The Willies and Thoughts of Loneliness

When I was 18 my father took the whole family along on his sabbatical trip to England and Germany.  I resisted going at first because I didn't want to miss my first year of college.  I dreaded being a year behind everyone else.  Now, of course, that seems like pure foolishness, but it is all moot since my parents prevailed.

Go ahead and fill in all of the cliches, but it is true that the year was life-changing.  Not only did I get to experience taking classes at Mander, a British college (really the equivalent of a community college), but I got to visit Oxford, Cambridge, Stratford, the Cotswalds, Penzance, Land's End, Stonehenge, and London.  I made a couple of friends, one whom I heard from not that many years ago.


I remember this parking lot at Mander College (now Bedford College).

I traveled by myself to visit my friend Kaisa Muotiala in Finland over the winter holidays.  I'd met her when she was an exchange student at my high school in Tucson.

 


The journey to reunite with my family in Germany following that Christmas holiday experience was also life-changing for more challenging reasons I won't go into here.

Once settled in Stuttgart, my mother and I took a course in "German as a Second Language" through an adult education program, which offered some very interesting pedagogical insights.  I'll never forget our petite professor exclaiming "Das Verb ist immer in die zweite position!"

We had many more adventures while in Germany.  We visited Rothenburg ob der Tauber,  Heidelberg and the Black Forest.  We went to Switzerland, Salzburg and Vienna in Austria, Liechtenstein and France.  We went to East Germany on our way to Berlin.  We stayed with a crazy lady in Berlin who had the strangest bed and breakfast facility (her former home, I believe) with floors that slanted and dipped.  We crossed over to East Berlin through checkpoint Charlie.  We saw the moonscape that was East Berlin.  Truly, it looked as if they had only just cleared away the rubble from World War II, yet the year was 1973. 

In retrospect, it's the people I remember best.  While in Cranfield, a tiny village on the site of a WWII RAF base, we lived in quarters designated for the RAF Officers and their families.  It was a four bedroom home which we found quite commodious.  Among our neighbors was the Wilson Family.  Although the family consisted of a mother, father, four kids and a dog, the most memorable members were the mom (whose name I think was Helen--but I'm not sure) and the dog named Sophy--a beautiful yellow lab.  Mrs. Wilson was a character.  Wiry and exuberant, she exhausted us.  She had an over-the-top personality.  Her two smallest children (the only ones still at home), were named Katie and Simon.  They were almost quintessentially British babes.  Fair haired and blue-eyed, their mummy indulged them, even when they were super naughty.  My family found them amusing, if also a bit obnoxious.  We came to refer to them as "the Willies".  Really, they were very kind, and I'll always be grateful for the friendship they extended to us.
 

This wasn't our home, but it's a close approximation.


Anticipating this next living experience in the U.K., I doubt I'll have the same kinds of connections with neighbors, but I guess I'll discover that once there.  In truth, even though I'll have friends and familiars nearby, I'm a bit anxious about the prospect of loneliness.  I LOVE being with my family--even though they may find me a bit exasperating.  I yearn for time with them and try to make as many opportunities as possible to spend time with them.  My oldest daughter refers to my efforts as trying to reconnect the umbilical cord.  Okay--I'll cop to that.  I hate having my kids live so far away from me (and my husband).  Thinking back on my childhood, I can say that seeing my grandmother and aunt (uncle and cousins) only once a year,  was frustrating.  I don't know how my parents felt about living so far away from their closest family members (beyond their own children), but I know I longed for more connection.  I truly hope I can maintain close connections with my children and sisters as they continue on their life journeys.