Wit, wisdom and wiliness - a surprising combination

“I just want to let it pass quietly”, Ned Nederlander sighed wistfully when I asked him a few months ago how he would like to celebrate turning fifty.

One of Ned’s great advantages in life, or at least in the last twenty five years of it, has come from his decision to swing hands with an older woman. As any toy boy knows, an association with a spouse with additional life experience provides superior access to three alliterative pillars of happiness: wisdom, wit, and wiliness. A fourth pillar, wrinkles, is not relevant to this story.

Ned recently benefited from my wise assumption that he was just being coy when he asked for a quiet birthday. He gave himself the day off work. I allowed it to pass relatively quietly. Well, admittedly I organised for Kleine Jongen to wake him with a blast of Happy birthday, reggae style” from a wireless speaker hidden under our bed. It just seemed easier (and wiser, wittier and wilier) than wrapping the speaker, which was a birthday gift.

In an effort to continue to provide the quiet birthday that Ned had requested, I convinced him to join me on an outing to a Swedish torture chamber/furniture store after lunch. Usually I will seek any flat-packed excuse to avoid going there (although I am a sucker for the World’s Greatest Dish Brushes; 59 cents in blue, red or green). But, we faced a domestic bedding emergency, and I needed a strong young man who could lift multiple heavy boxes, help me bring them home and carry them up five flights of stairs. I swear I thought it would take us 30 minutes. 

Apparently not available at the Amsterdam store

It took three hours. Three hours of the poor man’s 50^th birthday that he will never ever get back. Three hours of our previously happy marriage that we may never recover from. Three teeth-clenching, tongue-biting hours in which I felt unable to defend myself against Ned’s thinly-veiled suggestions that I had ruined his birthday

I bore my guilt stoically for another 24 hours. The next evening, in an attempt to thaw the marital freeze, I slid an envelope across the table to my aging child groom. It contained an invitation to his surprise dinner the following evening. A surprise 50^th birthday dinner that had been planned for weeks, even before he got Swedishly grumpy. A day’s notice was a mature and gracious compromise between defending myself against petulant spousal inferences, and allowing said spouse to retain some dignity when faced with a couple of dozen smug and secretive dinner guests.

I waited for him to beam appreciatively, throw his arms around me, thank me for my thoughtfulness, and apologise for his churlish behaviour the previous day. Instead, he raised an eyebrow, cocked his head suspiciously and coolly asked, “Will I know anyone there?”

Kleine Jongen, who had counselled me against any form of surprise celebration muttered, “Told you he’d hate it.” I retreated, leaving them to their mutual eye-rolling and shared sympathies.

The following afternoon, Grote Jongen arrived and I confessed that I had given Ned the tiniest heads-up. Grote Jongen looked crestfallen and declared “It’s not going to be much of a surprise then. That’s no fun for Dad”. I looked from one son to the other, and in the face of such contradictory views, found that all of my wit, wisdom and wiliness had drained away.

The four of us - and our varied expectations and fears - cycled off into the October night to the birthday non-surprise. The guest list at least remained a secret, so it was with some uncertainty that Ned ventured into the restaurant.

One of the highlights of the night was a rare audience with the Count and Countess of Oirschot, who had traveled half the length of the kingdom to be there. Years earlier, the Count had encouraged and enabled our move to the Lowlands, thus bearing most of the responsibility for the greatest adventure of our lives. He engaged his entire family in his efforts. On a sunny September day in 2011, after a gezellig lunch at their Oirschot home, the Count's ten-year old daughter took me into the garden. She chatted amicably to me in Dutch and was incredulous that I was unable to understand or utter a single word in her mother tongue. This delightful young member of the Counter family became the first of many Dutch people to try to guide me through their mysterious linguistic maze, by teaching me to count to ten. She remains my favourite Dutch teacher. Ever. 

One, two, THREE! The Count of Oirschot and Ned practice blending in 
with the enemy as they watch another Venlo ball hit
 the back of the net in 2011

Later that day, the Count and the eldest of the four Counter children hosted us at a passionate Eredivisie match. It was there that Ned and de Jongens learned to count to three. They watched underdog VVV Venlo slam goal after goal after goal into the net of the Counter family's home team - PSV Eindhoven. It was possibly the biggest upset ever seen in Dutch football (if you don’t count the national team missing out on the 2018 World Cup, and since we’re on the subject, it seems an opportune time to casually mention that Australia qualified again this week, for the fifth time in a row. But who’s counting?).

A quick personal aside: Count, Countess en de vier geweldig Counter kinderen, we zullen altijd dankbaar zijn voor jullie steun. We zijn ook zo blij dat jullie waren naar het feestje gekomen. 

There, that should amuse all my Dutch readers for a few moments.

I suppose Ned was expecting the Shagger’s Back crew to be there at his surprise dinner, and most of them were. These are the fearless men he has risen at 5:45am each Tuesday to run with for the past several years, summer and winter. Despite having endured numerous marathons, half marathons, and beer-fuelled recovery sessions together, these middle-aged pavement soldiers are occasionally prone to debilitating spinal discomfort. This, combined with a delusional sense of the state of their own love lives, has led them to adopt their quaint team name. They were, as expected, the last to leave the party, at 3am, and so deserve a special mention here.

The Blog Tart of Muiden (pink shirt, back row) 

unwisely ignores my witty toast to Ned, 

unmoved by my wily use of airline teaspoon props.

Ned correctly predicted that the Blog Tart of Muiden would be there too. It is widely suspected that BTM plans his life around opportunities to earn cyberspatial notoriety, and sadly he can think of no greater honour than being given his own blog moniker. Frankly, after so many years, I think he’s earned it. So welcome to your very own place in history, sweet Blog Tart.

Of course, every one of the surprise dinner guests deserves their own paragraph, but sadly none have paid me as much as BTM, so their names will not appear here.

A small but regrettably absent group do however warrant acknowledgement, because no celebration of Ned is really complete without them. In many ways, Ned would not be Ned Nederlander without them. In particular, he owes his own blog moniker to  this group, so I hereby give long overdue acknowledgement of their contribution to Ned’s now infamous identity. 

A few of those who woulda, coulda, shoulda been there

The lifelong friendships in this group were forged under the intense pressure of undergraduate lectures, field-trips and having too much time on their hands over several summers. Since then those friendships have survived the annual strain of the so-called World’s Toughest Fishing Competition (anonymous sources have suggested that it’s only tough on the livers of the competitors; seldom on the local fish population). Their bond has survived countless overly-competitive bocce games, in which balls were almost lost. Together they have turned the simple act of online footy tipping into an intellectually exhausting science that has at times teetered on the brink of war. Over decades they have welcomed “outsider” partners like me, and our children into their midst, while retaining their impenetrable original bond. Had any of the group made the long trek from Australia, the birthday party would have lasted well beyond 3am (with the exception of the Maid of Maroubra, who would have fallen asleep at 9pm). Extensive Dutch tutting – a national specialty - would still be being heard from the Amsterdam locals, and Ned would still be smiling. You all know who you are. You were all missed.

Now that the event is behind us, I’m relieved to say that it turns out that Ned was thrilled with my witty interpretation of “quietly” as “quite (loud)ly”. And he was left with no choice but to show appreciation for my wily arrangement of a surprise dinner to celebrate his half century. What a wise man.

School daze

Grote Jongen, at age five and a half, was confident and excited about starting school. Waiting in the playground on our first day of being school parents, Ned Nederlander and I were ridiculously proud of ourselves and of our high-achieving (our assessment) first-born. We didn’t want to brag, but we secretly suspected we had produced a social, sporting and intellectual genius. He could write his name, throw a ball and count to twenty with exceptional skill. As far as we were naively concerned, our job as parents was pretty much done. The hard work was surely behind us.

The bell marking the beginning of his school day rang, and Grote Jongen rushed enthusiastically to his classroom. Ned and I followed, expecting him to eventually turn and wait for us, overcome by nervousness and separation anxiety. But he simply strode ahead of us and walked into the classroom alone.

“Hello, what’s your name?” we heard his surprised teacher ask, as we hurried towards the door.

“I’m Grote Jongen, and I’m in this class,” he announced. Ned and I skulked in behind him, trying to look responsible and relevant.

Hours later, the bell marking the end of that first school day rang, and it was me who rushed enthusiastically to Grote Jongen’s classroom, eager to hear his stories.

On the way, I passed the Principal. She was a no-nonsense woman with natural authority. I thought I glimpsed a flicker of admiration in her eyes; an acknowledgement of my substantial achievement in raising a child to school age. I felt unbelievably competent and I smiled proudly at her in greeting, awaiting her praise of my mothering milestone. She’d seen my type before though. Without breaking step, she smiled stiffly and said, “Well then, that’s one day down, only a few thousand to go.”

And with that, my grown-up school-parent bubble was burst, and my legs were knocked from under me. I realised that our parenting job was nowhere near done, and that the hard work was not behind us at all.

“One day down, only a few thousand to go.” Those words have rung in my ears many times over the intervening thirteen years. Somewhat unbelievably, today marks the last of those few thousand days of classes. A two week study break followed by twelve exams in as many days are now all that stand between Grote Jongen and alumni status.

As I reflect on Grote Jongen’s school days on this, his final day of Grade 12, I feel the same sense of pride that I felt on his very first day of kindergarten. Even before he takes a seat in the exam hall or opens the website that will indicate his final grade, I am still ridiculously proud of him. Regardless of his final result – which will be cynically presented as a single number – I never want him to define his success by that number. I already have sufficient evidence, gathered over several thousand days, to declare him a raging success and to justify my maternal pride.

I’m proud, for example, of his emotional agility and resilience. At the tender age of twelve he was uprooted from all that was familiar to him before being deposited on the other side of the planet. He was given no choice but to start again. Because he stepped in to an environment where most students have been similarly uprooted, it has been easy to lose sight of how special it is to be able to balance and pivot competently when one’s life lurches sideways. More than five years ago, Grote Jongen stepped into an unfamiliar schooling system in an unfamiliar country, and balanced and pivoted like a pro. That’s a skill for life, or at least for surfing.

He has vacuumed the language of that once unfamiliar country into his head and his heart, and I am in awe of his ability to converse in Dutch so competently. Recently I sat mutely by his hospital bed while he discussed titanium plates, wound management and suture removal timelines with his orthopaedic surgeon, in Dutch. My maternal pride skyrocketed, even though for all I know they were comparing notes on problematic mothers. Yet despite these achievements, Grote Jongen’s inability to respond to simple requests issued in English remains a mystery. “Please hang up that wet towel” or “Put that plate in the dishwasher,” should not tax a boy of his linguistic ability as much as it appears to.

I am proud of how he has played his heart out in hundreds of football matches, since before he even started kindergarten. I’ve loved watching him be part of different teams, variously pursuing wins or accepting losses. He has captained and been captained with grace, a skill that will surely serve him well throughout life.

When he broke a high jump record that had stood for longer than he had been alive, I wondered if my heart might explode.

The memory of him gathering himself, running purposefully towards the thin metal bar 181 centimetres from the ground and clearing it in one athletic jump will stay with me forever. I know it will not be the last time he runs at a seemingly insurmountable obstacle and lands exhilarated on the other side of it.

He has formed sustainable relationships with people from all over the world. He has ridden the turbulent tides of introductions and farewells, holding firm as his peer group ebbed and flowed with the movements of transient international families. That's a rare strength.

He has developed an enviable depth of character. He shows charisma, intelligence, humour and compassion. Let the record  show that he is also argumentative and stubborn, with questionable time management competencies. But he knows his mind and stands his ground, confident in his own assessments and decisions. He is unafraid to rattle a cage or push a boundary. Certainly, this has not always been an endearing quality, but I increasingly trust him to put those skills to constructive use. As the person who has weathered most of his cage-rattling, boundary-pushing experiments, I feel well-qualified to predict that those characteristics will contribute greatly to his future success.

One day done ... several thousand more also done. NOW is the hard parenting work behind us?

On the last of his several thousand days at school, just as he has done since his first day, I'm certain that Grote Jongen will continue to walk his own path, in his own time, and to announce himself with quiet confidence when he deems it necessary. Ned and I remain ridiculously proud of him.

A monumental reminder of the need for resistance

On the edge of Museumplein in Amsterdam, about one hundred metres from the American Consulate, is a striking monument. It is a stark metallic structure, comprising eleven stainless steel panels and a tall cylinder, all arranged in a semi-circle. The monument is stunning in its simplicity. It is elegant and graceful, strong, refined, beautiful. Yet at the same time, it is crisp and industrial, suggesting a no-nonsense, sturdy, reliability. It is steadfast and reassuring, and always thought-provoking. I want to be like that monument. So far I have "crisp" down pat. Working on the others.

The cylinder emits light and sounds that are reflected by the metallic panels. The pattern is unpredictable. The effect is powerful.

The monument is my favourite beautiful thing in a city full of beautiful things.

On 21 January 2017, I stood beside it, as I often do. Through the shimmering stainless steel panels I watched in awe as three thousand concerned men, women, children and dogs stood respectfully in front of the Consulate, raising a calm, united voice against an unprincipled, vulgar, discriminatory tyrant who raged an ocean away. For more than an hour we had marched together, standing against the threat we felt he posed to the civilised world. We insisted that decency, fairness and kindness prevail in the world. We announced that we would brook no discrimination or division. We gave unequivocal notice that we would not stand for asinine cruelty or ignorant generalisations.

We made the same points we had been making to our children since they were toddlers. Share. Be kind. Show empathy and compassion. Don’t hit your sister. Listen authentically. Consider others people's perspectives. Don’t tell lies. You won’t always get what you want. Admit your mistakes. Don’t hit your brother. Don’t try to solve a disagreement by yelling. Don’t grab other people’s genitals. Get a haircut.

Even the dog gets it.

His sign says "Even I know that

grabbing pussy is not ok.

The difference, on that sunny January day, was that most of our children had understood the gist of society’s message well before they finished high school. Most of them were responsive and responsible, even if some of them could still do with more frequent haircuts and were still occasionally surly and mean to their parents. Few of us among the three thousand could comprehend why we now had to repeat the same messages to a seventy year old narcissistic buffoon. Could the world really be going to hell in a hand basket simply because one little boy missed the kindergarten memo about playground ethics that was handed out in the middle of last century?

Yet here we were, gathering by the thousands, not just in Amsterdam, but in hundreds of cities across every continent on earth. Millions of good men and women, mindful of the dangers of arrogance, of blind, reactive protectionism, of singling out one group of humans for barbaric and unjust treatment.

The Dutch have seen this sort of caper before. They are familiar with the swaggering bully character, strutting around the playground like a puffed-up little rooster, and they know the devastating havoc he can wreak. They are very aware of the fruitlessness of constantly punching the quiet, sad kid in the corner. They know that nationalistic propaganda can generate fear and uncertainty for decades. Indeed, they have built monuments to remind themselves and the world to remain vigilant against those attitudes.

One such monument is the one standing sentinel on the edge of Museumplein in Amsterdam; the Women of Ravensbruck (1940-45) monument. My favourite beautiful thing in a city of beautiful things. As I stood beside it on the day of the Women's March, I looked at the inscription on one of the stainless steel panels. What a missed opportunity to have gathered so close to this monument without anyone acknowledging its significance or paying tribute to the women it recalled. But how uplifting to realise that, like the monument, most of humanity remains refined, beautiful, sturdy, reliable. And sometimes a little crisp. The inscription, reflecting all the hope inherent in a sunny January afternoon, is more relevant than ever. It reads:

“For she who until the last moment kept saying no to fascism”.

We will keep saying no. And when our last moment comes, others will step in to keep saying no.

And like the light and sound emanating from the monument, our pattern will be unpredictable and our effect will be powerful.