CHAPTER 11 MONICA’S STORY The December Fulbright gathering is in Budapest, so we meet at Sherry’s apartment early in the morning. We love Fulbright Fridays and start to call the other grant recipients “family.” While Tom and Zoli watch the children, Christine, Sherry, and I walk to a nearby café to compare notes on how everyone is adjusting. I learn that, unlike us, with our increased “guest catering” prices, Sherry’s kids pay the same for school lunches as the other students, and Christine’s children get lunch for free. I guess I don’t understand the system. Does our kids’ “guest” status extend to the classroom and culture of the school? Are they being included as much as they can be? These thoughts churn in my mind as we bundle up in our hats and mittens for the cold walk back to Sherry’s apartment. Laughs greet us when we enter; the children have been running around outside, playing video games, and having the time of their lives with the other Americans. Seven kids between the ages of two and nine have kept the men busy; Tom and Zoli are grinning ear to ear. When we return home, we’re ready to decorate our townhouse for Christmas, so we unpack the artificial tree our exchange family left for us. “This is it? How are we possibly going to make a Christmas tree out of this?” Nathan says, eyeing the three small sections. We piece it together to the kids’ disparaging laughter. By our standards, it is tiny. “No wonder Hungarians don’t get a lot of presents under the tree,” Nathan says. Tom and I appreciate the message of a modest Christmas this year; after all, we will have to bring their gifts back to the US with us. I learn that Hungarian children put their boots on the windowsill on the eve of December 6 to await a visit from Szent Mikulás, who fills them with candy and nuts for good girls and boys, or the evil Krampusz, who adds sticks for the bad. Our kids scramble to their boots, bang off the dirt, and carefully arrange them on the sill. They are thrilled to find szaloncukor (Christmas chocolates) in the morning. Still eagerly anticipating Christmas, though, they busily decorate our townhouse with paper chains made from completed pages of their homeschool workbooks. Henry makes an origami snowman for the top of the tree. In iskola, they learn that it is Jézuska, the Baby Jesus, who leaves the presents. “But it’s really Santa, right Mom?” Anna asks. “Well, it is at our house,” I reply. Tom and I shop online for gifts, but the vendors we use don’t ship to Hungary. Instead, we send them to Tom’s brother in the US, who repacks them to mail to us. For three weeks we check our mailbox every day for a note from the posta (post office) that our package is here. By Christmas Eve it still hasn’t arrived, so we carefully arrange the few presents we have, the highlight being the toy crossbow I 129 WINTER bought in Romania. I stand back to survey – it’s a dismal sight. A wrenching knot forms in my belly at how disappointed the kids will be. The next morning, they don’t seem to notice how meager the offering is. They gasp at the wrapped gifts and tear them open under the gaze of the snowman and Henry’s lizard. Most presents are disposable items like chocolate and craft supplies. “Oh good,” Tom says sarcastically, seeing three plastic pencil sharpeners. “Now we can sharpen three more pencils.” Tom’s wit – of course the sharpeners won’t work but once – combined with my relief at the kids’ joy makes me laugh out loud. “No matter what Santa brings us, it’s still amazing,” Henry says. Bless his heart. HENRY Winter hits hard. The temperature plummets to about –12 o C (10o F) and the fog rolls off Lake Balaton, collecting as frost that freezes directly to the tree limbs. My drive to the gimnázium in the Mighty Opel becomes increasingly treacherous with no plows pushing the slush off the road. Henry, wearing another new pair of sneakers, skates his way home from school on the sidewalks that are sheer ice. At one corner he announces, “The words are just popping into my head,” referring to how naturally vocabulary comes to mind now compared to previous efforts. His brain is sorting through the Hungarian language and making sense of it. When we join Mark and Lujza for dinner or an afternoon of playing board games, Henry frequently asks, “What does this word mean?” I can’t say a simple sentence, myself. Henry’s class plans a Christmas play in which he has a few lines. We ask his teacher to write them so we can help with memorization. “Henry is a clever boy,” she says, “He can learn it during school.” She is a good teacher who believes in our son and his abilities. I compare this to my experiences in the US where our children’s teachers expect us to sign their tests, check for upcoming assignments on the school website, and remind them to wear the right shirt for Spirit Day. Overseeing these details is tiring and I dislike the underlying message that children aren’t responsible and need parental involvement to remember anything. I appreciate the teachers doing the teaching here, allowing me to be the parent. On the day of the play, the room is lined with chairs for the audience. Wearing their dressiest clothes, the children solemnly enter the room carrying lit candles. They recite lengthy lines and arrange themselves for several songs. The teachers offer no help other than relighting the candles at the end of the play; I can’t envision this occurring back in the US. This is the level of independence, responsibility, and maturity I wish for our kids. Portraying Joseph in the classic nativity story, Henry has two lines – the first complete sentences I hear one of my children say in Hungarian. I tear up at the love in the room when our son stands alone in front of the audience and says, “Boldog békés karácsonyt kívánunk.” (We wish you a Merry Christmas.) After the holiday, we embrace the cold with a trip to the Tatra Mountains of Slovakia. The flat plains of Hungary give way to rolling hills, then quiet, snow-covered pinelands after we cross the border. We rent a one-bedroom basement 130.