The Braderie

After the last post, I need to follow-up with something much lighter.

The end of August always brings us a little bit of regret: We loved going to the Minnesota State Fair each and every year, multiple times.  This is our fifth year in a row that we've missed the "Great Minnesota Get Together."  Every year, we look longingly at photos posted by FB friends of the fun we are missing.  The KFAN podcasts of the "Live at the Fair Broadcasts" filter though our iTunes to remind us that we're here, not there.    

For my Belgian friends, State Fairs are time honored traditions.  They began as a showcase for agriculture and livestock, where people from throughout the state would compete to win the title of the best of the best in any number of categories anywhere from pumpkins to pigs.  So today, there are still the agriculture and livestock displays.  But there are also rides, and concerts and markets to shop and lots and lots of food.  There is something for everyone.  When we were younger, we went for the rides and games.  As we got older, it was for the music and beer.  With little ones, it was to wander the streets with the stroller, and start to teach the American tradition to our toddlers.   The Minnesota State Fair is always the last week or so in August, with the last day always falling on the American Labor Day, September 1st.

But La Hulpe does follow-up with something pretty cool.  Each year on the cusp of our disappointment of having to miss the State Fair for another subsequent year, we start to see signs for the annual La Hulpe Braderie.  Here, our "braderie" is a basically like a big town garage sale/street fair.  They close off the main street of La Hulpe, and sell spaces along the street to whomever wants a spot to sell something.   All of the shop owners get a section in front of their store, so they have special sales.  Most of the food shops, like the meat market, the bars or the restaurants, set up tables and chairs and sell food and drinks.  And in between it all are local residents selling garage sale stuff.  They also have rides and games and music.  It is definitely more like Grand Old Day (in St. Paul) or BBQ Days (in Belle Plaine) than the State Fair, but we miss those events too so we will certainly take what we can get and not complain.

And one nice difference about a street fair in europe: they don't make you keep your alcoholic beverages in a beer garden.  You are free to roam about at your leisure with your mohito in hand, which is exactly what we did last night.

 There was one other activity that I'm not sure they have in the states.  A few steps from the front door of our church, there was a giant inflatable swimming pool.  And for a mere five euros, they will put your kid in giant bubble and let them try to move around the pool.  As a mother, it's a little alarming to watch your child get zipped into a giant plastic bag.  But then it's inflated to float on the water and for a good ten minutes or so, you can watch your kid run around like a hamster on a wheel.  I think the whole contraption would just fit into our backyard, maybe we should get one for home?

This year's braderie marked a new milestone for our little family.  We did not need a stroller, and we went at night instead of the daytime.    We saw friends from school, older kids from the neighborhood, people we know from around town all out enjoying themselves on a beautiful September evening.  We watched our kids ride a few rides and sipped a few drinks and ate dinner provided by the street vendors.  We came home and tucked children into bed, tired from the fresh air with bellies full of junk food.  We love our little town.



    

Fifteen minutes.

It just figures that the day I return to my blog, something monumental happens.  I think it was the universe telling me I would need to be able to tell someone about this in order to fully process what just happened.

I just saw a man die.

Well, I don't know exactly when he died, but I was the first to arrive after he did.  It was just another Friday.  We are in our second week of school, the routine has started to settle in.  I picked up the kids from school and we went to our swimming pool for swimming lessons, just like we've done every Friday for years.  Only this time, the lesson was for Miss B and the boys had to get ready for their respective Friday night soccer practices.  We were leaving the small parking lot, we turned down the tiny street towards the intersection that led to the busy street, and there, in front of us was a motorcycle lying in the middle of the road.  Something was obviously very wrong.

By the time we got to the end of the tiny street, we could see a man lying just beyond, and the largest dump truck I have ever seen was parked a little further away.  The man in the road wasn't moving and the driver was pacing in the street yelling into his cell phone.  We were the first car to arrive on the scene.  It had probably happened just a minute or two before.  At first it looked like it was a teenager, but then later I saw his face and it was someone older than that.

I immediately put the car in park, told the kids to stay put and ran into the street.  My mind raced.  What do you do at that moment?  Do you try to help the lifeless body laying in the road?  Talk to the driver?  I was afraid of the body and my french isn't good enough to offer anything to the distraught driver.  By now, the driver was off the phone and he told me that the motorcycle man had turned out right in front of him, he couldn't stop.  I think I asked if the man was dead but I don't remember.

By this time, other cars were stopping, the lady that had pulled out of the parking lot behind me was on her phone, calling the emergency numbers as I'm sure the driver of the truck had already called.  Other witnesses were standing around.   No one knew at this point if he was alive or dead, but it didn't look good.  No one knew what to do and there weren't any sirens to announce the arrival of anyone that would know what to do anytime soon.

The dump truck was parked in the right lane.  The man was lying just behind the truck.  Two men moved the bike out of the road.    Traffic was starting to pile up.  Cars that couldn't see what was happening were honking impatiently for the unexplained stop.  One lane was blocked by the truck and driver but the other was passable, but it was a corner and hard to see.

I couldn't just stand there.  So this American girl threw up her arms and started directing traffic.  I stopped one lane of traffic, just like I've seen police officers do a hundred times.  I waved about ten cars or so through from the opposite lane and then  I stopped the next car and ran fifteen yards or so to the other side and waved about ten cars through from the other direction.  One of them was a nurse and she stopped to try to help the man.  Back and forth, back and forth I ran, telling cars where and when to go. It felt like I did this for an hour.  But really it was probably only for about five or ten minutes.  I tried not to look at the man and his helmet that was cracked in a million places.  I yelled at cars that were going too fast to slow down and tried to stand in front of the man to block everyone from staring, and also, I guess,  to make sure no one ran over him again.  Eventually, we could hear sirens.  Then, the police officers were there.

It didn't matter anymore about directing the traffic, the ambulance parked in the open lane and traffic was blocked in both directions.  I had to move my car so the little street was passable.  But I didn't want to leave in case I needed to tell someone something.  And I really wanted to know if the man was alive...or not.  No one was moving very fast, so I think I already knew the answer.

I asked one of the other early witnesses.  He didn't know for sure either and he switched to english right away.  I told him I was the first one to arrive and he went with me to talk to the officers.  I didn't see the actual accident, they didn't need me to stay.

I asked my question.  "Is he alive?"

The officer shook his head and said "his head..."

I told him I would never let my sons ride motorcycles.  Not that they would want to after seeing this anyway.

Then, the officer smiled at me with a small smile that I will never forget, and he said "thanks for your help with the cars."  I think I just shrugged.  I hadn't realized until that moment that I had even done anything.  It hadn't been intentional, I just reacted to a situation.

I walked back to my patient children and lost it a little then.  When I got back to the car, I was wiping tears from my eyes and AJ said to me "mom, it was pretty cool that you were able to help."  I pulled it together enough to get the boys to practice.  When I looked at the clock I realized that the entire interruption in our routine Friday afternoon only took about fifteen minutes in total.  That fifteen minute interruption is nothing compared to what some nearby family is experiencing tonight in learning about the loss of a loved one.  It's nothing compared to what the poor truck driver must be going through tonight.  My heart goes out to all of them.

I have this need tonight to tell anyone and everyone:  Life is precious and fragile.  Don't take it for granted, each day is a gift.

RIP motocycle man.  I didn't know you, but I will never forget you.

A Much Needed Regroup

This writer needed some time to regroup.

Last spring, I attended Crimefest, a crime writer's convention in the U.K.  I carried something very precious in my hands - my first manuscript.  It was an amazing experience.  I met other aspiring authors like myself, there for the pitch meetings and work-shopping opportunities.  I had precious face-time with agents and editors.  I had drinks and dinners with accomplished authors.  It was surreal to go to the train station on my way out and see their books sitting on the shelves at the train station bookstore.  All of it made me want to succeed in that world more than anything.

But most important and valuable of all, I got some advice.  The advice was to rewrite my manuscript.  Pffffffft.  Can you just hear my bubble burst?

She told me that my concept would be excellent for the young adult audience.  <Sigh.>  How on earth could I take characters that I created to exist in a certain time and space and make them into something completely different?

The first thing I did was get myself copies of the hot young adult fiction that I had never even so much as glanced at before - Twilight and the Hunger Games.  I was immediately hooked, and realized that my writing style was perfectly consistent with theirs.  So maybe I should think about it.  Maybe something new?  The problem was, when I tried to write something new, the old characters came out.  When I tried to invent a new plot, the old one came out.  It made me realize that maybe I should give a rewrite a try.  To my surprise, the rewrite only took about five weeks.  The biggest problem, was that it was summer vacation and with three kids at home and vacations to enjoy, my attention was divided, to say the least.    Sometimes though, we just need to step back, take a minute and regroup so that's what I tried to do.

But now, schedules are back on track and so am I.  I'm happier with it than I've ever been.  I've finished the edits and I'm back to the painful process of sending it out to agent slush piles.  We shall see what happens and I will keep you posted.  

Rats.

And I mean that literally.

I saw a rat once in New York City.  We were standing in Central Park trying to decide what to do next with our day when a big, giant rat ambled out from under a bush, looked at us, blinked and leisurely crossed the path to another bush where he disappeared.  That was the closest I ever wanted to come to a rat.

But then I moved to Europe.  When an American thinks about Europe, images of castles and cobblestones often come to mind.  Romantic lands rich with history have been teasing our imaginations for years and years until one day, maybe we are lucky enough to come see part of it for ourselves.  (Even after more than four years of living here, I still have to stop and pinch myself sometimes at the unbelievable opportunity that meant we actually get to live here.)  But there is good and bad with everything, and one little point in European history was pretty ugly.  The Black Plague.  If rats ever had any chance at all at a positive public image, the Plague sort of sealed the deal otherwise.

When we had the dog and cat, we didn't have to worry much about rodents.  But we've been pet-free for a year now, and over the winter, we started seeing signs.  What's that they say?  Something like, for every one that you see there are hundreds that you don't?  One day, I saw a dead rat in the road.  Once, there was an unexplained rustle in the bushes on the back patio.  A sighting in the neighbor's garden.  Another sighting in the garden on the other side.  But surely, there was a forcefield bubble around OUR garden, right?  That's what we told ourselves.

It wasn't just in our neighborhood.  It appeared to be an epidemic this spring.  There were others on the road in other neighborhoods.  One day, the children at school were looking through the fence at the pasture below, watching one die (its bloated body had clearly been poisoned.)

Then one day, I was serving lunch to some ladies.  As part of my duties as the VP of the American Women's Club, I was required to sit on the board of the ISG (International Study Group).  The ISG ladies are pretty awesome.  An older group of women, they are dedicated to educating themselves by bringing in monthly speakers on a variety of topics.  They also like to have lunch, so our board meetings were at each other's houses, and the hostess is required to serve lunch.  The ladies on the board reminded me of my Grandma Bares.  Classy, and dressed to perfection.  Potentially intimidating and certainly not afraid to demand certain standards, especially of society.  Making them lunch would be nerve-wracking, but at the same time, an exciting culinary challenge.

My lunch was back in February.  (I thought about blogging about this back then, but I was too traumatized - and not because of the ladies.)  It was cold, so I made wild rice soup and pecan pie.  We started the meeting with coffee, had our meeting, finished lunch and I was on my last coffee service when I saw it.  I was seated at the head of the table, with a view of our patio and garden and there it was.  A large brown rat. Taking a  leisurely afternoon stroll across our top patio step from one set of bushes to the other.  It was followed a few minutes later by another one.  They were clearly mocking me.  As if by their actions they were saying "So you thought you would try to serve a proper ladies' lunch?  We'll see about that (cue wicked laughter) Mwaahaahaa...."  

Thankfully, the ladies never noticed and the only thing they have to talk about from lunch at my house was this Minnesota girl's wild rice soup.  A few days later, our neighbor came to the rescue and brought over some rat poison (they hand it out for free at the commune, and he had extra.)  John was out of town and still teases him about bringing his wife rat poison on valentine's day.  I never wanted to consider poison as an alternative, but with thoughts of the black death in the back of my mind, on that particular day it was a present I was happy to have.

The poison got eaten, and the sightings (both dead and alive) stopped.  Early this summer, though, our bushes were invaded by a new resident.  These teeny-tiny little mice.  They were rather cute, with their big giant ears and little tiny bodies, but they were very bold.  One night, we were having dinner on the patio when no less than five of them came out to see what we were serving.  We don't have screens on our doors, so if we wanted to be able to open our doors at all this summer, it was clear we needed to do something before they moved themselves right on into the living room.

About the same time, our neighbor had similar sightings, and his son claimed to have seen another rat.  No way, we all said, just little mice.  But the poison went out, got eaten and we waited.  One morning, Luke and I went outside (I think it was back when he was looking for snails.)  There, right at his feet, was a dead mouse.  I screamed and turned.  But there, just a few feet away in the other direction, was another dead one.  I screamed and turned again, and there, lying in the middle of the backyard, was a large dead rat.  That scream brought my entire family (and probably most of the neighbors) out to the patio.

Our garden had become a land of rodent horror.

The remedy was swift and quick.  Composing myself, I scooped up the dead bodies with an old shovel and dumped them in the compost bag with the grass and that was that.  And hopefully, the message was sent loud and clear to future generations: You'd best be advised to move elsewhere.