20

GERMANY

Like many Americans, Kyle and I have German blood running thick through our veins. Oxenreider means more or less what you’d think it means: someone who clears fields with oxen. I’m told my maiden name, Henegar, evolved long ago from Heineken, and it finds its origins in a keg of German beer (there’s a Henninger lager, another derivative of the name). My father is full-blooded German, and my grandfather’s mother’s maiden name was even the word German. Sausage and sauerkraut are coded into our DNA.

We land in Munich after a quick flight from Izmir, pick up a new rental car, then pick up Kyle’s parents, who have jumped the pond for a visit.

It’s our first morning in Bavaria, and five seconds after gathering my things out of the car to head down the squeaky-clean streets of Munich, Finn has disappeared. Panic sets in. He was just here; he can’t have gone far. I find him ten feet down the road, standing on a windowsill four feet off the ground.

“Dude! How on earth did you get up there?” I say. “And get down—you’re not supposed to be staring in people’s windows.” The window’s shutters are open, and he’s peering into the house.

“It’s okay,” I hear in German-accented English from the other side. Four teenage boys are playing foosball. “He’s just watching. We don’t mind.”

They continue playing and pay him no attention. We watch a few more seconds, say Auf Wiedersehen, then head to the science museum with the grandparents.

Bavaria is Germany’s most German province. Lederhosen, glockenspiel, the mammoth clock celebrating the wedding of the duke who founded the nearby famous Hofbrauhaus, Oktoberfest—all these hail from here. We walk Munich’s cobblestone streets, climb church towers, and sample giant pretzels for two days, then leave town for the countryside.

While in Italy, Dan and Bethany recommended a theme park in Bavaria. I balked at the idea, shuddering at the thought of commercialized, concrete-ridden parks full of overstimulating noise and movement. I’m a poor poker player, and my face tipped Bethany off. She smiled, said, “Oh no, it’s not like a regular American theme park. Trust me—this is a good one.”

“Is it worth the money?” I asked her. For much less money, we could have an actual local experience, and not a manicured, prepackaged, branded one trapped in a theme park.

“It’s only like ten euro each,” she said. “Totally reasonable. And the food is really good too. Just trust me.”

Fifty bucks for our entire family is a steal, and Dan and Bethany haven’t yet steered us wrong. We decide to visit Freizeitpark Ruhpolding.

Kyle drives us through idyllic Alps-infused Bavarian countryside to a little town hugging the Austrian border, GPS charting a rural route with no theme park in sight, and I’m fairly sure we’re lost. Then I see it—a wooden sign swinging on a pole. A gravel parking lot is tucked into the hillside, and a narrow hiking path disappears into the hills. Arrows on the path point to the park. We zip our jackets and trek uphill, panting to the entrance.

Devoid of primary colors, rubbery walkways, and the stripped natural landscape so common in American theme parks, Freizeitpark Ruhpolding is hewn out of these Bavarian hills. Trees canopy the play areas and slides copy the ebb and flow of the land, resting on hills and letting nature dictate their downward course. I breathe in forest air and exhale worry. Bethany was right.

There are vintage carnival rides and a roller coaster, but the park is mostly wooden climbing structures, monstrous tire swings, zip lines, and merry-go-round discs set at an angle on a hillside, devoid of handles and safety rails. The kids jump with abandon in a ball pit crammed full of other kids. I haven’t seen a ball pit in the States outside a therapy clinic in years.

“This place is the best!” Finn trills as he whips down a slide in a felted toboggan.

Some parents are playing with their children, zipping in tree houses and besting them at skeeball and tin can–shooting games. Many more are seated on decks outside cafés, sipping beer and coffee and quietly chatting. All kids are free to wander. Ours join them.

We play with the kids at first, whooshing down precipitous metal slides and screaming with them. We spin in a ride that whirls backward at such breakneck speeds that I make my body a seat belt for Finn for fear he’ll careen out of our shared seat. Later, when Kyle and I tire, we soak in Bavarian sunshine on the wooden deck, nursing drinks and watching the kids gallivant.

We leave at closing time and make the hillside stroll downward. On the way, I instinctively grab Reed’s hand. He’s my wild child, a boy who prefers to sit upside down to hear a story, who dances down the sidewalk and spins circles in the produce aisle.

“Hey, Mom,” Reed says, voice quivering, “did you notice you’re always grabbing my hand?”

“Well, I just want you to be safe,” I say, loosening my grip. I am called out.

“But I’m seven now. I know I’m a kid, but sometimes when you hold my hand like this, it feels like you don’t trust me.” His face crumples with tears.

Last week in Turkey, Tate and I were waiting in the car while Kyle and Reed ran across the street to take a photo of him in front of the hospital where he was born. We were reminiscing about the trip, the freedom she felt to go alone to the bakery in Cadenet, to swim by herself in the community pool across the street from our Thai guesthouse, to stroll the acreage of the Pasignano farmhouse in Italy with Abbie.

“If we were still living in Turkey, would I be allowed to run errands on my own?” she asked.

“Yep,” I answered her. I remembered watching eight-year-olds run into the corner store from our apartment balcony, three-year-old Tate begging me to let her join them. Soon enough, you will, I’d answer.

Tate sighed. “I really wish kids were allowed to do that kind of stuff in America. We should tell the president to make it a law so that kids have more freedom and adults aren’t so nervous all the time.”

I remember this conversation, and stop on the Bavarian trail back to the parking lot and look Reed in the eye. “I don’t mean to treat you like you’re little. I want to show you that I trust you. Because you are a good kid. You’re a fantastic kid.”

“Mom—I have something to tell you,” Reed says. He breathes deep and wipes tears running down his face. “I’ve been almost around the whole world now, and I’ve done a good job. I haven’t gotten lost or gotten hurt. I feel like I’m growing up.” He pauses. “Do you think you can stop holding my hand so much?”

I look down at our hands; I’m still holding on and Reed is cupping his palm free. I release my fingers and he slides his hand in his jacket.

“I love you, bud,” I say, messing his hair.

“Love you too,” he replies, and runs ahead.

Uhldingen-Mühlhofen is so difficult for us to say, that between Kyle and me, we default to a butchered nickname: Uberlingen-Dinglehopper. We snicker childishly at the highway exit and entrance signs declaring Ausfahrt and Einfahrt. I love that the word for airplane is flugzeug, which literally translates to “fly-thing.” The word for speed limit is geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung. German amuses.

We want to revel in more Bavarian countryside, so at the last second, we book a guesthouse in Uhldingen-Mühlhofen, the miniature village along the Bodensee lake. Along the way, we take ausfahrts to villages that sound even mildly interesting, soaking up our rental car before returning it in Paris. We need coffee this morning, having spent a day at Freizeitpark Ruhpolding yesterday, and Uhldingen-Mühlhofen is still two hours away. We approach a road sign for the village of Landsberg am Lech, and it looks pleasant enough from a distance. Italy is less than two hundred miles south, but it’s no small feat to find a decent cup of brew in Germany. We cross our fingers, hope for the best, and make the exit.

I find directions to an open bakery on my phone app, and as Kyle searches for a parking spot, I read about this unassuming village.

“Oh, my goodness,” I gasp.

“What?” Kyle asks.

“This is where Hitler wrote Mein Kampf,” I say, scrolling Wikipedia.

“Whoa. Are you serious?”

“And this is said to be where the Hitler Youth first formed.” I survey the village’s town square, with its innocent houses and pink-tinted shops. One of the vilest persons born into this human experience wrote his foundational ideas in this pocket-sized place. I see no signs commemorating this history.

I scroll through my phone and read more as I wait for our coffee order at the bakery. Landsberg am Lech is also where the United States Army liberated a concentration camp with the help of one of their soldiers named Tony Bennett, and it’s where Johnny Cash was stationed with the air force. The village’s medieval wall is still erect, cannonball still stuck on one side.

I return to the car, coffees in hand, and I think about the world’s other Landsberg am Lechs. How many random villages down this street hold the weight of history in their annals? How many layers of civilization are we driving over, roads so old they’re too deep to unearth? Twenty, like Izmir’s? What other ausfahrts hold secrets, hinges that alter the trajectory of global saga—not just in Germany, but in Italy, Croatia, Morocco, even in the States? How many shoulders do I stand on, their spirits whispering around me as I walk through Venetian alleys, Cadenet’s market, Kenyan fields, and little, unpredictable Landsberg am Lech?

Tonight we tuck the kids in at our new guesthouse in Uhldingen-Mühlhofen, where we watch the sun set from our backyard over the Bodensee, Switzerland waving from the other side. We have no agenda here, other than one final week to catch up on school and work before heading northwest, into northern France and onward to London. The last time we stopped for any length of time was in Cadenet, almost two months ago now. We need a breather before our journey’s final push. I can already see a pinhole-sized light at the end of the tunnel.

The kids’ grandparents are with us, and it’s our duty to let them watch the kids while we go on a much-needed date. The last time we went out was Lourmarin, eight weeks ago. Kyle opens the gate in the backyard, and we cross the street, walk hand in hand along the Bodensee. Earlier today we spotted a pub with outdoor seating in the microscopic town square, overlooking the waterfront. Our kids played in the grass while German teenagers ate picnic lunches nearby, and we eyed the pub like a beacon of light.

Tonight, we stroll down the darkened street that leads to the town square, order lagers from the smoky bar, and zip our jackets as we cradle drinks and wind whips our hair.

“Babe—we’ve done it,” Kyle says, taking a slug of beer.

“We did it,” I answer. I clink his glass in cheer.

“Around the world in one direction. Who’da thought?”

“That it was doable?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “That we’d do it without killing each other.”

“A worthy endeavor,” I answer. We clink glasses again.

He pauses. “Well, we’re not done yet. I guess there are still a few weeks to kill each other.”

Tonight, we decide it’s time to begin landing the plane. In three weeks, we’ll be back in the United States, still undecided about where to call home. We don’t have our answers yet about home, work, and postnomadic life, but we know they’ll come when we need them. Right now, we are still vagabonds. I think of the hat I wanted to exchange with Nora, and I wonder where I finally tossed it into the wind. We’re still crawling the earth and chipping away parts of us that no longer fit, but we’re molding new clay, fresh stuff we gathered on the road. The trip has changed us, but we’re so fully present, here in this Bavarian forest, we don’t yet know how.

I want to write a rough plan on how, exactly, we’ll debrief the kids as our plane descends. We’ve chatted with each of them throughout our year, asking about their favorite and worst moments of a day, what they think about nonstop travel, what they miss about normal life, their favorite things about different countries. Debriefing well is to unpack a backpack and name what’s inside. It doesn’t prevent rough reentries back to a home culture—we know this from personal experience—but it can certainly help smooth the bumps. Tate and Reed are already thinking about a return to American life, but Finn has a limited grasp of time. We need to break the news to him soon: our trip is almost over.

Kyle and I slurp our lagers and hash out what the kids will need to process: people they met, places they already miss, the aftermath and beauty of dividing your heart and leaving it in infinite places. The surprising and inevitable challenge of returning to life in one location looms. These are things we need to process as adults.

We know one kid needs to hash out thoughts about friends, and another needs his own room. One kid needs to catch up on math, and we need a heart-to-heart about continuing school during the summer. All three need serious sleep. This is the stuff of parenting. Traveling never gave us a free pass.

We toast to our three kids and marvel at their growth because of traveling, not in spite of it. We scroll back to photos from the Great Wall in China and witness how much they’ve grown, discuss how they’ve matured. Reed hardly needs his hand held anymore. Tate is solidly in tweendom. Finn outgrew shoes midway through the trip, and is already outgrowing his second pair.

We walk home when the pub closes with a game plan to start preparing for a return home in the next few days. Just before I turn out the light on my nightstand, Kyle already snoring, I pull out a pencil and add to my journal: I need to work through every bit of this too.

A few days later, we’re on our way to the French border town of Strasbourg and we slink down one last ausfahrt, this one for the town of Gengenbach. We know nothing about it, but it’s our last chance to walk on German soil. I’ve grown a fast affection for this country. Barely on the western edge of the Black Forest region, Gengenbach’s medieval town square hosts the world’s largest Advent calendar through its town hall’s twenty-four windows. It also has some bang-up lemon gelato by the main fountain. It’s home to the second labyrinth of our trip.

The kids play in the park that afternoon in Gengenbach, and Kyle watches them from the bench while he chats with his parents. I have a few quiet minutes alone.

Shoes tossed aside, I step into the labyrinth and begin my prayer from Chiang Mai: Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me. I have questions for God. What has this epically long family road trip taught me about myself? How have I changed? How am I still the same? How is God speaking to me through the sheer act of travel? I remember St. Nicholas, the patron saint of vagabonds.

I know, in my soul, that a love for travel is a gift and not a hindrance. It feels like a burden when the bucket list is bigger than the bank account, but a thirst for more of the world is not something to apologize for. Denying its presence feels like denying something good in me, something God put there. Wanderlust has a reputation as the epitome of unrequited love, something the young and naive chase after because they don’t yet realize it’s as futile as a dog chasing its tail. Turns out, ever-burning wanderlust is a good thing.

I step deeper into the labyrinth, one more step, two steps, one foot in front of the other.

Even so, my innards ache for home. My heart has a magnetic pull toward an earthly center, a place of permanence. I want passport stamps, so long as I have a drawer to keep that passport in at the end of a trip. Giving up a home this year felt like swinging on a netless trapeze. The kids are eager for a home, to be in their own beds with blankets and stuffed animals. Kyle is eager to dust off his tools and get back to woodworking. I pine for my books, splayed on a shelf instead of an e-reader. My soul feels pulled in two directions: toward home, and toward another unknown road in another town.

God, why do I have both wanderlust and a yearning for home? I step deeper, closer to the center. This labyrinthine path, a circular back-and-forth toward a central ebenezer, resembles our family’s year. It zigzags, rambles out farther then returns closer, takes the long road to its destination. The rock stays unchanged. No matter how many times I’d try to rewalk this path, I’ll wind up at the same rock.

Wanderlust and my longing for home are birthed from the same place: a desire to find the ultimate spot this side of heaven. When I stir soup at my stove, I drift to a distant island. When I’m on the road with my backpack, my heart wanders back to my couch, my favorite coffee cup. My equal pull between both are fueled by my hardwired desire for heaven on earth. And I know I’ll never find it.

I stop at the labyrinth center, and I think of the stanza to one of my favorite poems, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God:

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries. . . .

I’ve seen an earth crammed with heaven. Hints of its existence are dropped all over the place, even in the birthplace of Hitler. If I could see to the fathoms beneath the surface, I’d see the secret behind all these common bushes, the roots of Thai banana trees and the avocado trees of Uganda. They’d wink at me, sharing their secret and nodding in affirmation at my bare feet. I press my naked toes into the labyrinth’s gravel path.

I love finding one more new place to explore, I love showing it to my kids, and I love wandering those new streets with Kyle. But unless the flickering bushes compel me to remove my shoes, traveling the world will never satisfy. Neither will the daily liturgy of normal life back home. The laundry folding and bill paying would do me in. I’d resign myself to plucking blackberries.

The way to reconcile my wanderlust with life back home is to lean in to the tension, to extol life’s haunting inability to ever fully satisfy. Life’s full of paradoxes, after all. Why shouldn’t this be one more of them?