A Full Empty Nest
I woke up this morning at my usual hour, five o’clock and went outside immediately. Before making myself a cup of coffee and settling at my desk to work, I take quick walks. Since we’re experiencing hot and dry weather, I’ve been watering the garden in addition to walking, and while the mornings are still cool enough to enjoy, I head out to pick strawberries. Tiny strawberries. They grow like groundcover in several of my flower beds, and I imported them all. Years ago, I discovered colonies of little alpine strawberries in my sister- and brother-in-law’s garden and started nicking the plants' runners to transplant into my garden. During the Pandemic, while on a morning walk, I spotted a vigorous colony of berries growing on the local schoolyard grounds—the berries, surprisingly, were white. I began picking and freezing batches of the berries until I have enough, a kilo, to make jam. The flavor of the red berries is a concentrated version of the field strawberry, and the whites taste of honeydew melons. Often, the pickings are meagre, and I simply eat as I pick. Nevertheless, the cellar is full of jam, most of strawberry jam. I add the fresh berries to my breakfast granola, and I cook them into delicious sauces to pour over ice cream. In making jam or sauce, I've never mixed the two varieties.
Strawberries have been plentiful this year. At the start of June, the weather was favorable, persistent rain and cool temperatures. But summer arrived mid-June with a scorching punch, just in time for our visitors from the States, my nephew and his wife, who took off from our place on an epic bio-bike tour of Switzerland—their honeymoon—and our eldest daughter and her partner. Grant and Josephine, the cyclists, arrived and took off before Helena and Adam’s arrival.
For three weeks, our lives brimmed with young people. The berries I picked, I shared. My early morning house, I shared. And our gorgeous country as well as our place in the Alps, we shared. Tours of our tiny medieval town; biking and hiking around the Furka, Grimsel, and Nufenen Passes; relaxing our place in Obergoms with each couple; wine tasting in the Lavaux vineyard terraces above Lake Geneva; lunch in Montreux; coffee on the shores of Lake Brienz; dinner in the shadows of Schloss Oberhofen on Lake Thun, and dinner a restaurant brewery in the Black Forest; we took swims in the Rhine as well as Lake Geneva, Brienz, and Zurich; we endured a bout of the flu; and hosted a family dinner parties with Helena’s Götti and Gotti, her godparents. Our son and youngest daughter, Calvin and Celeste, and her partner, Deen, popped by, swelling the young-people numbers. Preparing meals and experiencing the steady flow of conversation and laughter both invigorated and exhausted us.
Whenever we were home in Kaiserstuhl, I shared my mornings and strawberry harvests, two pleasures. The three weeks came to an end, though. Grant and Josephine returned their rental bikes and flew home. Helena and Adam returned to LA, and even Celeste, who stayed with us a few of the hottest days, to work remote from Kaiserstuhl, escaping her urban apartment and office—hotter still—left us. Once again, I had the morning and my strawberry pick all to myself, which left me a little sad. The silence I usually relish felt empty. The evening of our return to empty nesting, we took our kayaks out on the Rhine for a vigorous sunset paddle upriver and return drift.
Sure, following a whirlwind of young people in the house, there’s laundry to catch up on, rooms to tidy and prepare for the next guest, the garden to water and water and water, and currants to keep an eye on. They ripen soon, and the heat wave is about to pass. In in the cooler temperatures, I’ll be getting out my pots to make jam, including strawberry jam. I’m back to freezing my daily harvest of red and white berries, and I’ve got a freezer full of the gems. Tonight, there might be another sunset paddle on the Rhine. After all, twilight times are upon me and Markus.
