It has taken me six weeks to wrap my mind around this new experience we are having enough to put it into words,
and I will undoubtedly fall short even now. It is not an exaggeration
to say that we wandered around for the first three weeks in a state of
rapture, a golden haze. I had no idea that at thirty-six I could still feel like I did
at seventeen when I stepped off of the airport bus onto Palace Court in
London, as though the world was fresh and new, ready to be explored.
Steve and I marvel to each other how suitable this place is in every way for our current stage of
life. (More on "this place" in subsequent posts.)
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.

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.