I'm back after a long silence.
In more ways than one.

Just the other day I turned on the stereo and actually selected a CD to listen to.  A fairly normal thing to do while one is doing household tasks, one might say.  But in fact, I realized that this was the first time I actually listened to music (by myself, I mean) in a very long time.  I'm not sure why.  But I wondered if it's the silence of this place that's finally penetrating my soul. 

The single most striking characteristic of this place, ever since we moved here, has been the silence.  Sometimes, when we're at the dinner table and everyone's chattering away (or often singing, as the kids love to perform their favorite hits at meal time) James will make everyone stop : "Shhhh, listen!"  And we all stop and listen to the quiet.  The only sound's the flowing of the stream outside.  "Do you hear it?" he says.  "It's so quiet!"  Between the kids and the noise of traffic and neighbors and the school next door and all the rest, I guess maybe it was just too noisy for me in Strasbourg to feel like I needed to add more noise.  Except when I went running.  I almost always used my Ipod to cover the outside sounds of the city.  I haven't used it once since we got here.  I want to hear the singing of the birds, or the noises of any other animals I might see.

Now we live in such a quiet place, where the friends and activities are much fewer and farther between.  At first, I think I lived it like a piece of vacation.  But you can't stay on vacation forever.  I have noticed the wistful thoughts about Strasbourg coming more often lately and me being me, I have a hard time admitting my own unhappiness.  But the fact is, it is hard to feel like an accessory to someone else's ministry.  It is hard to live in a small town where everyone knows who I am and where that very identity ("pastor's wife") is often a barrier to relationship.  It is hard to live day after day with my only face-to-face contact being with a mentally ill neighbor (with whom conversation often feels like double monologue) and a smattering of kind ladies over 70.  It's hard to watch my son (Sara seems to be doing okay.) struggling with loneliness, so much so that he runs quickly to play with older boys who tend to laugh and ridicule him.  He has developed a nervous twitch/blink.  Is this related ?

So I put on music.  I listen to sermons on line.  I yell at the kids.  I talk animatedly to almost anyone who calls, or whom I meet in the street.  Mostly just to fill the growing silence. 

Monastically, I am sure this silence would be considered a boon.  The perfect place to pray and study!  But there is one who would like me to fill it with anything but that.  So the battle goes on, one day at a time.

Once, soon after we moved here, James said to me that being in Strasbourg was like being in a bubble.  When you're inside it, if feels safe and comfortable and normal.  When you live there, you are convinced that it is what is known as a "happening place."  Important political and cultural events are staged there.  You can catch all the latest films in their original languages.
When we lived in Strasbourg, we would come out to places like the one where we now live for a day or two.  We would take long hikes, go sledding, and then get back in the car and drive back to the city.  "What a beautiful place.  What a winter wonderland, " we would say.  Then, we felt as though our day in the mountains had been spent in a sort of bubble.

But now when we spend a day in the city, as we did yesterday, we have the distinct impression that it is the city that is the bubble.  There are so many images and signs, so much explicit advertising, so many people all in one place.  I am afraid to look people in the eye, afraid to say bonjour, disoriented and uneasy.  In the tram, I stare at my feet, and wonder why it feels so different now that I don't live there, how I could have failed to notice how surreal it all is. 
We must have over a foot of snow up here, but there there wasn't even a hint of it in Strasbourg, although we did catch sight of a flake or two floating in the air in the middle of the afternoon.  The people who are outside are almost all in a hurry, looking upset about the coldness of the air.  Maybe it's the concentration of people, vehicles, buildings and events that make people in Strasbourg feel like they live in an important place.  Seems to me that the normal things, like walking outside or chatting with your neighbor, get lost in the shuffle.

This morning, as I was typing an email, I caught sight of my neighbors the S.s walking slowly by with their snow shovels on their shoulders.  They were just coming back from shoveling in front of some other neighbors' houses further up the road.   Marie-Eve stopped in front of my window and waved for I-don't-know-how-long before I realized she was there and looked up from the computer.  She said hello and we chatted.  She talked about how they had had their morning's excercise shoveling snow...  And she said that I had been so concentrated on the computer that it looked strange to her.  "When I see you like that," she said, "with such a look of concentration on your face, I don't know, it's weird..."  And she gave a little shudder.

And so I wonder, whose bubble is real?

I'm not under any illusions.  It's going to take a long time to know people and to be known in a place like this.  I realized that when we prayed with one friend, and she pretended like nothing had happened....  even though I knew she had been weeping during the prayer.  So I don't expect to feel tomorrow as if I'm in my place and I've got a network and all is right with the world.
But something happened yesterday that certainly helped my outlook.  I was trudging back up the hill after having put the children on the bus for their Monday afternoon at school, when, as I walked by Monique's house, her window swung open.  Monique is one of the faithfuls, one of the pillars.  She plays the organ in Waldersbach, Belmont and Bellefosse, and she is an elder.  But she went away right after Christmas and has been gone all month.  Each time we walked by her empty house, I would think about her, and sometimes I would say to the kids, "I miss Monique.  I wonder when she's coming back."
She has a beautifully kept home with varnished wood shutters and lace curtains.  And her kitchen windows look out on the street, so that she sees each person who walks by.  We sometimes chat right there at her window.  She offers me a taste of the cookies she just baked, or I hand her the list of hymns for Sunday...
So this time, when the window swung open, it was like a ray of sunshine.  "Eh c'est toi!" I said.  Monique is one of a handful with whom I can say "tu"  instead of "vous."  And I told her how often I had thought of her, and how we had missed her, and we gave each other a kiss.  And she invited me in for coffee.  Her next door neighbor, Marie-Eve, was also there, so she invited her too.  
This is nothing spectacular or exciting.  Just coffee in an elderly widow's kitchen.  But that coffee changed my entire day.  Why?  Because of connection.  I suddenly felt connected in my neighborhood.  I know my neighbors and we can have impromptu coffee.  In fact, Marie-Eve invited me to her place afterward because there was something she wanted to tell me in private about another mutual neighbor (and that's another story for another time...), so I spent pretty much the whole afternoon chatting with neighbors, knowing their kitchens, getting invited to a Tupperware party (these are a big deal up here), trying to pet an unbelievably timid St Bernard... 
Connections.  I found myself smiling at everyone I met in the street today.  I live in Waldersbach.  And maybe I will fit here after all.

In the middle of all the chaos of moving, I reassured myself at times by thinking, "Well, at least Aleph is staying with us." And in the weeks before we left Strasbourg, several friends admired him, commenting on how slim and beautiful he was. Those who helped us move were happy with us for him, that he would finally be in a place where he could go outside and play. It was difficult to keep him in those two weeks the vet recommended, so that he could get his bearings in the new house. Then he went out. Once, on the front balcony, he caught a bird. I won't soon forget the way he looked outside the window asking to come in, up on his hind legs with that little bird in his mouth. He was surprised, I think, like I was, and happy. He left it on the floor, and when he saw it was dead--after batting it a couple of times with his paw--he left it there. For me?
Aleph was there purring each morning when I got up. He was there begging to drink when we took a shower (now we know why), and looking out the door when we arrived home from somewhere. "Hi, buddy pal," we'd say. I'm not sure when or why I started calling him that. That's the way nicknames are. There was "buddy pal," which sometimes morphed into "buddy shmuds," or just "shmuds." Or "Alepher-weffer." I also had little songs I would sing to him : " You're my favorite kitty, la dee da dee da dee da..."
Over the weekend he stopped eating and drinking, started having trouble getting around. We had no idea what was wrong. Maybe it was the fight with Suzy, the nieghbor's cat. Maybe he had gotten hurt worse than we thought. James took him to the vet thinking we'd get it fixed, whatever it was.
But there was no fixing it. "Il faut qu'on soit realiste," the vet said. And she offered, if he became too uncomfortable, meowing a lot, to put him to sleep for us. We could have him rehydrated in an animal hospital, but it would be costly, and do him no lasting good. His kidneys were shot.
So James brought him home again, on Monday, and we told the kids he was going to die. We petted him a lot, and the kids came and loved him every time they got up, went to bed, or left to go somewhere. We didn't know how long he'd hang on.
Last night, while we were up working on our computers, he started to mew pitifully. He sounded like he was very uncomfortable. We reassured him with our voices, with a pat, saying things like "Hang in there buddy pal," or "It's going to be okay. Just rest now." Then we looked again, and he seemed different. He had stopped breathing. He was gone.
I feel silly for making such a big deal out of this. After all, I say to myself, it's not a person. It's just a cat. But Aleph was a great cat, and a warm presence in our home. He was patient with the children, even when they were cruel to him. Now I feel all alone here without him.
Eric prayed several times for God to heal him. I prayed it too. I told God, "Either raise him up or take him." Because I didn't like to see him so sick.
I honestly don't know what God does with prayers like that. I don't know of a single instance where He miraculously healed an animal. I suspect that there's a lot I don't understand.
But I do know that death will one day be gone forever, and that God in His goodness can be trusted when one of His creatures dies this way.
It's raining. We want to bury Aleph this afternoon on some church property up the hill in the forest, where it won't bother anyone.

I'm wanting to write something juicy and profound about our first experiences in our new home... I find it's too late and I'm not clear enough to do it tonight. We are in the place I described in my last post. It's somehow much better than I imagined it would be, even though the move was much harder than I thought it would be. Church activities aren't yet starting up much so we have some time and space as a family, which is SO GOOD.
Tonight I'm just grateful. God is good. There will be more soon.