Paris is always a good idea

When life gives us lemons, many smug and annoying optimists tell me, we should make lemonade. That’s all well and good, as long as we also have sugar to hand.

My dear friend Lady Howmany recently had a crate of lemons hurled directly at her head from a great height when she was least expecting it. She had to fly urgently from Sydney to Paris as a result. The chances of her making lemonade when she arrived were slim. At face value, the situation involved a lot of sour surplus citrus and very little sugar.

Even before she’d left for Sydney Airport, I’d booked a train to Paris and one of the few remaining hotel rooms available in a city embarking on Fashion Week. I had no idea what use I would be to her, but at the very least, I hoped I might be able to provide a sugar cube or two. What a welcome change to feel useful and present when a friend needs a scaffold. So much better than my default ex-pat response of sending well-meaning text messages across the 16,000 kilometres that usually separates me from my nearest and dearest when life gives them lemons.

Unfortunately, I had to deal with some lemons of my own en route, thanks to Dutch Railways, who deftly turned a scheduled four-and-a-half-hour journey into an eleven-hour debacle. Lady Howmany got from Dubai to Paris in considerably less time. Hamstrung by the foibles of online travel bookings, I stomped around Antwerp for four hours waiting for a train that would accept me. I was in no mood for making lemonade from my relatively meagre (and frankly, embarrassingly trite) influx of personal lemons.

Then finally, Paris. Gritty, fraught, chic, refined. 

Beautiful, complicated Paris. She wouldn’t dream of making lemonade, a drink she would surely deem bourgeois. No, she is a tarte au citron, lemon madeleines kind of city. For the most part, she’s zesty and pithy and vibrant. And dammit, Lady Howmany and I decided, so are we. We would make the most of our time together, despite the circumstances.

We started in familiar territory. Gin and tonics (“sans citron, s'il vous plait”) in a cute bar. Over the following days, Lady H, her supremely gracious mother, and I progressed through traditional crisis management territory: cups of tea, trips to the boulangerie, washing up, wiping down, making small talk to fill the silences, making slightly bigger talk when the opportunity arose. In such situations, it’s hard to make an impact beside the formidable pragmatism of Lady Howmany. 

She’s a frighteningly efficient full-time working executive mother of four young women, carer of two energetic dogs, and fairy godmother to anyone who needs one. She's the first to arrive on a friend's doorstep when trouble looms. Plus, she finds time to do fun and frivolous things with her adoring and adored husband. 

By the time I arrived, 24 hours or so after her, she’d already swathed the Paris house and its residents in love, compassion, sensible ideas, gentle suggestions, and unspecified other magic. Here, among her kin, she was in peak form.

While I sat mutely wondering what I could do to help, I marvelled at the generosity of her kin, who knew me only by association but who welcomed my daytime visits to their home, who invited me to lunch with them, who shared their stories with me, who courageously and generously let me peek into their lemonade factory while it underwent a major reconstruction. For a lot of the time, I wondered what I was doing there at all. My contribution mainly consisted of making the dog bark hysterically and vociferously whenever I arrived or left, which I hope everyone found to be a helpful distraction. 

I also reorganised the plastics drawer in the kitchen, the importance of which can hardly be understated for people whose lives have recently been torn apart. When I triumphantly held up a half packet of couscous that I discovered in the back corner of that same plastics drawer, the family smiled encouragingly and assured me they’d all been wondering where that had got to. So, so, very helpful.

Lady H and I revelled in the unexpected opportunity to spend time together, even though her focus was firmly on her extended family. We talked of blessings in disguise and clouds with silver linings, and before we knew it, we were making lemonade, tarte au citron, AND lemon madeleines.

We managed a trip to the centre of Paris for half a day. It was cathartic and fabulous.

We had two breakfasts an hour apart. So hard to choose one Parisian café over another.

We stood on bridges and laughed out loud at the mere fact that we'd come from Sydney and Amsterdam to be in Paris together with three days notice.

We inadvertently wandered into the middle of a Fashion Week photo shoot and experienced some rather fruity French instructions on how quickly we should move along. Apparently, two middle-aged women, each adorned with a single layer of mascara and a smear of lip gloss and wearing sensible shoes and waterproof jackets, didn’t quite fit the image the director was aspiring to. We left them to it, once we'd stopped shreiking with laughter and could stand up straight again and walk.

We were overjoyed and overawed by the spectacular stained glass of Saint-Chappelle.

Gasp-inducing light and colour in Saint-Chapelle

We ridiculed each other’s appalling French. We ridiculed the stupid social-media tourists on every corner who pouted and swivelled and posed in a manner that, frankly, deserved our grumpy-old-women disdain. Oh, how we tutted. 

We were moved by the sight of Notre Dame Cathedral, burnt and bowed after the 2019 fire and now embraced by supportive scaffolding. But we were also heartened by the idea that burnt and bowed does not have to mean permanently destroyed. And so she rises again.

It's hard to keep a strong dame down

We missed metro stops and caught connections in the wrong direction. We blamed each other for these amateur oversights. Then, giddy with childish excitement, we collapsed in uncontrollable giggles.

We visited the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, now on my personal list of Favourite Places on Earth. Walking into this labyrinth of paisley sofas, velvet cushions, antique typewriters, and worn timbers, all shrouded in silent stories, felt like the literary equivalent of a fresh croissant dipped in a bowl of café au lait. I thought I saw Hemingway out of the corner of my eye, but then I realised it was merely his ghost. I heard Virginia Woolf whisper. Oscar Wilde tapped me on the shoulder, but when I turned around, he’d vanished. Overcome by bookish emotion, I spontaneously decreed that Lady H and I must peruse the shelves independently and select and purchase a suitably meaningful book for each other.

The front cover of Shakespeare and Co.

You had me at "I fell..."

For her I chose The Lady and the Little Fox Fur by Violette Leduc (1965). Besides featuring the Eiffel Tower and the name of a French feminist author on the cover, either of which would have been sufficient reason to buy it, the story allegedly provides "A stunning portrait of Paris, of the invisibility we all feel in a big city, and ultimately of the hope and triumph of a woman who reclaims her place in the world".  I hope it will always remind Lady H of a glorious few hours wandering the streets of Paris, when we felt both hopeful and triumphant.

She gave me Excellent Women by Barbara Pym (1956). It’s about a “smart, supportive woman … who gets embroiled in the lives of her neighbours.” Setting aside the chance that there is a subliminal message there about the appropriateness or otherwise of my arrival in the midst of her familial tumult this week, I love the premise. I also love the cover and would quite like some cushion covers made in a similar fabric. (I will report back here when she provides those because, dear reader, I assure you that she eventually will. I told you, formidable efficiency).

On excellent interfering women

And so a tradition was born. Whenever the stars align to place a friend with me in a bookstore outside of our respective home cities, we shall gift each other a specially selected book.

Such an exchange need not always be in response to a life-giving-you-lemons situation. However, it shall henceforth be called a “literary lemonade exchange”, out of deference to its sweet, sour, Parisian origins. And for the same reason, it most certainly should always be concluded with a tarte au citron or a lemon madeleine. Or both. And if you must, lemonade.

Authors note: For further information about Lady Howmany, refer to A "framily" affair

How do you like my buns?

Around this time every year I am confronted by the absence of hot cross buns in The Netherlands. Why would any population deny itself the life-enhancing combination of yeast, cinnamon, sultanas, obscene lashings of sugar glaze, it’s sweetness perfectly offset when slathered with salted butter? When questioned, the Dutch claim that their krentenbollen or currant buns are an appropriate substitute. Obviously, this is laughably misguided. 

Krentenbollen are not acceptable as a hot cross bun substitute

They are insipid, unspiced, unglazed, and ubiquitous. The buns that is, not the Dutch. Being available all year round, krentenbollen deny consumers the anticipatory excitement of a seasonal product, to say nothing of the pious culinary virtuosity that comes with consuming a product infused with religious symbolism.

I am far more inclined towards the Dutch Easter bread, which at least recognises the life-enhancing combination of yeast, sultanas and obscene lashings of sugar glaze. It has no cinnamon or other spices, but it more than makes up for that with the addition of a core of sweet almond paste and a generous scattering of toasted almonds on top. 

Paasstollen

It comes in a box decorated with rabbits and eggs. I consume dozens of these Paasstollen every Easter in an attempt to overcome my sadness at not having ready access to hot cross buns.

However the Paasstollen loses all credibility as a hot cross bun substitute because as far as I can see it is exactly the same as the Dutch Christmas bread, which is a delicious combinations of yeast, sultanas and obscene lashings of sugar glaze. It has no cinnamon or other spices, but it more than makes up for that with the addition of a core of sweet almond paste and a generous scattering of toasted almonds on top. It comes in a box decorated with fir trees and snowflakes. The box seems to be the only thing distinguishing a kerststollen from a paasstollen.

I admit that having a backup plan for unsold Kerststollen reflects a certain economic aptitude that is regarded highly by the thrifty Dutch.  It also shows an awareness of supply chain management that can only come from having been a mercantile powerhorse for centuries.

But be that as it may, I would still like a hot cross bun on Good Friday.

4 January in a Sydney supermarket

This year, I have been anticipating the joyous consumption of a hot cross bun since January 4. On that day, I walked into a Sydney supermarket. I had escaped from a surreal world where devastating bushfires raged and we were all trapped in an open-air sauna that surely heralded the end of the world. Under such circumstances, it’s fair to say I was very hot and very cross. So imagine my surprise when my eyes settled on a shelf which only seconds before had supported several dozen unsold Christmas puddings. But in place of puddings, I saw bags of plump and spicy hot cross buns. These particularly premature buns were laden with chemical preservatives and sealed in plastic bags. They would have stored perfectly well for three months had I brought some back to The Netherlands with me. But they would also have inevitably brought culinary disappointment so instead I resolved to make my own when the time came.

And so it came. Good Friday 2020 in The Netherlands. Outside the coronavirus pandemic rages and we are all trapped in an open-air infectious diseases ward that heralds the end of the world as we knew it. One of few things that could have got me through Good Friday was a hot cross bun slathered with salted butter.

Inspired by the many (secretly really annoying) #isobaking posts on my social media feed, I decided to surprise my housebound family and make a batch of HCBs. Spoiler alert: a comedy of errors ensured it didn’t happen.

First, having resisted the trend to panic buy, and with three supermarkets within a five minute walk of my house, I maintain a relatively sparce pantry. On Good Friday I could scrape together a little over a cup of plain flour; the recipe insisted I find three and a half more. Unfortunately, flour is now a rare commodity. I blame the smug #isobakers. But I set out on a mission that I was confident fell into the “essential travel” category.

As I suspected, the first of my three immediate supermarket options was a flour-free zone. I walked to the second and much larger supermarket. A man loitering at the door asked me for 50 cents. I apologised for having no cash. He yelled at me and told me to go to the cashpoint. I considered the chance of withdrawing a 50 cent coin from the cashpoint, and instead decided to apply some Corona kindness and purchase some groceries for him. I was about to ask him what he’d like me to buy but he strode past me and made for the alcohol aisle. He grabbed a can of beer and with a distinct absence of Easter spirit, stomped angrily back outside. He was clearly untroubled by his cash flow situation and felt disinclined to stop at a checkout. It was 9.30am. I briefly considered picking up a nice bottle of breakfast wine and an extra-large paasbrood.

Foolishly I proceeded to the flour aisle instead. Nothing. Someone started yelling. Through my flourless fog I realised it was a middle-aged fellow customer, and that I was the object of her yelling. “Where’s your basket???” she screamed. “WHERE’S. YOUR. BASKET????”. Louder. Frighteningly wide eyes. Getting wider. “YOU NEED A BASKET!!!!” Exclamation marks were visible above her furious head. I suddenly realised that I’d been so frazzled by my encounter with Breakfast Beer Man at the entrance, I’d neglected to collect a coronavirus-fighting shopping basket before I entered the store. I’m highly sceptical that a plastic shopping basket will shield us against coronavirus, but Breakfast Beer Man had thrown me off my normally impeccable coronavirus game. In the face of The Basket Wench’s fury, I scurried away, flourless. And quite rattled. And thinking that two bottles of breakfast wine might be a good investment. I decided to persist with the original plan. It paid off, or so I thought.

At the third supermarket I was faced with the giddy choice of spelt flour, quinoa flour and …is that…lentil flour??? Is that even a thing? It’s now beyond obvious that I should have opted for breakfast wine at that point. But I bought the spelt flour and hurried home with my last ditch, confidence-sapping, gluten-free gamble.

A failure to froth was the next sign of impending doom. Yeast plus sugar plus warm milk should generate a magical foaming and frothing as the yeast activates. It hints at the pregnant potential for dense dough to become a light and fluffy delight. I ignored the clearly unreactive yeast. I did not have the emotional fortitude to return to a supermarket to purchase more and begin the process anew. Big mistake. Big, big mistake. I melted, whisked, sifted, mixed and then spent a cathartic ten minutes kneading. I produced a satisfying ball of dough and left it to rise. The only thing that expanded at all was my own self doubt.

Stubbornly, I formed twelve balls of dough and put them in the oven, completely forgetting to decorate them with crosses. Earlier, I’d had the rather brilliant idea of piping angry faces onto each bun. I was looking forward to posting my own #isobaking photos with the caption “Prolonged isolation has produced seriously cross buns this year”. Oh how we would have all chortled. If I’d remembered.

My #isobakingfail

Instead, I produced twelve hot uncrossed rocks. Twelve hot uncrossed inedible rocks. No paasbrood. No breakfast wine. It was a very Bad Friday.

It’s now Easter Sunday and I have absolutely no culinary aspirations whatsoever, other than to eat my way through the three large bags of chocolate eggs that I purchased yesterday. And perhaps to figure out what to do with 400 grams of spelt flour. Any ideas, smug #isobakers?

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.