I’m sitting in Brenna’s kitchen, Parisian café music playing from the Alexa behind me. Everyone is still asleep; I slept longer than I have in a while, cozied up in a feather bed that’s actually long enough for my legs. I roused to the sound of the rain, the furnace heater like a steady rush of water. I turned up the volume slider on the satellite radio I brought from Oma and Opa’s and listened to Icelandic music, 2000s, Taylor Swift. I looked around at all the things that make up someone’s life, thinking how each time I come here another branch has grown on Brenna’s family tree. The first time I visited, Katla was newly born. The second, Katla was old enough to grab fistfuls of cheese and stacks of pepperoni, and Brenna’s pregnant belly almost touched the stove. And now, Katla spins circles in a maroon dress with kitten-nose pink sequins, closes her eyes as Brenna and I funky dance to whatever we just found on the radio. Licks peanut butter from a knife and mmmmmms; tries a German Duplo chocolate and declares she doesn’t like it when she’s three, but when she turns four in May she’ll like it then. Almar teeters through the hallway with hands full of ham and sometimes falls flat on his butt, attempts to angry-wiggle out of his high-chair harness. Rolls me a potato he finds under the counter; vacuums the rug with his fingers.
In the tub, I step over monster trucks and unicorn ducks.
On the way home from the airport, I devoured an entire large cinnamon roll Brenna bought from the bakery. Out the window, the dramatic Iceland landscape shifted by in typical style: sleet, sun, heavy clouds casting shadows on swaths of snow. While I freshened up, Brenna made a divine creamy potato pork kale soup. We listened to Ella Fitzgerald and all helped ourselves to seconds. We ate slice after slice of bakery bread and butter; Katla balanced soup in a small spoon and drizzled it over her bread.
Sunday morning we walked to the community center a couple minutes from Brenna’s house. We watched Katla somersault on wrinkled tumble mats as more and more kids funneled in for the 10-12 AM open gym. Soon it was a zoo, little boys wielding soft swords, little girls on scooters and rope swings. Dads kicking soccer balls, moms hovering near their wide-eyed toddlers, encouraging them to try. Katla dragged over a long, balance-beam folding mat and said something to Brenna, who then said to me: She wants you to do the crocodile. For the next several minutes after, I found myself running around the gym, dodging kids and balls, almost chomping a squealing Katla with hungry crocodile-mouth slaps.
After about an hour, we walked upstairs and Brenna signed me in for the hot tub. I showered, skipped the towel-dry— fast-ran from the locker room to the hot tub of course at the end. 39-41 degrees Celsius. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. In the hot tub next to me, I heard two girls speaking German. I lounged for about ten minutes before an older man joined from the pool; I smiled and said góðan daginn and then stared off and sometimes closed my eyes to try to avoid the proximity awkwardness of facing a stranger you could touch with your leg. After another woman joined, I climbed out of the tub and hovered on the handrails of the pool, letting the dizziness pass. The pool was more than ten degrees cooler and so refreshing against my steaming skin. I butterflied two laps under the cloudy sky, breathless.
In the sauna, a tattooed man from Portugal told me he works at a chicken farm. He used to work at a chocolate factory in Reykjavik, but the traffic there was too bad, and there was too much noise. It’s much nicer in the country, just way too cold. Is it cold in my country too? When I told him I’d been to Spain but not Portugal he said the countries are similar, but Portuguese food is way better. He laughed and fidgeted like someone from Spain was eavesdropping. And now it’s time for me to leave, he announced after a few moments’ silence, jumped off the bench, and shook my hand. Paulo, he said.
The rest of Sunday, Brenna and I played with the kids and then attempted to clean up the living room, a gargantuan task considering every time we picked up one thing, Almar would get into something else. But when we pulled out the vacuum, Katla declared she wanted to help, and she proceeded to detail-clean the living room with just the hose— she went in cushion seams, long-reached under the couch, crept behind the curtains. Thank you, thank you, we said, you’re doing such an amazing job.
When Ívar got back home from his parent’s house, Brenna and I went on a walk to the nearby waterfall, a swirl of raging clear water tumbling over boulders. We walked in step along the Ytri-Rangá, a salmon fishing river, and talked about the life of having kids; financial goals; how money gives a sense of control; how jobs in America give you no time off; and how complaining is the culture of Berlin. More than halfway through the hike, we sat on a bench and shared Mango Indica tea from Brenna’s thermos and snacked on chocolate-filled cookies.
For dinner we ate still-pink burgers from the nearby food truck— my first burger in months. The juice streamed down my wrist and clung to my hair. Katla dipped her fries in coke and Almar slammed ground beef against his tray.
On Monday, Ivar took Katla to school and Almar to his parents, and Brenna and I walked to the community center, where she had a mom's-only workout class and I went to the gym for leg day. I Bulgarian split squatted, free-weight squatted, leg pressed, leg curled, leg raised, and did cable pull-backs.
After the gym, Brenna and I drove the 30-40 minutes to Selfloss, the nearest bigger town. We did the rounds we've done a couple times before, starting with THE ICELANDIC HOT DOG--a perfectly juicy meat tube with sweet, creamy sauce on a bed of soft bun and crispy onions--and its companion cone of salty, seasoned French fries. Mmmmm. And then we went to the thrift shop (where Brenna bought a lilac tea cup), a few clothes stores, the grocery store, and finally to the cinnamon roll bakery. At home, we shared the treats and sipped more tea.
When we picked up Katla from pre-school, she ran over to us in a rained-on suit with dirt smudged over her face, shoes, clothes. Brenna told me the kids go out twice a day, no matter the weather, and then I tried to remember if I’m too cold was ever part of my vocabulary as a kid. I remember digging up onions in winter, hovering around make-believe fires, getting sweaty in snowsuits. When did I first define "comfort" and then use it as an excuse? When Elsa sings “the cold never bothered me anyway”, Brenna jokes how that would never be my song.
For dinner, Brenna baked seasoned chicken drumsticks over a bed of potatoes and zucchini and we ate it with salad that Katla removed from the bowl to her plate, then back to the bowl, then back to her plate, then arranged red peppers for Almar on his tray and licked the cucumber slices, giggling.
Before bed, we sang Julie Andrews’ Do Re Me on repeat in the kitchen and again the next morning, when Katla donned her princess dress and sang along to that and Let it Go for three songs in a row. After she said something about Frozen that Alexa didn't understand, Brenna and I suddenly found ourselves loudly singing along to Who let the Dogs Out. Katla was smiling, looking at Brenna, then me, then Brenna.
On the way to the airport, we got another hot dog, fries, cinnamon rolls. We chatted about the weekend and Brenna said wait are you reconsidering (even though) you've seen the chaos? I don’t think so, I told her, but here's the thing: I do see the chaos. I see the stress and annoyance of never getting alone time. I see the thankless hours, the suffering of trying to soothe the inconsolable, the mandated forgetting of yourself.
But I also see how everything is temporary; how in two years' time Katla went from saying her first words to switching between Icelandic and English at the dinner table. How now she points to an array of whimsical animal noses in her book and asks “which one is your favorite?” and it’s always different from mine. I see how little dude has a face full of Skyrr and how in two years he'll be tearing his own paper towels. It’s just really cool, I tell Brenna, to watch them evolve into their own personalities, to see them bring you pages and books and then volumes of color.
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