Our stuff arrived two weeks ago.
At the risk of sounding like the spoiled American I am, I was overjoyed. As
familiar shapes were carried through the door and unwrapped to reveal the
furniture underneath, I was like an ecstatic apartment-traffic controller,
directing a five-man crew to each item’s precise location and orientation.
In my defense, it had been 7 weeks
and 3 days since I’d left San Francisco, where I’d already gone 6 days with no
furniture or familiar fixings with 2 freaked-out cats on my hands. The clothing
I brought with me was appropriate for our first 10 days in Hamburg, then I had
to do some creative layering to keep up with the dropping temperature.
Now I had shoes, sweaters, books, more
than one pan to cook food in—every new/old thing unpacked was a forgotten
luxury. And, as things go, there were the little irritants of settling; certain
walls unable to hold artwork, no clothing rods in the closet, repeated no-shows
for our Internet installation, etc.
Truly first-world problems.
Because just days after I was
happily putting away spare towels and my favorite brand of lotion, Larry left
his office and saw more than a dozen police cars converging on a building in
his complex that was being converted from office space to refugee housing.
Vandalism? Arson? Bomb threat? It
could have been any of those. But suddenly the complaints of my world were meaningless.
There have been reports of more
than 200 attempted or successful attacks on refugee centers in just the past
two weeks around Germany. During our early days in Hamburg there was a
demonstration downtown, near where we happened to be wandering. I suspected it
was related to the increased influx of refugees, but didn’t want to stick my
little brown face around the corner to confirm.
The police activity just down the
road last week was a little shake, a little reminder that under the pampering
and padding, life can always be reduced to its essence: survival.
I’m grateful for the privileges that
make my survival not such a struggle, and weeks ago might have argued that hardship
is a relative thing. But finding the courage to leave everything you’ve ever known
and truly start over with nothing for the hope of survival--there's nothing relative about that.
:/
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