Hej from Copenhagen
We’ve arrived safely to our new assignment in Copenhagen, Denmark. My husband has already headed off to his first day at work, the kids are still asleep in the fog of jet lag, and I’m back to the beginnings of things. Sitting down to write, inviting some gentle attention and merciful order to bubble up in the bewilderment of beginnings, seems like a good thing to do.
The embassy has labored to make our arrival as comfortable as possible, and yet it is so easy to attend to the discomforts. We are fatigued from a full day of nearly sleepless travel. Our mountain of luggage is in various stages of half-unpacked chaos. We don’t know how to fit our new apartment at all. We don’t know where anything is.
There’s a bit of an Alexander temptation in me, to fixate on the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad aspects of everything, despite our being so well provisioned. That’s Alexander’s trouble, isn’t it? In the midst of manifest good, he experiences all that doesn’t quite go exactly as he wants it to go. I’m in the same boat. I turned in a grocery list to the embassy a few days ago, so they could shop for some items for us to have right when we got to our apartment; quite a gift! But one of the cartons of milk ordered for us to be here upon arrival has leaked all over the fridge. I couldn’t find paper towels to wipe it all up, so I used a wash cloth to do it.
The apartment has curious quirks, perhaps especially because it is so well-appointed. We have a tiny European fridge and a gigantic wine cooler. There is not a single bar or hook, anywhere, to hold a towel of any kind. One of the toilets has ill-conceived (and possibly just broken) automatic sensor features that make the toilet come unnervingly to life that bring no relief while one is relieving oneself. The toilet has a remote control. My new strong opinion about things is that No toilet should have a remote control! None of the buttons on the remote control do anything at all. And yet, not only is there a lightbulb that automatically turns on in the toilet, the commode also makes electronic groaning noises as you sit on it that make you wonder if it’s about to spray something on you. Worst of all, the seat automatically lifts anytime one of us passes near it. I’ve put my heavy toiletry bag on top of it to try to hold its mouth shut. I can hear it struggling to say something when I walk by it. It’s not fancy; it’s WEIRD.
Part of the mental taxation of these beginning days has a lot to do with the exponential nature of anxiety. If this toilet was just a quirky commode in a week-long Airbnb rental, we’d all laugh and find it a refreshing bit of humorous otherness. But we are not tourists, and we are not just traveling here. We have moved here. This apartment is now our residence. It’s so tempting to slam on the red-panic button of exponential fear and anxiety with the niggling thought that the bewilderment of the last 24 hrs will perdure for the next three years.
Adventures throw us off-kilter and demand so much from us; that’s why they can be refreshing, even life-giving, despite being reliably uncomfortable in the living of them. Indeed, it seems almost churlish to write about the bewilderments and discomforts.
And yet there are such manifold streams of goodness in the discomfort. We had beds in which to sleep last night, milk in the fridge, and a gentle cool morning breeze came in through the open windows as the day began. The fresh sea-infused air could not be more different than the sodden heat of the Washington, DC, area.
Our apartment faces out on a city park, criss-crossed with paths, and landscaped with tall trees, tended flower beds, and fascinating statues dotted here and there. There’s an endless supply of people and birds to watch from our front-facing windows. Waking long before anyone else did this morning, I found it soothing to see people out early, walking, biking, jogging, playing with their dogs, and even to glimpse municipal workers collecting litter from last night’s sloppy picnickers.
As they always have, the birds help me surrender to and accept all that feels ill-fitting and hard. I’ve already spotted some of my favorite European avian friends, especially European magpies, and a handful of new-to-me birds — some kind of goose in the park and a stout little blackbird that I’ll have to look to know its name. Since we’re now in a city, we hear and see lots of pigeons, there are plenty of swallows darting and shrieking, and being so close to the water, there are plenty of gulls.
Our migratory time is here. We feel a little like non-native vagrants, blown off course. We feel washed up to a place that has prepared to receive us. We’ve got to settle into the nest here. It takes real work, one that requires patience, persistence, and perseverance. I will embrace the invitation today, and refuse to take on the worries of three years’ worth of tomorrows.