I must understand this one thing. She won’t go to bed until she has explained it very well. She has realized the cause of the phenomenon she is calling her ‘wobbly gum’.
Little Ren stands before me in her pyjamas, which consist of a violet Minnie Mouse onesy, while I sit on the side of her little bed. The night is black outside our window. Winter is in full black-night swing, and all our memories from this season are dim interiors and grey middays.
Ren’s eyes are wide with serious intent. She demonstrates her point with her hands, which are held vertically with fingers together and straight, palms toward me. One hand points to the side, and the other, just below the first, points up.
You see? Here’s the new tooth. The gum is in the way. How can the new tooth come up if the gum is here. So she carefully turns her hand to indicate that the gum has made way for the tooth. She raises the tooth hand, and then the two hands are side by side, co-existing in peace. She shrugs to show how simple it all is, the mystery of our bodies. Everything will be fine.
This demonstration accomplished, she comes back to me, and she sits in my lap. The night is pressing in on the windows. We are alone, huddling in our circles of light and warmth while winter proceeds outside the windows, like a long migration of nocturnal herds. We must stay inside and out of their way.
Little Ren is still afraid to sleep alone. She has nightmares. Animals and monsters prowl in her sleep. In the middle of the night, she calls for us. She doesn’t want to be alone. For now, she is free to sit in my lap as long as she wants, chatting and swinging her legs, leaning her head into my chest, even falling asleep if she likes. My back is to the dark window, and no monsters are getting in.
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
Friday, January 20, 2023
On the contrary, my girls and I enjoy our commute to school. We take our time, and we talk. Baby Jos pedals forward on her little, pink bicycle. Little Ren rides behind me in the children’s seat. We ride together at Jos’s pace. Usually, we ride side by side, but sometimes Jos sings to herself, and she dawdles. When she slows down, I pull ahead and to the right, to give more space to passing cyclists.
For the Dutch, the bike paths are just another opportunity to hurry. Hurrying is a favourite pastime here. The most Dutch among them seem positively righteous in their rushing, loved and affirmed by a rushing God. For others, less exalted, the race is a contest of some sort, with themselves or with the clock or with the ghosts of their ancestors. Some pedal with anxiety, working out a pressing algebraic equation with their feet. The road could never be long enough for those. The common denominator is their solitude. Their eyes register no recognition of humanity among the race participants. People are pylons on the obstacle course. The only reason my little family draws attention is that we don’t conform to the usual rules of motion. We catch the eye as randomized elements on the course. Passer-by stare at us like creatures who have wandered into the wrong ecosystem.
But, for all that, we enjoy our time on the bike path. We are well used to the routine by now, venturing out into the cold and climbing up on the bikes. The girls play; they talk. As we pedal along, they sing or they chatter. They are in an expository phase now, compelled to explain or describe. They provide long taxonomies of their teachers, friends and classmates, naming them, describing them, and correcting each other. They lay out precise moralities of playground behaviour. They review agendas for me. They remind when their birthdays are. They count off the days until cherished activities are planned.
Baby Jos is the scientist. When I say, “Look at the pretty sky!” Baby Jos catalogues all the colours we see in the sunrise. She has lots of ideas. She explains the prototype of a phone she wants to build. It involves cans and a wire that will bounce signals off a satellite. That seems to sum up the leap in imagination we’ve made in the decades since I was a child.
Sunday, January 15, 2023
Winter has something to say, but who has the time for the small talk? It’s Sunday evening, and I am wiped out. I am more exhausted than I was on Friday. So far, I have completed exactly … one week (!) since school and the kids’ activities started up again. How will I make it to June?
The clouds are flying low, and every day sees some rain. It rained all day yesterday and when night set in, you could still see it billowing in the light of the streetlamps, clouds of white stipples in the sky.
The grey clouds hanging low, the gentle hiss of rain, the patient face of the waters in the canals and in the rivers, the longsuffering trees sleeping until spring, the whispering voice of Winter, they are inviting you to slow down, take some tea, think about nothing. But you have a schedule. You walk through your daily circuit with your head down, considering the damp pavements, the puddles, and the dim sky reflected in them. You feel your burdens acutely, weighted with the damp as they are.
There’s no season in which our lives of urgency seem more incongruous than during winter. Nature proceeds with a hushed voice, and we insist on noise. The quiet clouds and the soft hazes nudge us toward gentle behaviours, but ours are harsh. All of Nature’s obstacles should encourage less movement, and yet we insist on running the maze, proud that no season has privilege with us. We consult our data on productivity, while the wild is dozing.
If, in our excesses, we threaten the Earth’s natural balance, then mightn’t it be worthwhile listening? When the sky is grey with muffling clouds, we might lower our voices. When there is ice, we might stay home. When a light rain raps at the window, we might just meditate on the rhythm.
These are moods, it might be argued, and how are we to regulate our lives by moods? But the Earth might counter: what vanity drives you out of the house before dawn? If we robbed humanity of mood and emotion, mightn’t you just sleep for a few months and then look out the window of your high-rise cottage to watch the clouds and marvel at what you see? Is the fluorescent-lit office the haven of rationality? Doubtless we confound necessity with rationality there. Is it cool and rational to tumble forward every day through rain and snow to beat the clock? Is it necessity or reason? Is it fear? Is that the smell of intellect in the crowded Metro during rush hour?