Our new home is a 1906 row house in the Statenkwartier
of The Hague, also referred to as the International Zone, due to its
proximity to French and German schools, the International Criminal
Tribunal and Shell's European headquarters. It was being gutted when we
saw it in May and had been a looming mystery, with photos of a couple
of questionably eclectic light fixtures being our only clues to its
final state. We arrived straight from a red-eye flight for the
"in-check" and found Henk and Lutien, she in a brightly-patterned jersey
dress and intense blue
eyeshadow, he in Euro-cut trousers and a black button-up shirt, eager to
show us their pet project of the past six months. Both they and the
house were more charming than we had dared hope. Antique tiles and
chandeliers graced the pleasant entry and lofty rooms, and
in the backyard a newly planted garden bloomed. As they watched Violet
and Townes thrill over every flower and fat furry bumblebee (which in
subsequent days Townes would insist on petting, even after he developed a
swollen red bump that we suspected of being a bee's angry retort), Lutien smiled and mentioned that they had left the tool shed empty
so that the kids could use it as a playhouse when it rained.
Steve
had wisely booked us into a nearby hotel for the first few nights, so we
dropped into bed and met the movers bright and early the next morning, but not before wolfing down an enormous breakfast from the hotel spread. On our first official night in the house three evenings later, we
sat in a pleasantly arranged living room (it has since become the
study/dining) and Steve looked around and said, "No matter what our lives
will be like out there, within the walls of this house we will be happy
and at home." Isn't that a nice thing for a husband to say.
Everything
fell into place. My darling little sister, Danielle, with a
conveniently-timed break between college terms, showed up to play with
our kids while we unpacked, and we were out of boxes and feeling
presentable when our friends Anne and Bill and their four kids showed
up exactly a week after the movers. The day before they arrived was our
tenth wedding anniversary, and as we loaded up the car again and again with a
bed for the guest room, a television and appliances with European wiring, and various tables
and doorstops, all temporarily discounted or otherwise absolute steals,
we joked that it was an anniversary miracle. Even the gorgeous sunset
behind an ancient windmill as we drove through brilliant emerald fields for our final visit to the big
electronics store seemed as though it was just for our eyes. We started our marriage in Europe,
with several miserable months in beautiful Paris, and as we reflected
on the places we have lived and the things we have done between then and
now, we felt so gratified to be able to use all of that experience, the
good and the bad, to transition so easily into what might have, at one
time, been a challenging new life. All of those missteps
were good for something. Really and truly.
Feeling
at home, having been favored with the warmth of friends and family and
surrounded by our old familiar stuff, we could turn our attention to the
first day of first grade in a new school, and being two hours late to
pick her up, having forgotten that on Wednesdays schools in the
Netherlands end at 11h30. Oops. We had packed her a lunch, though, so
she didn't seem to mind too much. And here we are.
