lovely weather, for a duck
It was a cosmic irony of my marriage that I had all the wanderlust and Adam had the job that sent him all over the world, that I have a passion for studying languages and he had so much opportunity for immersion.
Because I love presents, he learned to bring me things back. Often they were consumable things like Swiss dark chocolate that we couldn't get in rural Michigan in the oughts, Côtes du Rhone from France, Grey Goose from duty free.
Sometimes they were tangible things like the wooden cat from Troyes that now sits on the bookcase in my office or my French copies of Jacques Prevert's poetry and Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince. Or useful things like my Russian-French, French-Russian dictionary.
Sometimes he brought me back bits of language--
"Wo ist mein Gepäck?" from the time his luggage got lost on the way to Germany.
"Ichi biru," which is not actually the best way to order a beer in Japan.
"Una cerveza por favor," which is the way to order a beer in Mexico.
"Mit senf" to get mustard on your sandwich in Germany and gross out your Czech colleague at the same time.
I don't have cause to use most of these bits of language often.
But there's one that popped into my head today. As I was was schlepping from my office to my car bundled up against the cold, it started to rain. Again. And I thought, "Schönes Wetter, für eine Ente."
"Lovely weather," Adam would say, "for a duck."
This bit of language came out of a conversation with the same Czech colleague who thought mustard was gross on sandwiches. They were working together in Germany during a prolonged spell of cold and rain, and they had very little language in common. "Schönes Wetter, für eine Ente" came out of a very human moment of solidarity across barriers of language and culture. It is both a comment on the weather and a triumph of communication, a joke in their shared foreign language.
I decided early in my widowhood that I did not want my home to be a shrine, with my dead husband's possessions on display like relics, but that I wanted to keep using the things of his that were useful to us. Like the Leatherman in my kitchen drawer and the cast iron skillet on the stove. Like the benches and the plant boxes that he built.
And like these bits of language.
Because I love presents, he learned to bring me things back. Often they were consumable things like Swiss dark chocolate that we couldn't get in rural Michigan in the oughts, Côtes du Rhone from France, Grey Goose from duty free.
Sometimes they were tangible things like the wooden cat from Troyes that now sits on the bookcase in my office or my French copies of Jacques Prevert's poetry and Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince. Or useful things like my Russian-French, French-Russian dictionary.
Sometimes he brought me back bits of language--
"Wo ist mein Gepäck?" from the time his luggage got lost on the way to Germany.
"Ichi biru," which is not actually the best way to order a beer in Japan.
"Una cerveza por favor," which is the way to order a beer in Mexico.
"Mit senf" to get mustard on your sandwich in Germany and gross out your Czech colleague at the same time.
I don't have cause to use most of these bits of language often.
But there's one that popped into my head today. As I was was schlepping from my office to my car bundled up against the cold, it started to rain. Again. And I thought, "Schönes Wetter, für eine Ente."
"Lovely weather," Adam would say, "for a duck."
This bit of language came out of a conversation with the same Czech colleague who thought mustard was gross on sandwiches. They were working together in Germany during a prolonged spell of cold and rain, and they had very little language in common. "Schönes Wetter, für eine Ente" came out of a very human moment of solidarity across barriers of language and culture. It is both a comment on the weather and a triumph of communication, a joke in their shared foreign language.
I decided early in my widowhood that I did not want my home to be a shrine, with my dead husband's possessions on display like relics, but that I wanted to keep using the things of his that were useful to us. Like the Leatherman in my kitchen drawer and the cast iron skillet on the stove. Like the benches and the plant boxes that he built.
And like these bits of language.
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