a picture worth a good slice of pizza

i come upon this wide clearing along a bike path on the way to the boys' schools... 

and i will almost always catch my breath in surprise at how beautiful it is...

and that's what i like about denmark-- because this is what you get-- there's no strip mall* just out of sight of the camera, no expensive restaurant exploiting the view.  you just have to learn to love the beauty surrounding you and be content that this is your gift for the day.

i will make an embarrassing admission that it took me a long time to internalize this.  i can very clearly remember my first pang of homesickness.  it was three months after arriving in denmark, probably exactly to the day.  it was a friday and greg was home early.  we took the boys to a park not totally unlike the park at william's school... sort of "unkempt" if you will.  i was pushing one of the boys on a tire swing and looking into at a very small opening between a couple of tall bushes, and suddenly i thought-- i just want to walk through that clearing and see a strip mall.  i don't even like strip malls, but at that moment i was just not content to simply be happy in a land that was content to not be overrun with consumer options.  it's friday.  i want to get in my car and take my kids out for pizza.  how is it that an entire country has decided that it is so unimportant to take one's family out for pizza on a friday night that there is no good option for taking one's family out for pizza on a friday night?!  how do they live like this???!!!!!!  i felt trapped.  i couldn't walk far enough to find what i was looking for that day.  i couldn't get in a car and drive to it.  i wasn't about to buy a plane ticket.

but that was three years ago.  three years (ago) in denmark.  now, i understand a little better the idea that fewer options equals simplification and simplification leads to simplicity and simplicity leads to contentment.  there is a lot to be said about narrowing down our options.  it makes us appreciate what's left.  it makes us slow down.  and it's hard to do in the united states.  there are sooo many options.  so many good options.  it's hard to resist.  and it's generally so convenient.  and it's ingrained in the vast majority of us.  when we go back, we indulge in all of it.  even when we say or believe, "we don't like strip malls" we find ourselves at them, because it's all just so damn convenient.  even when we say we don't mind riding our bikes everywhere-- in the u.s., we drive (that's also because it's downright scary biking most places in the u.s. and often nearly impossible to get to some places by bike).  so i can't say that even if i've discovered a little of denmark's secret to happiness that i've discovered how to bottle it up and take it with me wherever i go.  i think i've definitely learned to take a little of it with me.  i've seen what it looks like and what it feels like, but i'm never going to pass up some good pizza, especially on a friday night... even if it's in a strip mall.

p.s. pictures... (the helmets are because they're about to get on their bikes but there's always one more thing they have to do)... 

i love that they don't cut the grass/wildflowers obsessively at william's school

*denmark has malls, denmark has mcdonalds, denmark has traffic (we sat in it on the way back from last month's hyttetur) and denmark arguably has strip malls (me: "would you say denmark has strip malls?" greg: "hmmm?... yes?... but not like the united states.")