Auf dem Land

I think my forearms are more pumped from my recent white knuckled driving adventure than my last climbing session. Windy farm roads where you must drive ever so slightly on the grass to allow oncoming cars to pass as they come whizzing by at 100 clicks. There’s 3 inches of “room” between cars, not much margin for error. For Wolf this feels spacious, for me I feel like I’d have more room driving in the shoulder of typical Canadian highways. It’s quite the rush and I’m nervous for my children’s lives. Regardless, I am a derby car chasing my husband down a tiny ass farm road so I don’t lose sight of our meeting point. 

 We are a pretty funny family when we go out… like we are the live version of a sitcom. All of the Kendler’s have FOMO. Wolf and I had suggested a hike last Sunday, his parents were coincidentally hiking and offered to join us. Of course Deja asks to invite her cousin Amelie along for the adventure. Then Wolf’s sister Alex gets wind of the plan and naturally, for fear of FOMO, must join us with her boyfriend Peppi in arm. Of course Jules (who was supposed to be enjoying a kid free Sunday) is the only Kendler left, so she coerced into coming by her ever persistent daughter. 

 So our odd little bunch hike as fast as snails and enjoy the curious smiles and stares that our unique family draws. Even little excursions such as this are mentally exhausting. Don’t get me wrong they are super fun and I need them to catch a break from everything…but the truth is you can NEVER catch a break from anything when you are immersed in a foreign life. Day to day life is relentlessly challenging and I am overwhelmed. All. The. Time. 

 As if sheer motherhood wouldn’t be overwhelming enough getting a grip on this whole mother of two thing…Throw in jet lag, sleep regressions, language gaps an attempt to build a social life, new cities, new roads, new stores, living attached to in-laws.. and life is bound to have its challenges. EVERYTHING is a learning curve and there’s never a break. The intensity of immersion is wearing on me. I never really realised what foreigners have to go through until now. It’s not any one thing that is particularly hard.. it’s the sum of all the small things that pile up into a mountain…so every day feels like an excursion. 

 My day yesterday for example…the kindergarten sent me an email. Of course it’s wordy German jargon. Normally an email would take me 3 minutes to read back in Canada…but here it takes me half the morning between online dictionaries and keeping the kids content. The same thing happens again with a text from a new friend where I need to look up every 5th word and then again at the grocery store in my attempts to decipher foreign labels while my two impatient children scream their heads off. I try my best to keep my cool but sometimes I also want to scream like an impatient child. Why is everything so hard!? I often find myself at the point of breaking but I’m somehow holding myself together. 

 I make it sound like life is bad here… but it’s not. It’s actually really amazing and exciting! Sometimes a decision that feels hard can still be the right one, and I’m confident that this is where my family needs to be right now. Just have to continue to take baby steps and ease into this foreign life one day at a time.