ASK NOT FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

I might begin by saying that when I named this blog, I had something slightly different in mind. “Chiming Bells” for me conjured up romantic images of church bells pealing out over hill and dale, echoing through village streets and lending their poetic rhythm to daily life.

Bells and bell ringing have, after all, fascinated me since childhood. Perhaps P.D. Eastman’s book THE BEST NEST had something to do with it? Those of you who know the book will remember that the story tells of Mr. And Mrs. Bird, an avian couple on the verge of parenthood who seek a new and better nest for their family. After Mr. Bird makes one miserable selection after the other, Mrs. Bird takes charge and swiftly decides upon a bell tower for their new home. When Mr. Parker, the bell ringer, appears on duty, her choice proves to have disastrous consequences.

Decades later, when I read those pages aloud to Leo (over and over and over again), I cannot help thinking that in moving to Switzerland, we were lifted up out of our suburban lives and planted down right smack in the middle of that story book. Just like in the illustrations, our village has a post office, a grocery store and a church bell tower all within a few bucolic meters of one another.

Wolfi’s school house standing at the very center of the village also has a bell tower, and its urgent ringing signals for the children playing tag or kicking their feet on the swings that their lessons will begin shortly. At the sound of its buzz, they rush for their backpacks and pile into the building ready to exchange sneakers for slippers and get down to serious work.

Then, of course, there are the cowbells which never fail to make the American Tourist Heart in me leap for joy. Cows with bells on their collars! Really?! And not just in the far flung Alpine meadows but right here in our very own little village. Their peaceful jingling cannot help but lend a storybook feel to my every walk here through the countryside.

Leo, however, for all of his close readings of THE BEST NEST, has given my poetic invocation of “chiming bells” an entirely new resonance. For at three and a half, he is currently obsessed with, you guessed it, the door bell. Yes, the door bells of Switzerland seem to have awoken in him a deep and irrepressible urge to press them over and over and over again. And if he, Leo, is not standing outside ringing the dickens out of our door bell, then chances are that some other little boy will be along momentarily to ring it himself. For by a great stroke of good fortune, the streets of our new neighborhood are full of little boys who, with a short school day, spend the afternoons in and out of each other’s houses and yes, enthusiastically ringing each other’s door bells.

 Needless to say, with every buzz of the bell, Pumpkin erupts into a fit of barking which reverberates through the house with a thoroughly un-poetic intensity. When the barking starts, I retreat into fantasies of turning off the breaker switch or replacing the bell with a knocker located strategically beyond the reach of eager, sticky fingers.

Extending well beyond our front door and its magnetic bell, the Baroque town of Solothurn boasts its own impressive array of chiming objects. The biggest town in the region, Solothurn is where we villagers go for our more serious shopping and café sessions. Seated picturesquely along the river Aare, it is, above all, a biker’s town, and the quiet whizzing and clicking of the velo fills the city streets. Perhaps I do not need to mention that each and every one of these velos comes equipped with its own bell, a mandatory accessoire in a land where bikes are used as a means of transportation.

I do though mention this tidbit because on my last outing into Solothurn, Leo and I needed a good half hour to get up one solitary city street. That being because he stopped at every single parked bike along the way to ring, you guessed it, the bell. And so a quick jaunt into town for apples and new shoes became for me yet another prolonged exercise in saintly patience. While Leo was intent on his ringing, I offered up a prayer that he not topple over the bike in question and even more so that the owner in question not appear and demand to know just what those eager, sticky fingers were doing all over his pristine velo.

So far, I am happy to report that Leo’s bell ringing has not had any consequences more disastrous than arousing the odd moment of maternal discord. I am, however, hoping that he outgrows this phase soon and that my own love of bells not be dulled by his incessant ringing.

And so, dear friends, I ask you, the next time you happen to hear the romantic peal of a church bell, the jolting summons of the door bell or the dainty chirp of a bicycle bell, ask not for whom the bell tolls.

It tolls for me.