The sun is verlegen, a toddler hiding from strangers, hiding behind the knees of mother earth and mother storm. Morning is a long, attenuated dawn, while light leaks ever so slowly into the fog and into the clouds, by such tiny increments that the streetlamps don’t know when to switch off. Photon by photon, the day advances, and the colours of late autumn emerge. Yellow leaves clog the rain gutters. The trees are almost bare. Rose light glows in the fog along the brick alleyways, violet light along the canals. There are fewer people on the bike paths, but the those who are pedal intensely toward their goal, heads down. We are the only ones still taking our time, Baby Jos signing songs while she pedals and Little Ren sitting quietly behind me in her bicycle seat, hands in her mittens, hands in her lap.
Change is memory. That’s the beautiful thing about seasons. The physical sensations of change – the bracing chill on the cheek, the foggy breath in the crisp air – awaken feelings that have been dormant. Winter has winter thoughts. The cold brings winter meditations. The holidays remember other holidays. We think of the past.
Timelines converge. The holiday season coincides with the arrival of winter and with the end of the calendar year and the end of the school semester. We’re spiralling into a calendar singularity. The pressure is intense, and yet the rituals of weather are a sort of salvation: the lights, the gifts, and all the clothing. Leaving the house takes time. It involves some challenging inventories. Life slows down at the door; it sets a pace for us. Do we have everything? Often enough, we do. It’s satisfying.
Monday, November 28, 2022
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
“I love Sinterklaas so much!” Baby Jos squeals in the morning. For once, I agree with her. It’s not just that Sinterklaas and I are, in fact, the same person. I have been converted; I love Sinterklaas.
The holiday has come on quickly, as it has every year. By mid-November, Sinterklaas was departing from Spain, making his way to the Netherlands. Before I’ve prepared myself, mentally or emotionally, the girls are placing their shoes in the entryway of our apartment. I have no candy or gifts at the ready. The ritual has begun! For several weeks before the day that the Dutch call ‘Sinterklaas’, the old man stops by during the night and leave treats in children’s shoes.
Once I’ve gotten over the calendar shock, I find myself enjoying it. There’s something fun, if I must admit it, to the mad dash for treats and gifts for the girls. And suddenly I feel rather sentimental, as I contemplate the possibility that this might be the last one. Baby Jos will one day become too cool for the children’s holiday, wise to the ruse that an old saint and his dubious Sancho Panza would travel miles in the night for the sake of my beautiful girls. I wish for them it were so.
It’s a bit like believing in democracy. For a brief, mad moment, as the US midterm election results poured in, one could almost believe in the nobility of an infectious idea. Democracy might survive. And fairness, rationality, sanity, justice! One wishes for the power to stop time, to be able to relish the illusion that humanity mattered, freeze one headline before the next comes, feel some hope.
Saturday, November 05, 2022
“Everything is changing.” Sometimes when children speak, it feels like prophecy. This morning, Baby Jos almost stepped onto the wrong escalator in the Metro. There are two escalators. The one carrying people down to the train platforms is usually on the right. This morning, it was on the left. Baby Jos was spacy, and I had to pull her back with one foot out over the rolling track. We laughed, and all the way down on the correct escalator, she kept repeating the refrain, “Everything is changing.”
In our Metro station, the platforms for both directions are on a central island. In two rows down the entire islands are squat, round pillars. They are white, but lights are placed in the housing at the tops of the pillars. The lights change colours in a slow cycle, lightly tinting the white pillars. Baby Jos likes holding her hands below those changing colours. Today, the first colour was red, and she shouted, “I have blood on my hands!” That was a chilling pronouncement from a child. Of course, she went on to say she had water on her hands and then grass, as the colours changed.
My girl’s words rang like dark auguries in my ears. I’m on edge, I think, because of the news from America. The mid-term elections are finally drawing nigh, and I find it unnerving. It’s not as though I was ever optimistic. Two years ago, I was already sure that the Blue Wave was only a short respite for the failing republic. I was already sure that 2022 would see the descent of a long night in American politics. But no one really wants to be right with predictions like that. And it all feels differently when it’s imminent.
I think the worst part of living through these sea changes is the gritty detail of it. You just want to hit fast forward. If we’re entering the new dark ages, then let’s just get on with it. Which is my mud hut? And the absolute worst of it is experiencing the personalities that will bring on the night. Jesus, what a pack of feral rodents! Where are the smooth evil geniuses, the ones who make you like them despite yourself, suave and polished? Or maybe even Eggman from Sonic. He has the virtue of some humour. Instead, we are herded into oblivion by the likes of Oz and Taylor Greene and Walker and Lake. And Trump, the ultimate painted clown who doesn’t have the wit to know he’s evil.
Lake in Arizona is particularly off-putting. If Trump is arrogant, it’s for lack of any perspective or introspection. He’s almost endearing in his primitive unconsciousness, his one-dimensionality. Lake sneers at us. She hungers for power with a maliciousness born of human intelligence. Lake wants you to know that she knows better, and that she freely chooses the path into the brambles. I’ll go on record with my prediction that, if elected, Lake will be the evil queen in our rapidly approaching American Gothic morality tale.