Reports of Our Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

A quick count reveals that, thus far in the calendar year 2012, we have posted on this blog precisely once. Across the Atlantic, we have heard the cries of our devoted—I had better say, our former—readers. The twenty-five souls who once followed us faithfully in the weekly hope of finding pictures rather than prose have dwindled—first gradually, then precipitously—until nearly all have given up hope. This blog, once the glory of our little realm, has, in some quarters, been pronounced dead. Learned and popular journals have printed elegiac obituaries. Mourners have sent e-cards with pictures of sympathy flowers. But reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated. We herewith announce our return.

As always, the question is where to start. The girls grow increasingly attached to Germany and increasingly fluent in its storied language. “I don’t want to go back to America,” I’ve heard more than one of them say. Tonight at dinner, Eli complained that “the babies” at her Kita always laugh at her. I protested that they were merely smiling at her because they like her so much. But Eli, wishing to be gloomy, insisted that they laugh at her and call her “ugly.” “Do you even know the German word for ugly?” I asked. Katharine, lying on her back on the kitchen floor (why, the reader can guess as well as I), lifted her head and called out, “Hässlich!” This, apparently, is one of the dozen or so treasures locked in the vaults of her vocabulary. Julia and Eli know considerably more. Julia, in particular, chatters away almost like a native. Eli chatters more like a locomotive—not always distinctly or grammatically, but she is manifestly a force to be reckoned with, and she gets her point across.

Each Tuesday for some weeks now Eli has gone to a swim lesson with her Kindergarten comrades. She adores it. Her teachers report that on the day of the first swimming trip Eli was visibly shaking with excitement an hour and more before they left. She looks forward to Tuesdays as she hardly looked forward to Christmas. Sadly, next Tuesday is the last lesson.

Julia’s class at school is preparing a little presentation of The Magic Flute, for which Julia modestly volunteered to be the Queen of the Night. The diva mentality among our daughters is universal. Lia gave me the soundtrack to Fiddler on the Roof for Christmas, and the girls have listened to it, without reprieve, ever since. Their favorite song is, shockingly, “Matchmaker,” with its hymeneal theme and its showcasing of three melodramatic sisters. They perform it constantly—for anyone who asks or, more often, anyone who does not object. I might add that they perform it very well. Even Katharine gets all of Chavila’s lines—even the spoken ones—mostly right. They even do all of the actions, which they memorized after seeing the movie twice last November.

Last week Lia’s cousin, Mary Reynolds, came to visit, along with her best friend Kelsey, from a study abroad in England. Lia took them to the inevitable tourist stops—the Brandenburg Gate, the Pergamon Museum, the Charlottenberg Castle. But alas, the week was bitter cold, and survival required spending a lot of time indoors. And this meant that our guests were, for many hours each day, the captive audience of our daughters. Mary and Kelsey, of course, were highly entertained, and left having heard all about everything each of the girls has ever thought, wondered, or said; known, done, or imagined. On Friday night, we played “Time’s Up” after the girls went to bed. We had to design our own cards, and our guests, ten years our junior, did a magnanimous job of hiding their shock, dismay, and compassionate pity upon learning that Lia and I had never heard of such luminaries as Adele, Gavin DeGraw, and . . . and others whose names I’ve already forgotten.

While Mary and Kelsey were here, Eli approached Lia with an important confession. “Mommy,” she said meekly, “back when we lived in New Haven I used to try to be really bad right before bedtime so that I could get sent to bed early, so that I could sit on my bed and watch the beautiful sunsets out my window.” “Oh,” said Lia, stifling a laugh. “You know, you could have watched the sunset without getting sent to bed as a punishment.” Eli rolled her eyes in disgust. Given the choice between doing something bed and watching the sunset and merely watching the sunset, there is obviously only one rational option. But parents never understand these things.

Two days ago was Valentine’s day. I wrote Lia a sonnet—not, I confess, in any imminent danger of anthologization—and gave her roses. Lia gave the two books that Nietzsche pronounced the best German novels of the nineteenth century—Adelbart Stifter’s Der Nachsommer (Indian Summer) and Gottfried Keller’s Der grüne Heinrich (Green Henry). I obviously got the better of that exchange. After the girls went to bed, we honored the day with Bacchanalian prodigality by eating ice cream and reading an essay by Gertrude Himmelfarb about Emma.

Now then. Don’t say we never post anymore.