first impressions

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.

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.