Belly Dancer's Nightcap

Magical Days...like gifts

Turned on to R.S. Thomas today by Abigail - on this raining-reading day in the gray reflection he is so welcome. So a poem for my boys today...they wake me with songs every morning, win most of my smiles, inspire me with new thoughts and views of the ordinary, they make everything light so that wherever we go we have their light to see by and they drive me just a little crazy. I am in awe of their little world and I miss it sometimes.

Children's Song

We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.

R.S. Thomas

Lately we like singing Elizabeth Mitchell's Little bird, Little bird

"...little bird little bird fly through my window

little bird little bird fly through my window

little bird little bird fly through my window

and find molasses candy

fly through my window my sugar lump

fly through my window my sugar lump

and find molasses candy..."

Ian sings it like this...

"My Mo My Mo

My Canny"

Where we are now we look down from a fourth floor and see dozens and dozens of rabbits. I tell Jack stories of how the rabbits go down their holes to a cozy den where they all have tea. I draw pictures quickly for impatient brown eyes though I don't know how to draw animals or nature. When Erik gets home he tells us that their homes are called warrens and that they wouldn't dig straight down. I guess I watched too much Bugs Bunny. My husband and I are quite the pair:)

At night Erik plays hard with the boys. We eat. Jack says he can smell Erik cooking Puh-sketti. Sometimes Jack asks me for a bagel and I tell him that they are hamburger buns. "I want one of those ham-i-tores." Ian always wants "nana" (banana) or "CooCoo" (cookies). We hold hands and say many thanks for all our blessings. We sit back with the coffee and Jack smells Papa's breath as he reads to him - "I want some of Papa's chocolate."

We are sort of suspended in time - perched in an apartment that looks brand new out of the 80's. This is a pretty comfortable limbo and I'm grateful for the rest before the toddler-plane-adventure and the rushed transition. My sister asks me what its like this time and do I look out my window and see barbed wire? Last time they messed up and put is in the cramped dark quarters meant for single soldiers. There was nothing you could walk to and not even a small bit of beauty. The view out my window was a barbed wire fence and I remember crying a lot.

This time we are on a different post where there are things to walk to though we don't hang out here much. The blue clad apartment is spacious and the boys are happy driving their little tractors over every surface. The buildings around us are huge and meant to house masses of people. It's never been like that in our two years here and now its almost empty. Since they used to pack so many people in they put a huge playground in about every twenty feet. Jack thinks he went to heaven. They hardly looked used and are made by a company called Kompan from Denmark I believe. I like their stuff. I want the whimsical flower swing that I looked out my kitchen window at for two years. I love the red bird seesaw and the flower seesaw that seats four people in a circle. Ah, playground fun!

The days are slipping away as I play with the boys and my husband works hard to finish what needs to be done to get out of here. Very soon now there will be...

the last open market

the last view of children walking and speaking German loudly

the last cafe

the last cup of good European coffee

the last trip to the bakery for schnecke (snail-shaped pastry)

the last Sunday in Steinheim at our breakfast haunt

the last train ride to go on an adventure

and watching the last train disappear down the tracks

...at least for awhile.

Every time I see a train now I cry. Good tears. I'm glad its ending this way:)

Posted by M. of the Gypsies at April 11, 2008 03:01 AM | TrackBack