Finding the Thread

Whenever somebody forgets what they were going to say, in German they say: "Ich habe die Faden verloren"...I've lost the thread. Anyone who sews knows how frustrating this can be. I had just until recently seemed to lose the thread of my life. I was living in a huge, cold house across from the windy forest with my three children after my husband and I decided not to live together anymore. We had come here five years ago, seeking European adventure, and also unconsciously, trying to escape an increasing sense of losing the thread of our marriage.

I don't feel like talking about the past, because it now feels as if my life is newly begun again. I will probably fill in the missing threads in posts to come. However, in the past two weeks, we--my daughter and two sons, my ex-husband and my friend Michael--moved everything we have, all twenty years of accrued married and family life, everything we needed, thought we needed, and couldn't let go of, into this small apartment.

It is in an undistinguished building along the main artery in the town, and it lies directly behind a mattress store. I have to tell people that's where I live: behind the mattress store. Believe me, I'd rather tell them that I live next to the waterfall, down a forest glade at the end of the abandoned 18th century stone quarry overgrown with ivy and moss. But, there it is.

The apartment itself is fine. It is about two levels up in a cavernous and echoey building refurbished who knows when, probably the 1980's, with a glass door outfitted with blue plastic pulls, meant to loosen anyday now, so they too must be replaced. Germans seem to leave the bone structure of their buildings intact, thankfully, while they continually change and alter the doors, the windows, the stairs--in fact, everything inside, with a regularity that is, to me, alarming. It just about destroys the character of the interiors, ultimately, as most of the new materials are plastic and in short order they wobble and squeak, and break down.

When you walk in, there is a lovely shining wood staircase leading to the upper floor, underneath the roof. Big, blocky wooden beams hold the roof above our heads, and the walls are partially slanted. There are seven small windows which let in an amazing amount of light. The windows are by Velux, and they are absolutely expensive in America, but just rather nice, here.