Good-bye Switzerland

The final week of our year abroad was spent kinda living the way I had for 5 years 25 years ago: in a rustic alpine chalet.
In a low-ceiling, 17th c. chalet apartment, we enjoyed a routine outdoors: hung laundry, stinging nettles, runs to the village for our bread, coffee yogurt, and postage stamps.

New mountain play area
with the requisite miniature train.

Sentimental Aside

My folks almost lived to travel, undertaking annual cross-country road trips while I - head pillowed on the speaker console of our Plymouth wagon - listened to hours of Top 40 radio. Late at night, AM frequencies brought in stations from far-off (I distinctly recall a superior playlist from Little Rock, AK); my little mind balancing distance, time, and speed in mobile-like, tipping motion: 500 miles from home, "Born to be Wild" is playing here, too?  The trips became infrequent and brief when my folks ran a liquor store on Olympic Blvd in downtown LA, but I suppose I passed through 30 states before turning ten. Rarely stopping - my parents didn’t know leisure – “adventure” meant hunting down the ice machine in that night’s motel.

Meandering became second nature and remains a driving force in my own family life. The trajectory from Wakayama, Japan to SoCal extended to include upstate New York and Europe.

Vevey

The last days of our Swiss year were spent quietly by the lake, visiting Edith Schaeffer and her daughter, Susan, who was visiting from Cambridge, England.

Origami placemats: folding paper cranes entertained me as a child; now Michael & Jack.

Parenting is much about the recycling and bequeathing - of memories.

We rode the telecabine (gondola) higher up the Alps, then hiked past grazing cows to the refuge (shelter) in Taveyanne.

The village is blanketed with snow in winter - skiers cross over rooftops - so the villagers  scatter, returning in late April.
The weather turned cool, so eating fondue in late July felt perfectly natural.

Our year in Switzerland was lived - unexpectedly - minus the mountains, whose craggy, multiple peaks and ranges crisscross each other in spectacular fashion, with vineyards terraced down to the lake. We bought a landscape painting by local artist, Walter Malfi, to remember the setting.
A year is short, but Michael’s kindergarten life and weekly fellowship with All Saint’s
- besides our prior history and friends in the area - anchored us socially. We’ve moved around enough to know that you have to really make the effort in the first few months, or your social life permanently freezes; you can suddenly become just part of the furniture.

Which reminds me that we’re in the market for a couch, since moving to a beautiful townhouse in Westlake Village - our first non-housesitting gig.  We're curious to visit Wertz Brothers in Santa Monica, where the rich and famous unload their stuff. The house came with a state-of-the-art kitchen – a sterile showpiece of recent domestic life, given the outsourcing of family meals and the disappearance of the table. The ongoing church debates over alcohol at communion seem especially irrelevant; I mean, why argue over grape juice vs wine when we’ve completely lost the table?

Parting Shots
One last ride on the tall slide;
Jack couldn't manage this 9 months ago.
One last gelato
One last view

Here we are back where we began in SoCal, getting invites to foreclosure bus tours while setting up house, waiting for the market to bottom. Classes begin August 25th and we resume life in the Conejo Valley, so what did we do?

Went up to Whidbey Island too see the unspoiled beauty of the Pacific Northwest and to visit friends in Taooma (prominently featured in Alaska Airline gazettes now!) and to put a new roof on our beloved home, anchoring us in another time and place.