He also fell in love, as much as that is possible for a nearly four year old. We have a neighbor nearby, an eight year old girl, and she became something of an obsession for him this summer. Every morning upon waking he would ask after her and want to run out of the house to play with her. Then he always brought her back to the house and played with her here. It was not a perfect match however and soon she found a friend her own age.

One afternoon as the two of them were playing in the yard, this older friend rode up on her bike. The two girls immediately ran off together laughing and HH stood forlorn on the front step and watched them go. She didn't even say goodbye - she just ran away.

Eventually he looked over at me with just about the saddest expression he couldn't suppress and asked me what had happened. A flood of answers rushed to me but I resisted the temptation to rant on the subject of relationships with the opposite sex. When it happened the second time however, he was really perplexed and I leveled with him -- in a way. The next time it happened, and it was bound to happen yet again, he was prepared and he just turned around and took my hand and said, "Papa, let's play."

Yesterday, HH said good bye to the lake and the trees and the little gate by the lake outside of which he left a small, blue, cardboard box each morning, as a signal, so that others could also find the lake and him of course. Today will see the scurry of closing the house and getting ready to go - something we have been working at for the last few days but inevitably has a reality of its own that requires a certain amount of anxiety to fuel. That said, we will make it and we will have time to say goodbye to the cabin and animals and to summer. Tomorrow night, we will sleep in our old beds and begin to adjust to life outside of these woods.

I may have been too long among the trees because I can't say I am completely ready to go. I'm torn between the reality of living in America (and this small cabin) and speaking my native tongue without thinking about it and returning to a world where communication is a struggle at best. VHS here I come.

Language dislocation is one aspect of the equation but the other is the fact that our home in Germany is just that - our home. We live there now and have put down roots. Next week, HH will return to kindergarten, reacquire his pre-summer German language skills and take up with his small friends in Cologne while Papa continues his efforts to make himself understood. Real life resumes.

Here's to Summer 2007… I hope it was a good one for you.

Copyright R.W. Dooley 2007

Read R. W. Dooley's full blog at http://germandiary.blogspot.com/

Subject: 'The New Old World', R.W. Dooley, expat in Cologne, living in Germany