rules, if you’ve got some. I’ve been told by random strangers not to park here, not to talk there, not to leave my bag on this chair, not to stand where I’m standing. When I start my car in the fog, someone invariably drivdes by to flash his brights at me, because even though I haven’t moved yet, the law says I need my lights on. It’s a nation of hall monitors. There are 7 million people in Switzerland, and 6½ million of them are cops.

I know they’re serious about their cheese. I know they’re not shy about wrapping their personal automobiles in paid ads. I know they eat horse-jerky. (No, really. It’s next to the salami at the Migros.)

I know that they don’t much like kids, but we’ve been over that already.

I know a lot of things. They may all be wrong, we’ll see. Meet Monika, my one-woman demographic sample. She at least seems to like children.

This weekend we visit some serious Alps. Meantime, here’s a picture of Max with orange eyebrows, courtesy of his older sister. (Thanks, Mia!)