I’m a mom, and I’ve got the chestnuts to prove it

Walking home from an hour in a cafe with no children, a chai latte and this book, my coat pocket is heavy with chestnuts. Autumn has come to Bern, the chilly mornings and the Bise - cold winds from the north - send me deep into the closet to find my wool blanket jacket. Boy A needs new winter boots - as do I - and a new winter hat and warmer long-sleeved shirts (Boy C is well equiped with all of A’s hand-me-downs: two children, both boys, both winter babies, the sizes and the seasons are in synch so far). Another autumnal tiding: we all have head-colds, all four of us. But it’s the chestnuts in my pocket, shiny-smooth as I dig my hand among that, that say autumn.

Bern, I discover, is full of chestnut trees, actually horse-chestnuts, planted as ornamentals in the Hirschengraben, along the Bundesterrace, in front of university buildings and blessing garden restaurants with their shade. In the autumn the chestnuts drop out of their spiky shells and roll glossy and brown on the ground, hide under dried leaves or cling to a half-shell. A and I never leave the house without a sand pail or deep pockets now; I scan the ground as we walk and point out the rich brown nuts with their tell-tale white round tops. We come home with pails of chestnuts.

Inedible and poisonous for humans, the horse-chestnuts can be eaten by deer and, if properly prepared, pigs. And so goes out the call every autumn for the children of Bern to collect chestnuts (and acorns) for the Tierpark, our small little zoo. And so we have buckets and containers of chestnuts in the apartment piling up until delivery day on the fifteenth.

This afternoon R left work early and I found myself with an hour or so to myself. I went to a cafe, drank some chai, read some Rilke, tried to revise a poem - which is probably a bad idea when you’ve also got Rilke at your elbow - and decided to walk home. Along the way I bent for every chestnut I saw, filling the pockets of my jacket without even trying. At home I emptied the contents of my pocket into A’s bucket, still loaded with chestnuts from earlier in the day, bringing the total up to the very rim.

Even when he’s not with me, he’s with me. I carry him with me like a pocket full of chestnuts, rich and shiny.

Narcissus in the garden of the changing seasons

Arosa

It occurs to me that I didn’t post any pictures of the actual town of Arosa. I didn’t take that many. I had intended to do it Friday and Satruday, but on Friday the weather was awful and on Saturday a combination of bad weather and two sick sons sent us home early. So I do not have many pictures of the village from this trip, but here are a few.

The train from Chur to Arosa (here in front of the Litzirüti train station):

Looking down the road from in front of my hotel:

Looking up from the Obersee (my new favorite view of Arosa):

Arosa from across the valley:

Not nearly as many pictures as I wanted to take, but I know there will be many more trips to Arosa to come. It’s good knowing that.

On the fifth day

The weather turned on Friday, low clouds and rain. At breakfast we couldn’t see past the grey eiderdown wrapping the windows in a damp chill. Both boys had colds with wracking coughs that woke each other up at night. Instead of riding the gondola to the Mittlestation and walking the smooth wide walking trail that is as easy as a road we walked around the lake, fed the ducks,

and looked at the old-time classic cars that were in Arosa that weekend, inexplicably, for a race. (Check out that fog!)

And everybody went to bed early.

On the fourth day

Wednesday night at dinner we decided to cancel the yoga sessions for Thursday so that we could start out early on the hike that would turn out to be the highlight of the week: a five hour (walking time) hike from Arosa to Medergen to Sapuen Dorfli (which, may I say, is the cutest Dorfli in. the. world.) to Langwies. From Langwies we would take the train back to Arosa.

Our path took us past the Stauensee

and up through the wooded hillside on the other side of the See.

Once out of the trees, we passed by an Alp. In English, when we speak of “the Alps,” we’re thinking of the of the Swiss Alps, the French Alps, the Austrain Alps. We mean the whole horizon-swallowing mountain range. In Swiss, an “Alp” refers to the summer home of sheep and cattle and the small cluster of buildings, the Alpenhutte, required for their care. So we passed by eine Alp: one woman tending one hundred and twenty eight cattle through the summer.

The cattle were friendly - a hiking trail passed through their grazing grounds, they were accustomed to people - and well-cared for and remarkably clean. It is these cattle and sheep, these summer grazing ranges, that make the Swiss mountain meadows - the Wiese - so beautiful. The cattle graze down the grasses and scrub which then allows the meadow flowers to bloom.

Our path leveled out as we headed towards the moutain village of Medergen where we ate lunch - crisp green salads from the local gardens and Bergkaese (mountain cheese) - from the cows we had just walked past.

We sat outside in the sun. We ate mountain cheese and hand-made bread and drank coffee topped with whipped cream.

We lingered too long, because it was all too perfect, and finally tightened our laces and continued on our hike with a backward glance at Medergen that had fed us so well.

Between Medergen and Sapuen we passed through Alpine meadows and saw, at a distance not worth photographing, a cluster of elk.

And then we crossed a river, passed through a field, and entered the tiny village - the Dorfli - of Sapuen. There were four children playing in front of the school when we passed through and refilled our water bottles at the village fountain though the school was closed; Sapuen is not inhabited year-round anymore.

And two minutes later we had passed through the entire village and Sapuen was behind us.

We rested one last time at the edge of a meadow, drinking our mountain water and crunching fresh sweet apples. We were about to start the climb down to Langwies, back through the woodlands, out of these high meadows and unobstructed views of the mountains. We knew we had to press on to make the train in Langwies but we were all reluctant to rise. Reluctant to say goodbye to this view.

On the third day

On Wednesday I slept through the morning yoga sessions and took an easy walk on my own so that I could stop for as long as I wanted in order to take some pictures.

On the second day

We hiked from the Praetschli at 1908 meters to the summit of the Weisshorn at 2653 meters through alpine meadows holding on to the latest blooms of summer, bees search for every last golden dusting of pollen.

Butterflies, two dragonflies dancing over a grassy alpine pond. Weather out of a post card, unbelievable summer weather even though autumn is making her entrance through the reddening leaves of the Alpenrosen, the dried thistle starbursts.

The last hundred meters – in altitude, not distance – is a blasted granite landscape, the aftermath of a rock slide or simple geology. At 2600 meters I am suddenly walking on a dried out riverbed, the rocks sliding and rolling under my feet, not a plant to be seen. This is what it looks like when a glacier recedes, the wasted ground-up trail I do not, cannot, stop to get the camera out of my backpack.

I am at my end these last 30 minutes winding up around the summit, the rocks shifting beneath my each foot fall. Regina, 62 year-old Regina two years out from a hip operation, shames me with her steady methodical pace. She finds her rhythm and never needs a break, never stops to put her hands on the small of her back to widen her ribcage and so expand her lungs and take in deep gulps of fresh cool delicious air. Her friend Isabelle, too, marches on. At the top we slump into the restaurant, order big bowls of hearty Bündnergerstesuppe and glasses of Rivella Rot and take in the view from the picture windows, this view that we earned today. I have been here before, at the peak of the Weisshorn. I have come up with the gondola and skied back down. Today I climbed up on foot, through alpine meadows with tiny treasures and across a wasted moonscape.

And the view, it was more beautiful than I remembered.

On the first day

Certain places speak to me. Over years, over decades, a small handful of places continue to lay claim to my heart. The list of places I want to see is as long as the atlas itself, but for all my wanderlust I find myself returning, like a salmon to its spawning grounds, to the places that speak to my heart.

I am in Arosa for the week, my favorite place - mein Lieblingsort - in Switzerland. I have been coming to Arosa since 1996 and I never tire of it. My heart has put down roots here. This place has become part of the story of my life. My husband wrote his first letter to me – a scant days after we met – sitting at a hotel bar in Arosa. I have come here as his girlfriend, his lover, his fiancé, his wife. I have come here as the mother of a son, as the mother of two. There are so many places in the world to see, but my heart calls me here. Here, where I spent my first Swiss New Year. Here, where I can walk past the restaurant where my older son tasted his first black olive. Here, where I can sit in my favorite café and in the moment before my cup of cappuccino with whipped cream reaches my lips the taste of it comes flooding back to me.

Here, where I’ve been coming since 1996 and yet today hiked to this waterfall for the first time.

We passed cairns at whose existence I never guessed

and ate lunch in a village I’ve passed through scores of times without stopping. I could come here the rest of my life and never reach the end of it. I hope to. Come here the rest of my life. And never be full of it.

Vacation!

I’m headed off today for a week in my favorite part of Switzerland, the Graubünden (also called the Grissons). We’ll be staying here. Pictures and stories when I’m back. Have a good week!

After they have left

After they have left, driving slowly with lights extinguished, I start to shake. After they have left I set Little Boy C on the floor with a toy and start to cry. After they have left, taking the moment with them, the moment rushes at me from the high corners of the room: Little Boy C coughing, dry-heaving like a cat, something in his mouth I can’t reach, dialing 144 thumping his back all the while. Waiting, it seems an eternity, for the ambulance that arrives only after C has thrown up his afternoon bottle and a puzzle piece of one of the dried-up leaves that are falling into our garden now that late August is here. They ask me to describe what happened, the paramedics, while trying to look at the little boy I will not let go of. They are kind and dismiss with sympathetic eyes my apologies for the unnecessary call. The team leader whose name I forgot the moment he said it looks at me with the eyes of a parent; he knows this fear, I think. His partner tells me, “Lieber ein mal zu viel… [rather one call too many...].” She listens to C’s lungs and pronounces them clear; he has not, she feels, aspirated anything. They take some information, fill out a form, and leave. Everything is fine, everything is okay, C is fine, C is okay, it is all over as fast as it began, my coughing child vomiting up this dry and pointy-edged but harmless piece of autumn. Already he is playing on the floor, taking advantage of his brother’s visit to the grandparents to play with all the things A will not let him play with. He is happily destroying a Lego-firehouse, blocks flying. Everything is okay. Everything is fine.

It is only after they have left that I start to sob. Everything is fine.