What does it mean to live in a place that offers a safe way of life? Is Basel really a Wonderland?
Dear Auntie SAM: How safe is Basel?
Shortly after our marriage, my husband & I bought a 1922 Craftsman, with a blue covered porch and a very large yard. In the area protected from the sun, rhododendrons stretched 4 meters high & grew basketball flowers. When their petals fell, our yard looked as if fairies had welcomed their queen.
The other side of the house had been used by the previous owners as their auto park. Under uneven ground sparsely covered with grass, rest car parts, toys, & one mysterious carpet.
The sun hated that side. It made the soil tough to break & rendered seemingly sturdy flora weak. Helios & I killed planets of plants learning how to appreciate each other’s advantages.
Loved ones often questioned if we’d ever make things work.
But by our tenth year, perhaps to everyone’s surprise, the former parking lot became a garden. Bees, birds, spiders, & worms giggled; encouraged life. Our cats climbed leafy trees. Textures transformed with each season. Peonies, forsythia, lilacs, & clover offered true romance. We even grew fresh herbs.
In front of the house stood a shrub. Round. Robust. Hardy. It provided privacy from the street & was lovely for that. Birds hid in it. But someone (perhaps the tenants who considered it a good idea to bury a carpet) planted it too close to the stairwell to our house. Its roots, fierce & confident, lifted stone steps.
So I wanted it removed.
My husband & I cut it back to a stump. We loosened the dirt around it. Tried to get it to wiggle. Like a drunk at an open bar, it refused to budge.
We hired professionals. They brought tools. Equipment surely derived from a dungeon. They also failed to upend it. Its roots, firmly planted, spread throughout our yard so securely that we would have had to remove the stairwell to remove this shrub.
When we left Seattle, it had returned to full bloom & was taller than my knees. I admired it greatly for its tenacity.
Now, five years later, it’s probably bigger than me.
Since living in Basel, I’ve thought often of that shrub & the things it taught me. I’ve thanked it, too.
The most dangerous thing about moving here is that the world around you will seem perfect. A beautiful garden easing thoughts & actions to bliss.
It’s only natural to want to prune weeds.
If you come to Basel for a company or as a Tag-along, you’re putting your life into the hands of a gardener.
Gardeners who encourage growth. Who shape shrubs into magnificent storybook creatures. Who redefine parking lots. And who sometimes kill. Often innocently … but the result is the same.
I could go on endlessly about how children walk alone through wooded paths to school from the age of four. How mothers leave open purses, fat wallets perched atop like turkeys asking for the gun, on the streets at Fasnacht. How grown men ride bicycles – or scooters – drunk at 6 am.
How cuties wearing red riding coats never encounter wolves.
But there are lots of people who will do that for you. Besides, that doesn’t sound like me.
Because when things go badly, Darling, on the other side of the world from your support, it does not matter how the people whose lives run smoothly work.
You need to know how to live.
To survive in Basel: establish roots.
Find people like you. People who like you. Give. Weave your ethereal soul through stone. Embed yourself in Swiss-cheese soil. Then bloom.
A short-sighted gardener still might try to oust you. But, if you’ve reached out enough, & Fortuna smiles … you’ll live.
XO
AS
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