Travelogue 954 – December 30

Hard Day’s Night

Part Two

And then, unexpectedly, you encounter a calm graciousness to this anarchic world. I awoke yesterday morning sick again with this autumnal malaise that seems to be my Dutch karma, a kind of Stuyvesant’s Revenge, a zombie cold-bug that never dies. I felt miserable. Nevertheless, I suited up for my morning errands. The family depended on me, after all.

I was moving slowly, unlocking my bike and wiping off the wet seat, feeling like an old man, and very gingerly swinging a leg over. I saw that one of my downstairs neighbours was watching with some amusement. He’s a Brit, and so I knew we could chat easily, without the usual awkwardness that attends small talk with Dutchies. I asked whether he would rather be in England for the holidays. He replied, “Oh, I left England for a reason.” And so the conversation went, sharing observations about our home countries and our holiday plans. He took an interest in the child’s seat on my bike; he has a young one about the age to start riding on his bicycle. All in all, it was a nice break in the routine.

When a few people deferred to me in the line at the Arab bakery, and even smiled, I knew something was up. There was some kind angel overseeing my morning. I smiled back gratefully. In the grocery store, the kids stocking the shelves courteously made way for me. From overhead, we enjoyed Adele singing something sentimental. I smiled at the continued British theme, and I even noticed something like a warmth in my heart as I listened to the song. I lingered as I held up item by item in front of the scanner, as I placed each item in my bag. I’m easily affected by small signs of kindness and grace. I wanted to soak it in, knowing it was a special and temporary dispensation.

Back home, the girls were just getting up. It was a holiday. They were in a sunny mood, and they wanted hugs. They each wanted to show me what they had built with their new magnet sets. Little Ren says, ‘Come look, Vader’. This way of addressing me is a habit she picked up from her big sister, who one day decided we were ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’. This was a cute phase, and one that Little Ren quickly adopted, though in a Dutch voice. She took my hand and led me.

It’s been a tough year. The headlines don’t offer much hope. Wouldn’t it be nice to see some congenitally mean figure like Mitch McConnell show sudden warmth, pause one morning to reflect on the fragility of nature, for example, or express just one small impulse, however hesitant, to be generous to another member of the human race? The cold cosmos shows more empathy, commiserating with me in a whispering voice on a dark morning, knowing somehow that my battery was low. And that is not to trivialize the kindnesses of my neighbours, of my family. Maybe these kindnesses are the dark matter that will hold the world together in the face of ignorance and evil.

Travelogue 953 – December 28 

Hard Day’s Night 

Part One

I don’t suppose I’m the only who feels as though he is staggering toward the finish of this awful year, depleted of the hope that should inform these final steps toward the moment of renewal.

I reflect on the degradation of hope in America, a country founded in hope. I compare the years when my parents were raising young children, when the nation was illuminated with optimism (delusional, maybe, but heartfelt). There were no shadows, only sunshine. I am forced to compare those years to these dim ones in which I am forced to raise my small children.

The story of our moment has roots in the golden days of our fathers, of course, but the overt signs of decay are as old as the millennium, perhaps starting with 9/11 and accelerating through the false spring ten years later, when we realized that not all hope was well-founded, becoming a juggernaut with the advent of the Brexiteers and Trump, and finally igniting in combustible handwriting on midnight’s walls describing inevitable climate change and deadly contagions. It’s solstice now, and we ought to be gazing into our hearths in reflection and repentance, but there’s a man standing in his pyjamas outside in the snow, shouting that he will never recant. We despair that these rantings will be the death of peace; we will never have the silence we need to sum things up. We would like to choose our last impressions.

And so it is we welcome a Biden administration with exhaustion, with lack of conviction, perhaps through no fault of Biden’s or his team’s or his supporters’, but simply because we have been herded through an alley of shadows and beaten with sticks. When hope is a weak candle flame, the only people laughing are the rich and the desperate. Everyone else is at pains to produce a sincere smile.

Travelogue 952 – December 21

 Return of Day

Making it to the solstice was a rough journey, like most of 2020 was; much like the final approach to a clean oasis, only to find it surrounded by briar patches.

Tough as it is, we do arrive. Time makes sure of that, scratched as we may be by the thorns of pandemic lockdowns and government incompetence everywhere. We do arrive at that magic moment when the sun changes directions, halts its southern migration and turns its face back toward its neglected subjects in the north. Days will grow longer again. Discredited science tells us that. Our cumulative experience of shared winters also tells us that, if we would rather not heed those traitorous scientists who are continuously trying to slip microchips into our brains.

The holiday break and the latest lockdown almost arrived simultaneously. The ‘almost’ is operative here. In fact, the lockdown began three days before the end of term, and students found themselves having to present to teachers online. Part of the curriculum this term was oral presentations, and they were due to be graded on posture and body language, among other things. Now they were suddenly forced to address us sitting at a computer. It was awkward, and of course I failed everyone. (Not really.)

The whole year has been like this, and it has been exhausting. Education has been ad hoc and improvisational at every step, where creativity was lacking then simple blind tenaciousness sufficing, the students handled like lab rats whom we alternately isolated to keep safe and then herded together in order to be socialized and to give them their proper college experience. They seem rattled to me, encouragingly goofy at times, but their insouciance blunted by uncertainty.

Hope is a feathered thing, ready to soar into the winter storm, if necessary. It hasn’t abandoned even Donald Trump, hunkered down in his lonely luxury, tweeting inanities and eating ice cream, so why should it abandon the rest of us? Even as a new, fast-spreading strain of COVID appears in Britain, scaring us in our sleep, we look to the lengthening day, and then to the new year, (and then to the new president?) for new inspiration. Mundane life in lockdown is fuelled by rumour and hope. The day is reborn!

Travelogue 951 – December 19 

Here Today

It’s been forty years since John Lennon was shot and killed in Central Park. That’s as long as he lived. And that’s a sobering ratio. To give it some perspective, it’s been seventy years since Edgar Rice Burroughs died, at an age of a few years over seventy. Remember him, the creator of Tarzan? That’s a nice reminder of the power of Time.

Paul McCartney has also been in the news, just having released his ‘III’ album. I was reminded in a sentimental little piece written about McCartney that I found posted on Facebook of his touching little tribute to Lennon, found on his 1982 album, ‘Tug of War’. The tune was called ‘Here Today’. ‘If you were here today,’ he sings to his friend and song-writing partner.

There’s that little formula that I find so tragic, the theoretical ‘would’. ‘What would you say?’ McCartney asks. What would John Lennon say now, literally a lifetime later? From these innocent and sad speculations spring our insubstantial ghosts, our hauntings. I’ve been re-reading Gore Vidal’s novel about the Emperor Julian. What would Julian say, if he were here today? He would probably recommend we sacrifice a bull beside the Reflecting Pool in Washington.

These two icons, Lennon and McCartney, have cast long shadows over my life and thoughts. The good kind of shadow, the kind you trace on the sidewalk and measure yourself against. I remember a dream I had some time near the end of my youth, an image of a kind of personal Mount Rushmore. The faces were those of Lennon, Kerouac and Hemingway. That was years ago. I much prefer other authors now. I prefer McCartney to Lennon. It’s hard to shake those youthful icons, though, and there’s little reason to.

I idolized my brothers with a similar fervour. They were much older than I; they would remember the Beatles as a living artefact of their youth. The band was history by the time I was old enough to appreciate them. But as a teen, I idly projected the personae of the songwriters onto my brothers. John was the soulful and private Paul, and Michael was the iconoclastic John. It was the kind of emotional echoing that helps a teen place himself in a confusing world. The charismatic songwriters provided many of us with powerful archetypes in that era, archetypes almost divorced from reality, but not entirely.

I wonder what inspirational figures will fire the imaginations of my girls. They’re too young to attach to Greta. I’ve certainly lost track of the current slate of pop stars. I wish for them the same sort of love and inspiration I experienced with my heroes. And, inevitably, the same heartbreak, I suppose, if they live out the long lifespans that I want for them.

 Travelogue 950 – December 10

The Way Seems Long

 

I finally understand. For parents, this season is a competitive test of endurance. In Holland, we basically have two Christmas seasons, one for the kids at the beginning of December and one centred around the common date of the 25^th. In addition, this family has one kid’s birthday in between those two Christmases and an anniversary at the end of November. This season – I see it now – is an Olympic event. It requires discipline and concentration. Frivolities must be pushed aside. The early years, when the children were young, were training for the more serious competition. One gauges one’s failures in the eyes of teachers and other parents, and one makes adjustments for the coming years.

 

I wake early, and I stretch. I do some breathing exercises. In the pre-dawn darkness, I turn on my desk lamp, and I read through strategy. I review gift lists and party schedules. One must have gifts not only for one’s own children, but for children’s classmates (in case of birthdays,) for children of adults in your network (in case of parties,) and gifts for one’s spouse, to keep morale up. There are holiday costumes; children have their picture days. One must review Christmas card schedules, for production or purchase of those cards, for inscription with signatures and cute notes, and then for posting. Cards should make it in time, not only for Christmas, but so that those who might be made to feel guilty are able to post something back. Conversely, some slack must be allowed in the schedule for our own surprises and miscalculations, people we’d forgotten about, people whose street addresses suddenly turn up, or those who unexpectedly re-emerge on stage after the first scene, so to speak, of the holiday variety show.

 

I see it clearly now. We are entering our athletic prime. We have performed all right this year, certainly better than last year. Objectively, there’s plenty of room for improvement. The next few years will be critical for our parenting career.

 

The timing of Little Ren’s birthday has seemed particularly cruel this year. She turned four, and in the Netherlands that means she starts school. Children are integrated into classes mid-year, whenever they have their fourth birthday. That means that, just as the temperatures are dropping, we are forced to figure out how to get two children to school in the morning. On the surface, that sounds simple. We’re already taking one, after all. But that one child was riding in my one child’s seat on the back of my bicycle.

 

We don’t have full daylight till nine in the morning, if you can call December light ‘full’ in any way. In fact, winter mornings leave one feeling uneasy and eventually disappointed. One glances into the sky, sensing something wrong. Even the sunny days are dim in some intangible way. Most mornings now, we pedal away from home with the bike light on, a tiny lamp that illuminates very little in the murky hour before dawn. The air is misty, and Baby Jos shrinks into her big jacket. The way seems long.

 Travelogue 949 – December 5

My Gift from Sinterklaas

 

It’s Sinterklaas, the day that Dutch children wake up to discover gifts that have been left for them in the night by the generous old saint. Me, I woke up early for an appointment to get a COVID test. I’ve had a cough and cold for weeks now, and the doctor won’t see me unless I get this test. I don’t think I have the virus, but it doesn’t hurt to be safe, anyway. The test is free, and easy to set up in my efficient new country. I made the appointment online, choosing a site I could reach on my bicycle.

 

Fortunately, there was no rain. In fact, the sun entered into a blue field of sky as I pedalled toward Schiedam. I had to marvel how far south the sun rises in December. There were a few clouds, scattered along the western horizon, but far less than we’ve seen all week. December came to us under heavy cloud cover. Mornings have been dark and wet. It’s been hard to tell exactly when dawn turns day. The light has been dim and watery, and everything glistened.

 

The testing centre in Schiedam is set in a warehouse district, long streets with anonymous buildings. One of these grim buildings has been taken over by the health service. Masked attendants guide cars one way and bikes another. Walking paths are delineated in green tape, and every few paces there is a station manned by young people with cheerful dispositions. They check identity. They pass you a labelled vial with a long stick. They assign you to a testing station. They bid you blow your nose and then hand you back the tissue in a plastic bag. They seat you. Finally, the nurse comes, clothed in protective gear from head to toe.

 

The young man assigned to me had a sense of humour. That’s always a nice quality in a torturer. He advanced with his swabs, and I was suitably humiliated for the sin of debility. I gagged, and I cried. He forgave me, and he sent me away, to wander like a lost soul along the forlorn paths outlined on the cold concrete floor of the sanitized warehouse. I emerged into the frigid morning air, redeemed by my suffering. I raced home in hopes I would be there before the girls ran downstairs to find their gifts.