Yawping in the Rain

Berlin gave us a taste of home this week—it rained and it rained and it rained. It rained with the unremitting constancy, the relentless implacability, and the merciless interminability that marks a New Haven downpour. It was not so much a rainstorm as a rainweek. The endless dribble and dump kept us indoors for much of the week. It was a quieter week, in some respects, than usual. We suffered more from cabin fever than the girls did. They had their artwork, their books, and their exercises in mutual persecution to occupy their attention and enliven their spirits. Our consolations were fewer. I had Lia’s astonishing good looks to cheer and amuse me; Lia had nothing at all.

But this is not to say we embarked on no adventures at all this week. Quite the contrary. Not even the rain can keep the indomitable LJEK down. Three adventures in particular recommend themselves to posterity and our readership’s attention.

Adventure I: Saving the World, Twenty-Seven Cookies at a Time

Lia made some cookies early in the week to take to an older sister in the ward who recently returned home after a long stay in the hospital following a complicated operation on her foot and leg. Sister Grunewald and her husband previously served as matron and president of the Freiburg Temple. The cookies came off without a hitch. Then the troubles began. First, predictably, the artistic masterpiece Eli prepared for Sister Grunewald was unfinished when it came time to go. This was not so much the fault of Eli’s punctilious perfectionism as of her dogged dithering. Lia reminded her a dozen times that she needed to finish before 10 a.m., but Eli persisted in chasing Katharine around the apartment pulling spectral faces and emitting ghoulish sounds (a favorite hobby, this). When 10 o’clock came, and Lia announced it was time to go, Eli flew into paroxysm of anguish. She railed, she stormed, she billowed, she raged. She lay on her back, flailing her arms and kicking the misty stuffing out of swirling airy nothings. Katharine placed a solemn hand on Eli’s quivering shoulder and intoned, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and your picture is incomplete.”

At length, they were off. Unfortunately, LJEK learned at the end of a long journey that the address given for the Grunewald’s on the ward website is fatally outdated. Lia groaned in dismay, her best-laid plans gone agley. The girls cheered in triumph; the cookies, they knew, would now be theirs. (*Lest some impertinent reader paste a smirking comment about the glories of cell phones, let it be known that we have a cell phone—two of them actually—and we HATE them; both were out of commission at the time of the ill-fated cookie mission; now only one of them is.) Rather than abandon the trip to total futility, LJEK visited the old Rathaus in the area, now transformed into a handsome local library that doubles as a site for weddings. LJEK saw a wedding procession and came home with a stack of books and movies. In the afternoon the girls watched an animated rendition of The Black Cauldron.

Adventure II: The Joys of Science

On Thursday LJEK went to a science museum. Lia made the serious tactical error of taking the girls to the physics room first. The physics room was essentially a playground, tangentially introducing its patrons to the physics behind merry-go-rounds, see-saws, and swings. Some of our children never wanted to leave. One of them resisted with volume and violence when Lia ushered them on to the chemistry room. She was only partly emolliated by the majesty of the chemistry room’s giant electro-storm ball. Thursday was full of activities, despite the rain. On Friday, everyone stayed indoors. The girls unanimously expressed that they preferred Friday.

Adventure III: Arriving at a Party in (Public Transportation) Style

On Saturday evening we were invited to a party at the home of Jeremy and Denise Robertson, a military family in the world, to celebrate Jeremy’s return from a five-month assignment in Djibouti. Denise once worked as a joke writer for the Late Show. Jeremy, it turns out, is a fellow Bulldog; he graduated from Provo High in 1998 and knew some of my siblings. Lia used our worthless cell phone to call Denise beforehand to confirm the address. She then relied on bvg.de for directions on how to get there with public transport. Then we were off.

Ninety minutes later, we arrived at the Robertson’s backyard, a sopping parade of diaper bags, strollers, and umbrellas. We had waited twenty minutes for one train, five for another, and nearly twenty for a bus. From the bus stop we walked 650 meters to the Robertson’s home—650 meters, one should clarify, through the middle of a spacious park that on this special night resembled a jungle swamp. Julia stepped gingerly around the edges of enormous puddles; Eli stomped gleefully through the center of them, wild with dash and abandon. Katharine rode in stately and sheltered magnificence, her beleaguered stroller-pusher soaking from top to toe. I tried to avoid one puddle by stepping off the trail. I was rewarded for my cleverness with a slap on the leg from a streak of stinging nettle. It was the most fun—by far the most fun—we’ve had since arriving in Berlin. The party wasn’t bad either. We got home after ten; the girls have spent all of Sunday punishing us for this indulgence.