DutchInLaw

I left the helmet in the hall, put my toddler to bed with extra careful kisses. Then I opened a message to my husband. I wanted to text, "I'm done here. Let's move back home." But I couldn't. Because we are home. And whatever the USA or Poland or other countries used to be to us, they're not home now.

Nike high-tops and slouchy cool clothes, a cigarette in one hand and a phone in the other. The epitome of an urban "Cool Kid", a young man leans against the corner of a cafe as I walk by with Pippin. Or try to walk by.                     

This month some of my family are coming to visit (so exciting!), which means that I get to show them around my DutchInLaw life. It would be fascinating to introduce them to more DutchInLaws – foreigners married to Dutch spouses – because everyone has a different way of interacting with Dutch culture. This is mine. There's the inside world: I drink tea, read and write, and take care of my little family. There's the outside world: I bike around town, have coffee with friends, and take Pippin to the shops and the library.

I took public transport or wa l ked till ab o ut three months. By then my baby could hold his head up, and I felt my comfort/balance level was enough to bike safely with a front carrier. I also checked the Dutch rules, and they say it's 'unsafe' to bike with a baby carrier/sling, due to falling risks, but not illegal per se. The official advice is to use a car seat in a safety fastening n the back of your bike, or a car seat fastened in a cart/wagon. After the baby can sit up alone, a baby bike seat is fine.  http://www.veiligheid.nl/tips-en-advies/baby-mee-op-de-fiets

I looked around me as I walked, thinking about what to write. How do you put images, smells, and feelings into words? Especially random, disconnected moments in days like that one. Above me in an apartment building, two women in Muslim headscarves sat on a balcony and watched the world - the calm, sunny for the moment, world in the Netherlands. How many thousands of kilometers from home are they? Or have their families lived here for generations. Next to them sat a solid 'quad'- a four wheeled road-ready vehicle. What a picture that would have made, but I didn't have my camera with me. I kept walking. Bikers in tight-fitting spandex - 'snelfietsers' - passed me by. One, paused to check his bike, smiled at me; a girl in rolled up jeans and a tank top, who decided on a whim that the day was too pretty to waste and was walking the 9 kilometers home from her parents-in-law. Her Dutch parents-in-law. Her own parents were hundreds of kilometers and an ocean away, no...