Whether it was the summer rain patting the pavement or the lentils burbling in the slow cooker I cannot say, but the sound was such a comfort it put me in a trance. I flittered between reading and napping as the laundry spun in the drum and gave thanks for being unemployed, to have time I could just waste. Soon all that would change once I was back to work and hurrying again, spinning in my own drum.

I made tea and changed into my pajama bottoms. Tomorrow I’d be off to Germany for two weeks, the first time in almost two years. I made a large portion of a new favorite recipe for Dawn and Charlotte they could warm while I was gone. And took care of small but important tasks, like fueling the generator if the power went out, fixing gutters, doing the laundry.

I bought a new T-shirt for my old friend Eberhard, who’d turned 70 this year. He always gave me shirts and whenever I gave him one he wore it often. He had a son who lived in Sweden but didn’t seem to call much—only when he needed something—which visibly hurt Eberhard. And I could relate, with family who only called to report near-fatal happenings. The excitement of seeing their name on the phone shifted to dread as I was conditioned to hear from them only bad news.

I loved visiting Germany this time of year when the fruit gets plump and the daylight softens. Every other year they held a wine festival in my mom’s village and every August since the beginning of time, the beer festivals. Going back sober was different but clarifying. I knew there’d be nothing for me to apologize for in the mornings, no surprises hearing what I’d said or done.

Already I’d started hearing the soundtrack of my upcoming trip, inspired by a pack of mix CDs my friend Loren made for me in 2015, the year we traveled through Europe, a lot by car. I didn’t know The Byrds well then so Loren made a mix of their favorite songs and named it “Die Vögel.” The shimmering melodies were perfect for late summer, joyful but tinged with melancholy.

The week after I got back from hiking the PCT I thought I’d contracted COVID but kept testing negative. Being sick was a good excuse to disrupt my daily physical regime and lay low, and my mood seemed to complement the shifting season with more of a turn inwards.

We’d had a family reunion the week before the PCT trip and that’s where someone brought the COVID. I’d organized a day hike with half a dozen of Dawn’s family, with a rare appearance by Charlotte, who typically shuns hiking but fell prey to FOMO, in wanting to be with her older cousins.

It was on that trip Charlotte had a physical and mental breakdown of sorts, which a different version of myself would have called bullshit on five years ago—but with this version I opted to abort the trip early and climb down the steep and dusty trail with her while the rest of the party carried on. Her not enjoying herself mattered more to me than my own enjoyment—a policy most parents adopt from the onset, but I’d resisted.

And it was on that trip climbing down we reminisced about our time in Europe in 2015, and shared our favorite memories. Somehow the story of me first hearing a Cocteau Twins song came up, when we were driving a long scenic country road through Scotland in late November.

My friend Loren had made those CDs for me and the song fit the mood of that scene so well it was now fixed in my memories that way. Charlotte pulled that song up on her phone as we sat in the car waiting for the rest of our party to come down from the hike. The lyrics were about motherhood, she said. We sat in silence listening as the music pooled around us. And I was glad to have that memory with Charlotte over any other. Glad because I knew I’d given her a good new one with her dad.

Going back to Germany is a mash-up of memories from the past 20 years since my mom and stepdad John bought that old house in that little village, Besigheim. Looking out the window of our house at the morning sky, part of me was already there.

Categories: Memoir, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, travel