My covert COVID thoughts. Day 8.

We were just starting to enjoy being empty nesters. But in hindsight, the strategic decision that Ned Nederlander and I made this time last year to downsize our nest is looking very unwise. 

A mere five months after Kleine Jongen flew off to a distant university, he and his brother, with much dramatic squawking and flapping, returned to the new nest to face the coronavirus in the bosom of their family. Admittedly, having encouraged their return, any remorse and regret on our part will need to be carefully managed – nay, deeply hidden.

We’re in no doubt that ruffled feathers are inevitable. Sadly but predictably, it seems that I am the first in our overfull nest to have my feathers ruffled.

In my defence, the changes wrought by coronavirus have been particularly cruel for me. Until two weeks ago, I was a woman spoiled by the quiet rhythms and pliant freedoms of working from home. My gentle cat sat softly on my keyboard from time to time to announce that I deserved a break and that she deserved to have her head fondled.

Life was grand. Although I always missed the energy and camaraderie of a physical office, I’m proud to say I could work an online video meeting like a boss, years before the rest of the world’s office workers realised that zoom wasn’t just something you did to a photo.

I had a choice of excellent cafes within easy walking distance of my home office. My laptop and I could wile away a few hours in any of them. I had several inspirational girlfriends willing to share what I describe to the tax office as working lunches. Or perhaps they were shirking lunches; I can’t remember anymore. It was another lifetime. Whatever they were called, when I returned to my empty home office I had a choice of unoccupied beds on which to indulge in post-lunch deep thinking.

Things have changed dramatically. I am suddenly forced to share my work space with three other adults, with quite some associated loss of control. The monitor that gave me such an air of quiet professionalism has been seized as a Call of Duty command centre. Every morning I find empty beer bottles and supermarket pizza crusts on my desk. When interrogated, no one knows how they got there. Meanwhile, Ned Nederlander has staked a claim on more than half of the family dining table. My shirking working lunches are lurking in a distant life. All this change makes the cat understandably traumatised and more needy than ever.

Ned has phone calls about bizarre topics for an average of 7.94 hours every day. My board room is now an indoor football arena. I put a notice in the kitchen that says “Your mother does not work here. Put your own cups in the dishwasher” and some lark crossed out the first sentence. I noticed with horror that unidentified forward-facing users of our unisex toilet were obviously prone to dripping. I provided a helpful sign on the wall imploring them to “Shake well after use”. My pleas continue to be ignored.

Also, everyone in my quarantine orbit believes they will die if they don’t eat three or more meals a day. They turn the kitchen upside down every lunchtime, perhaps searching for the workplace cafeteria, the uni bar or at least the Salad of the Day. They have no idea that three digestive biscuits, a stick of celery and a spoonful of peanut butter taken straight from the jar will keep them going until dinnertime. Added bonus: the kitchen won't look like a nuclear blast zone.

My treasured corner office with the view is now shared with two sweet work experience kids who keep interrupting me to show me funny memes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. They play inappropriate but amusing YouTube videos at unnecessarily high volumes. They have flirtatious phone calls with mysterious callers. I grit my teeth at the unrelenting tappety tappety tap tappety tap tap tappety on their phones and accompanying chuckles as they continue to indulge in their digital lives. I am living in a virtual episode of The Office, without the wit of Ricky Gervais, but with an unscripted soundtrack of offensive rap music. 

Occasionally I see unexpected value in my new situation. My family are the in-the-flesh colleagues that I missed when life was “normal”. Ned offers cups of tea before dashing off to another loud phone call. Other Q-colleagues share their secret stash of wine gums. Incredibly, one of the work experience kids can fix IT problems without leaving the sofa and without looking up from his own screen. It’s nothing short of a miracle and well worth the eyeroll and sigh that accompanies such assistance. Occasionally my Q-colleagues show interest in what I’m working on. Initially this threw me into a guilty tizz. But I soon learned to have multiple tabs open on my laptop so I can flick to a productive-looking one when someone approaches my desk. My favourite decoy is a highly complex spreadsheet that I once used for holiday planning. It’s worked so far.

When I rhetorically cry “Where are my headphones?” three seconds before a scheduled group call, someone nearby actually answers. Admittedly they just say “I don’t know”, but I’m overjoyed at such unfamiliar human interaction in my work life so I thank them for caring and tell them I appreciate their efforts. 

Before coronial quarantine, such queries merely led to my inadvertently waking the cat. She would jump excitedly onto my keyboard right at the moment I joined the meeting, often with her bum directly in line with the camera. She seriously undermined my professional credibility. The cat is a key reason I never turn my camera on during video meetings; I claim pathetically that my camera does not work and mumble something about a previous incident involving a rolling pin, a slingshot and a small child. 

But the real reason for my camera shyness is that remote meetings offer an excellent opportunity to do a quick yoga session. A downward-facing dog, a prolonged tree pose and a sun salutation are a huge boon to creative thinking. Those of you still inexplicably excited by the novelty of home video conferencing will adopt similar tactics within days, I promise. You will soon be relieved that you no longer have to remind yourself to stay seated throughout the call, lest a pair of pyjama pants be inadvertently revealed below your carefully chosen upper body business attire. Plus you’ll realise that the bookshelves behind your colleagues are mere props for making you think they are more intellectual than they really are. No way have they read that. Or that.

A “broken camera” also negates the need to control one’s eye-rolling and forehead-palming tendencies. Even in normal operating conditions I find that exceedingly helpful. As we plunge more deeply into this coronial crisis, I predict that we will all need all the help we can get.

Let's do the (parental) time warp again

Each time I phone my mother, she observes wistfully that her 11 grandchildren are growing up “too fast”. To overcome my guilt at raising two of them on the opposite side of the world from her, I usually point out that her grandmaternal options are expanding with time, not contracting. Because the offspring of her offspring currently range in age from four to 26, she can decide whether she wants to read one of them a bedtime story or ask another one to fix her computer. She can decide whether to play with a toy train or be taken on a real helicopter ride. She can request a seat at a kindergarten Christmas recital, or a backstage pass at the biggest musical in town.

But daughterly defensiveness notwithstanding, I do have some idea of what she means. As Kleine Jongen sets out this morning for his last day of high school, I am unable to stop myself musing about the rapid passage of time. Parenting — and I assume grandparenting — is indeed an odd kind of time warp.

For example, most of us spend a couple of parental time warp milliseconds on our child-rearing journey/battle/flounder, call it what you will, deranged and hysterical from a lack of sleep. We beg time to pass as we force ourselves at 3am — yet again — to address the latest nocturnal snot, pooh, wee, vomit, or scary monster combination, while considering whether that weird bronchial wheezing is likely to right itself by dawn. Against all odds, those parental time warp milliseconds pass.

Before I could say “successfully toilet trained”,  I was depositing Kleine Jongen at daycare. He was stoic although I could tell he was also reluctant and uncertain. But he didn't cry. It was an early indication of his unwavering resolve and independence. My little steel-coated marshmallow.

I bumbled through some unconvincing maternal reassurances. “You’re going to have a lovely day here with all these other lovely children including that lovely girl over there staging an unruly sandpit coup — make friends with her, she's very cool — and this lovely boy who appears to have an entire infectious diseases ward coming out of his nose,” I cooed. “These lovely underpaid women are going to look after you while mummy gathers herself and engages in the world for a few fleeting seconds. I might even have lunch with a couple of equally-exhausted girlfriends, wearing something other than tracksuit pants, the contents of your breakfast bowl, and one of daddy’s t-shirts.”

I smiled and waved cheerily, feigning confidence as I walked to the gate, hoping he hadn't seen the flash of maternal uncertainty cross my face. Metres outside the gate, I had to resist the temptation to go back and prevent my precious steel-coated marshmallow from being slowly toasted in the flames of maternal abandonment. When I returned to collect him a few parental time warp milliseconds later he could tie his own shoelaces, write his own name and create remarkable works of art.

He called me a poo-poo-bum-bumhead and gave me his now familiar aloof and incredulous stare when I announced it was time to leave. I anticipate receiving the same treatment when he realises I've posted this blog. #iamapoopoobumbumhead

Back then, I was not too bothered by the aloof incredulous stare, because by this point in the parental time warp I was revelling in the blissful luxury of at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep most nights. I functioned relatively normally. Mostly. In general. Broadly speaking. Although not always.

There was that one day when I deposited Grote Jongen at school and stayed to chat idly to some other mums. Three-year-old Kleine Jongen played with another child nearby. After ten minutes I bade the other women a good day, walked out of the school grounds, got into my car and drove 50 very quiet metres before realising, with an involuntary scream and an F1-esque u-turn, that I had left Kleine Jongen alone in the school playground. Parking regulations were blatantly flaunted and world sprint records fell as I returned to the Scene of Unintentional Abandonment. I expected to find police tape and a judgemental international media. Instead, I found two supposedly supportive girlfriends, doubled over in hysterics, wallowing in smug comparative maternal excellence. Beside them, safe in their dubious care, sat Kleine Jongen, pretty much as I had left him; digging happily in the sand and oblivious to my negligence. In hindsight, I should probably not have bothered to go back and get him because three parental time warp milliseconds later, he was enrolled at that school himself.

The time warp intensified shortly after Kleine Jongen (officially) started attending primary school. 

Pure evil: Kleine Jongen (centre), 

shortly before his bog-gate acquittal

He was named as a member of an unruly gang of 5-year olds who committed the heinous crime of hurling wads of water-soaked toilet paper onto the ceiling of the boys’ toilets. And ok maybe the ceiling of the girls’ toilets too. This creative physics experiment (“bog-gate” to those of us who watched, bemused, as the disciplinary proceedings unfolded), was a crucial part of Kleine Jongen’s headlong descent into adulthood. He vehemently and convincingly protested his innocence to a formidable principal. This early success applying paediatric philosophical reasoning skills encouraged an intense study of human rights (his own) and provided an excellent grounding in playground diplomacy. It was a short step from there to the field of football diplomacy. Years of expert commentary on corruption and injustice in the Beautiful Game ensued. 

He developed an intimidating encyclopedic knowledge of international football statistics, and a (reasonably) healthy obsession with seeing Liverpool FC win the Premier League. 

The earliest known sighting of 

Kleine Jongen in a Liverpool shirt: 

his 6th birthday party

Such deep knowledge requires a lot of internet access. Ned Nederlander and I soon recognised Kleine Jongen’s superior technological firepower and we made a strategic withdrawal from the Virtuous Battle Against Excessive Screen Time. Ignoring reems of expert advice, we allowed ourselves to be driven meekly into technological submission. My retrospective justification for this is that the more time kids spend on devices, the greater the chance that you’ll produce a personal IT consultant. Go ahead; throw another device into the parental time warp. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, let’s see. One day, you will be extracting last night’s broccoli from the video player (“It wasn’t me!” they will protest) so they can watch no more than 20 minutes of amusing but educational content (grateful cheerio to The Wiggles). Approximately eight tortured parental timewarp milliseconds later the school will call to let you know that your gorgeous little sweetheart is on detention for sharing inappropriate content on their finsta account.

Still wrapped in red on his annual
pilgrimage to Anfield

You will need to look up “finsta” before you have any hope of sensibly responding to the Assistant Head of School and interpreting your child’s claims that he is a victim of gender-based bias and blatant double standards. Your child will emerge with a reputation as a responsive and accountable adolescent, who it turns out can correctly identify gender-based bias and blatant double standards. You, on the other hand, will have gained a reputation as a naive, disengaged and irresponsible parent. And you still won’t really get the point of a finsta account. True story; that happened to someone I know really, really well.

Moments after I shared Kleine Jongen’s glee at being able to walk across the room by himself, he was walking out the door to go to the airport. He called over his shoulder that he’d see me in a week. Something to do with a summer course, future university choices, self-catered accommodation, and a television recording studio. How did we get to this point?

He’s training me, just like his big brother did. Getting me ready for the time he goes away for two weeks, not one. Helping me cope with the idea that soon he might disappear for months at a time. He's preparing me for the currently unthinkable concept of him only making quarterly visits home. It’s my turn to be the steel-coated marshmallow. Except I think I’m actually a marshmallow-coated marshmallow. Damn this parental time warp. And double-damn that I have to endure it twice.

But wait, no. I think it might actually be okay. Kleine Jongen’s transformation from clinging toddler to confident and competent young adult gives me many reasons to enthuse about the parental time warp. His motivation, focus, determination, and resilience inspire me. I envy his level-headedness under pressure, his understated and often unnoticed courage, his witty pragmatism and his balanced, objective view on life. His ability to retain and recall information highlights my own declining mental abilities, as does the canny perceptiveness that allows him to evaluate situations and people with speed and accuracy. I would like to have half of his ability to make and keep friends, quietly gaining people’s confidence, calmly moving between worlds. The parental time warp has turned him into an amazing human.

As he steps into his last day as a school boy, I see his readiness to move on to the next time and space dimension. And I know that in a few short parental time warp milliseconds, this too will seem like a distant memory. Let's do this time warp again.

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.

Force and fortune

On a sweltering Sydney day in December 1993 I stood in front of an overflowing congregation to deliver my father’s eulogy. It had been a harrowing few days, and I was in no fit state for public speaking. I have no record of what I said, but I recall that walking to the microphone was like walking through wet sand. As I waited for my words to find their way up from the pit of my stomach, everything seemed blurry and indistinct . A coffin that I didn’t want to see was the only thing in clear focus. Struggling to make sense of the scene before me, I knew that the chances of anything other than a deep sob coming out of my mouth were slim.

So I well remember the wave of empowerment I felt when my eyes finally settled on the faces of two of my most treasured friends. These two had come into my life via different roads, from different directions, at different times and for different purposes. Both of them were -and remain - essential to my life story. And my ongoing amusement. And my gin intake.

Seeing these two side by side at my father’s funeral somehow amplified the support that either might have given me individually. It was a bit like finding two corner pieces of a jigsaw puzzle at the same time – suddenly, a task that seemed overwhelming became just that little bit more achievable.

After seeing them - my corner jigsaw pieces - emerge from the haze, I opened my mouth to speak. The threatening sob stayed put, and my words found their way into the air.

Later, as my brothers and I shouldered our father's coffin and made our way slowly down the aisle, both of those friends stood tall, strong and reassuring. They held my eye and touched my free arm as I passed their pew. The strength of their stance and the power of their friendship got me outside into the sunshine.

A couple of years ago I stood beside one of those friends at his mother's grave. I watched him drop a flower onto her coffin and momentarily lose himself in  private thoughts and memories. Being there was an honour and a privilege for me. Afterwards, he and I walked together from the shady cemetery into the sunshine, then drove to his childhood home to indulge in a suitably celebratory wake.

Rest easy Gal.

Tomorrow, the other of those two friends will farewell her father. I desperately want to be there so I can hold her eye and touch her arm; to stand solidly in her hazy blur. But that’s not going to happen. Instead, on the far side of the globe, feeling helpless and a long way away, I will think about a dry-witted, open-hearted, multi-talented man who helped raise a remarkable daughter. I will try to stand tall, strong and reassuring for her, as she once did for me, and hope that she somehow senses it. 

And I will make time to celebrate the force and fortune of friendships that carry us through shadows and back into sunshine.

Blood on my hands: a Shakespearean marital drama.

Ned and I have never made a big deal about our wedding anniversaries. Actually, the fact that we had a wedding at all had quite a lot to do with UK visa requirements, and not so much to do with romantic expression of enduring love and passion. A faceless civil servant, with the terribly English name of Derek Bottomley, signed my visa and triggered a three-year adventure in London and points beyond. For a time I loved Mr Bottomley almost as much as I loved my new husband, such was the impact his signature had on my life.

An ancient visa securement ceremony and the precious visa

To the surprise of many, Ned and my romantic expression of love and passion has proved more enduring than my UK visa. In fact, last week marked the twentieth anniversary of our visa securement ceremony. Ned and I remain staunchly committed to our marriage, even though we have both moved on to second visas (courtesy of a Dutch civil servant who I believe is named Derk van Botomlij).

We agreed that our twentieth anniversary was worthy of a little more fuss than the other nineteen. That was an easy decision for Ned to reach, because we follow a system whereby he organises the odd year celebrations and I organise the even year celebrations. For “celebration” read “last minute restaurant booking” at best. This being an even year, Ned was free of last minute restaurant booking responsibilities and so swanned off to work in the US for the week leading up to our anniversary. He arrived back in the Lowlands around midday on our actual anniversary, eager to participate in whatever constituted a “little more fuss”.

We cycled through parts of Amsterdam we didn’t know existed to the restaurant I had booked (admittedly, only thirty minutes earlier). Ned and I relish our travels through unknown territory, and we have certainly arrived together at some dodgy-looking places over the years.

Another pretty dodgy, but ultimately
fabulous, destination. Bolivia, 1996

However, on this occasion I was surprised to find us in front of a dingy warehouse slouched against a dusty parking lot, pretty much on the corner of nowhere. There, on the wall of the dingy warehouse on the corner of nowhere, was the name of the restaurant I had booked. It seemed that this year’s organising committee might have made a big mistake.

Turns out that the warehouse enclosed a bustling restaurant, marked promisingly by blazing sunshine, waterfront tables, champagne buckets and a lot of hip young things with big lips and even bigger sunglasses. A well-appointed cruiser, possibly featured in a recent James Bond movie, docked in front of the restaurant as we arrived. A camera crew alighted. Several passengers tossed their coiffed heads haughtily as they were filmed striding onto the wharf. There they took turns to shake hands and exchange a few words with a man with a big smile and an even bigger microphone. They all looked very pleased with themselves.

As we locked our bikes, I admitted that this lunch could turn out to be either a comedy or a tragedy. Ned picked up a stick that was lying on the ground. He pointed it at me and shook it from side to side.

“I shake spear,” Ned announced, pausing to allow his wit to settle on me. “This, like our marriage, is both comedy AND tragedy. Or at least drama. Which means that it is a true romance.”

Shakespeare and I sat poetically at a table in the sun, where we revelled in our true romance for a couple of hours, reciting sonnets to one another. Okay, we didn’t recite sonnets. But before leaving we went inside the “dingy warehouse” – turns out it is not so dingy after all – and took a photo that encapsulates the secret of our marital success.

We then passed the remainder of the afternoon rolling through bucolic scenes on a romantic-dramatic-comedic-historic bike ride, worthy of our own personal Shakespearean masterpiece. In total we rode 55 kilometres, no mean feat after oysters, sushi, duck pancakes, prosecco and pinot grigio in the sun. This gave us plenty of time to ponder the remarkable linkages between a Dutch bike path, Shakespeare and our own marriage.

There were a few long, flat, boring sections on our route. This, I recall, is also a feature of many of Shakespeare’s plays. I’ll be honest and say the same can be said of parts of our marriage. Oh come on, you feel the same about your own marriage; you’ve just never written it down quite so bluntly.

Ned Nederlander, his bike and a dyke

There were some disconcerting parts where we teetered along a narrow dike, battling a headwind, with cold, murky water lapping at either side. This is clearly a parenting analogy. Of course there are loads of Shakespearean references to water, wind, waves and possibly dykes, although neither Ned nor I could recall a reliable passage linking these themes to children. We subsequently found a cracker in Act IV of A Winter’s Tale, where Camillo speaks of “a wild dedication of yourselves to unpathed waters, undreamed shores”. For us, this is a clear reference to the uncharted parenting journey, specifically for those of us raising our offspring in the vicinity of the shores of the IJselmeer. Of course more esteemed scholars of the Bard may dispute that connection.

While on the subject of Shakespeare and parenting, it is worth commenting on Ned’s tendency to use King Lear as a model for his paternal wisdom. For the past 17 years and to the extreme annoyance of De Jongens, every time one of them answered a question with “nothing” (which happens on average 100 billion times a year), Ned simply says “Nothing can come from nothing. Speak again” The eye rolls in response are legendary and worth the price of admission.

But back to our anniversary tour.

There were some exhilarating parts of the route, where we rolled along side by side, enjoying the feeling of sunshine on our shoulders. It seemed effortless and laughter came easily, even when we hit occasional potholes. On and on through green pastures, over quaint bridges and around wide curves. Terrific. Love those bits, in Shakespeare, in cycling and in marriage.

"What need the bridge much broader than the flood?"

Much Ado About Nothing (aka the story of our lives)

Our journey last week was also marked by the first cycling accident I have had since we have lived in the Lowlands. We stood in the beautiful village of Uitdam, holding our bikes, looking at a map of the surrounding area. We were – imagine this - in perfect agreement on the path we would follow. I took a single step backward as I turned my handlebars to face the required direction. My heel caught a small unseen bollard, I overbalanced and landed on my back on the side of the road with my bike on top of me. A bicycle accident … while not cycling. How marvellously dramatic.

Uitdam, the small Dutch hamlet that some believe inspired Shakespeare

Shakespeare sprang to mind as I bit my lip and tried not to cry. “Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall” (Romeo and Juliet … how fitting on our romantic sojourn). Friar Lawrence was advising Romeo not to rush headlong into marriage (for a visa, say), but he could equally have been referring to the need to use caution when mounting a bicycle.

Grazed elbows, bruised pride, swollen humiliation, blood on my hands. Pure tragedy.

The damned spot, after
a few days of healing

In the midst of the (melo)drama, I looked at my wounded palm. I looked at my lovely husband of twenty years, my co-conspirator in nuptial visas. Then, with quite some dramatic inspiration I stood in the hamlet (yes!) of Uitdam and in my best Lady Macbeth voice, I exclaimed:

“Uitdam spot!”

With that single comment I managed to prove Ned's earlier point that drama, when combined with comedy, creates true romance.

Back in Amsterdam later that evening, we stopped at the Vondelpark Open Air Theatre. Free performances run all through summer. The scheduled act, on the day of our twentieth anniversary, was a dance called Woke up Blind by the Nederlands Dance Theater. It featured  two Jeff Buckley songs, "You and I" and "The Way Young Lovers Do". Jeff Buckley happens to be one of Ned's favourite singer-songwriters. The dance explored the changing nature of love over time. We know this because the program told us. Otherwise we would not have had a clue. But seriously, how could we not watch and participate in such powerful anniversarial symbolism?  

Symbolic movement by the NDC

It turns out that dance is an art form not yet within Ned's or my orbit of cultural appreciation. For now we will stick to drama. And comedy. Which, as we all now know, are the very essence of our true romance.