Shrimpy's new motor and houses that don't trust you

Shrimpy’s motor has been giving us trouble, idling rough and stalling at critical times, like in busy canal intersections where you definitely don’t want your motor to stall. We’ve only had one nice weekend in Amsterdam when it’s not been raining or too windy and the faulty motor trouble ruined our chance to sail during the brief window of good weather, which we decided was the last straw. The summer season is too short to mess around with an 8-year-old unreliable motor. We bought a new one and James transported it on the bakfiets and worked all week to install it, getting the wiring sorted so it’s connected to the steering console.

Our little canal-side dock has grown wild — the path is overgrown with thistles and blackberry vines. The bees are so happy. While James was working on the motor I had a scuffle with an enormous spider who chased me off the boat. The spider went overboard during our altercation, but James fished it out of the canal and flung it into the blackberry bushes so it may not be the last we’ve heard of that spider. I suspect it wants revenge. We all do.

Between the rainy weather and the construction delays on our new house (and lingering grief from my dad’s death, probably) I’ve been feeling stuck. I haven’t felt my creative spark and my brain is pretty broken. I can’t seem to focus on anything substantial. I haven’t felt like socializing or writing, I can’t read, and I can barely sit through a movie. The only exception is Widow’s Bay, which I absolutely love — it’s easily the best show I’ve seen in years and if you aren’t watching it I highly recommend it. I won’t say anything about it because the less you know going in the better, but it’s such a clever mix of genres and characters and atmosphere and storytelling. It’s the one thing (aside from sailing on Shrimpy) that is giving me joy right now.

The other thing I’m grappling with is saying goodbye to my current house. We are about half packed up — there are boxes everywhere and we’re using the dining room and parlor as staging areas for all the stuff we’re trying to sell on Marktplaats or donate to the kringle and everything is in disarray and it feels suffocating, and I know my house feels it too. This house and I have a special connection — I felt it from the moment I walked in the door nearly eight years ago. This house spoke to me immediately even though it seemed out of our reach— a beautiful old mansion with an established garden and soaring ceilings and stained glass and original wood pocket doors and fireplaces and a primary bedroom big enough to do five cartwheels from end to end if you can do a cartwheel (I can not) in the grand, old-money neighborhood of Oud Zuid, adjacent to the Vondelpark. We never dreamed we’d be able to live in a place like this, but our landlord hasn’t put a euro into this house in literal decades and it’s in such disrepair that the rent is significantly under market value. James has the skills to fix the plumbing and plastering to keep the walls from falling on our heads. When we moved in with our giant American labrador and middle schooler we thought we’d only be here for 1-2 years max, but that turned into eight years and now it’s time to leave and I’m in mourning. It’s not unusual for a house or city to speak to me — when it happens it’s very clear. It’s magic. Some sort of witchcraft. St. Augustine, New Orleans, NYC, and Amsterdam are all cities that have spoken very clearly to me. So clearly that I have upended my life and done the impossible to move there. This house spoke to me with that clarity. I speak to this house every day. Out loud. I greet her when I walk through the door, and I say good morning and goodnight. I tell her all my story ideas and she listens and helps me make things happen. This house took care of us during the Covid lockdowns. This house saw our dog through the best, and the last years of his life. This house supported me through my breakdown after leaving the States while I recovered from and found my voice to write about my toxic boss at The Atlantic. This house saw my kid through middle and high school, and held me while I let go so my kid could leave the nest. Just writing these things makes me cry. I have loved this house as much as anyone could love anything. I hate that this house’s fate is to be stripped of all her ancient beauty — to be gutted and turned into four soulless apartments to earn our greedy banker landlord millions of euros. I want to keep her — to stay and take care of her the way she takes care of me. But we both know our time together is ending.

Our new house is lovely and is everything we were looking for — it’s smaller and more manageable, fits our budget, is on a great canal in a lively and charming neighborhood in Oud West, just on the other side of the Vondelpark. We searched and searched and searched to find a place that had old Dutch charm — the big windows facing the canal, the fireplaces, the high ceilings with ornate plaster mouldings, and no crazy Dutch death stairs. Our new house has a magnificent garden that the previous owners spent 40 years planting and tending with no chemicals — choosing flowers and grasses and plants that work with the light and climate and provides a vast ecosystem for bees and birds and bugs. There’s every reason to love and cherish our new house. But. Our new house is not speaking to me. I’m greeted with silence, and I must admit, I have not warmed to our new house either. My theory is the new house and I don’t trust each other yet. The new house is still loyal to the couple who lived there all those years. Who planted the garden and preserved all her old details. Yes, they did allow mold to grow in the basement (to the tune of 40K euros worth of water abatement), which we have now remediated, but they loved the house completely. We all cried when we signed the papers at the notary.

The new house is still under construction. We’ve chosen the paint colors and the wallpaper and the fixtures and appliances and all the things that will make it ours. But the house and I have not found our connection. Not yet. Right now the new house is choked in plaster dust and stripped down to the studs with no walls to cover her cold bones. She’s shivering and scared of all the noise and change. Her garden is completely wild — 5 months of neglect because we can’t get back there through all the construction to tend to it. All the changes are necessary — the wiring was ancient and terrifying and needed to be brought up to code. But the work is dragging on endlessly. (There is an end in sight, and James keeps telling me it’s at the point where all the big foundational work is done and we’ll start to see the finishing work soon, but I’m still blind to it.) It’s no wonder the house doesn’t trust us yet. I suspect she senses my own apprehension. How I’m holding back. It’s all fear right now and no love or comfort. A sensation that I suspect feels familiar to everyone who is reading this, but for other reasons — mostly having to do with politics and the state of the world, which I also feel.

Last week I crawled over the construction and shimmied along a plank to reach the garden. I chose the most beautiful rose that was climbing up the pergola. I took it to the paint store in the hopes that I could match the color for the upstairs bedroom that overlooks the garden. I told the man at the store that I had a rose in my bag whose color I want to match but the rose is dying so the color is fading and without skipping a beat the man said “Well we’d better act fast!” and we both laughed. It felt good. We chose a custom blend color — just a whisper of pink. I hope the new house will feel pretty and loved and cared for. That’s what we all want, isn’t it?

Xoxo