she's feeling 22!

the child is 22! she spent the day painting this painting for herself. she sent pictures of dinner with a big group of friends.  happy, beautiful, creative, smart, working and studying hard, thriving and surrounded by friends. we really couldn't ask for more. i miss her, but she's exactly where she needs to be. i'm so happy that she's living her best life. 

home for christmas

three flights, one missing bag, nearly 24 hours of travel later and our peeks is home for christmas. bob is so happy to see her and we totally get him. i took the day off to make The Soup, vacuum and secure all her favorite snacks. her good friend, who wants to spend christmas with us(!) came along to the airport to pick her up. husband met us there between meetings. then us three girls came home to snuggle up with the kittens on the couch and watch christmas movies (love actually was first up). aside: dang, it does not age well, and yet remains weirdly charming. i have a quite a lot of work to do up to christmas, but the whole week off between christmas and new year's and i'm looking forward to making good food, playing loads of cards and board games, building a big lego set (i still have a couple stashed away) and having lots of good conversations. now, just to make it through the next ten days of work. 

daily delights - february 9

today, the monotony of working from home started to get to me. i felt a little cooped up and just generally unfocused and mildly out of sorts. i escaped to go to the cheese truck and the fish truck to get some goodies to cheer us up. and also just to get out of the damn house. and over my lunch, i looked through all my pictures of arizona on my phone and uploaded a few to my computer to use as backgrounds for those endless teams and zoom meetings. and i found this photo of sabin and i one early morning in december 2019, before all this madness began, watching the sunrise cast its warm glow on papago. and i really did feel better. we're going to get through this, but some days, it's harder work than others. thank goodness for happy memories.

five things friday :: august 30

thing 1: the child moved into her new apartment today. her very first one. it was big. and wonderful. and a little bit scary (for her mother). they grow up, these people we make. and it’s rather awe inspiring to witness.

thing 2: you can talk all you want to your dead parents but they never listen. or answer. i suppose they think turnabout is fair play.

thing 3: heat takes a lot more out of you than you realize. stay hydrated. 💦

thing 4: we have a bit more road trip 🚗 ahead of us and despite all the driving so far, i’m looking forward to it. especially because i’m going to meet an old bloggy friend - @herthirdeye - in person for the first time!

thing 5: laundry never ends. just when you think it’s all done and you’re caught up, you realize those people are all. wearing. clothes. 😳 and even if they’re not, they probably just stepped out of the shower and so that towel will need to be washed! 😬

things kids should do as kids

i keep seeing this piece about things that kids should do by themselves before they turn 13 circulating on facebook. and while it's all well and good that kids do their own homework and can make their own lunch (i really should have enforced that one) and set their own alarms, i feel like it's kind of a careful and tentative list and a little self-serving for the parents. and who the hell doesn't talk to the teacher when it's necessary or help with homework? that's just lazy, it seems to me.

my child is 16 now, but when i think back to the things she did before she was 13, i could add a number of things to the list:

~ fly somewhere alone. when she was 7, we sent the child to the states for the summer. of course, we paid the unaccompanied minor fee to sas, and i delivered her to the gate in copenhagen and my sister was waiting for her outside customs in chicago, but she did an 8 hour flight by herself. she had to entertain herself, excuse herself to go to the bathroom, tell the stewardesses what she wanted to drink and mess with that infernal onboard entertainment system on her own. it wasn't her first time on a plane, so she was already a routine traveler and knew how it worked, but it was still a big step. and she did it with flying colors, also flying home again on her own at the end of the summer.

~ have secrets. we all need something that's our own, that we maybe share with a friend, but not necessarily our parents. a couple of summers ago, we were walking down a creek that flows behind our property and the child and her best friend were reminiscing about a time that they ran scared from some aggressive swans at a little lake that you come to, some ways down the creek. i knew they had played down there, but not that they'd had a bit of an exciting experience, nor that they had walked as far up the creek as they had. it made them strong and brave and gave them something they had together that wasn't anyone else's.

~ eat food you planted and picked yourself in a garden. our child has grown up picking strawberries, popping a warm, sweet cherry tomato, picked directly from the greenhouse into her mouth, sifting through soil after freshly-dug potatoes. she knows where food comes from and how it tastes different and much better than what you buy in the store. she has spent time helping me pick countless little tiny violets so we could make a vivid purple cordial that we mixed with fizzy water and enjoyed on a hot summer day.

~ make the child use public transport. to get to school, to get to a movie, to get to her friends, to get to a party. buy a travel card and know how to use it. to find her way to the brandy melville at sloane square in london, leading the way for a group of her friends. to get herself around london. and copenhagen. and st. petersburg. know how to read a metro map. and figure out how to get on the metro in the right direction. these are important steps to adulting.

~ eat sushi. the child should learn to eat sushi. early and often. mine started at age two and a half. and at about 4, she woke up briefly in a restaurant in manila, ate her weight in sashimi and then fell back asleep. i'm pretty proud of that.

and if i expand the age range to 15, there are a couple more...

~ be part of a major protest for a worthy cause. i will be eternally grateful to my strong female cousins for the idea that we would head for the women's march in washington, d.c. and i am so happy to have shared the experience with my 15-year-old child. now she knows the energy of half a million women and people and her father who support women on her own body and mind and psyche. it strikes me as one of my strongest parenting moments.

~ know the difference between good makeup and drugstore makeup. yes, this is a girl thing, but it's important in today's world. and some drugstore makeup is good, but you can't know which unless you've tried it and also tried the good stuff. (and yes, maybe i am justifying buying my child chanel foundation. but that doesn't make it any less important.)

* * *

very cool, evocative photos of small town america.

and he even used flash! or maybe just lit them up at night.

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what a cool story. goes off to buy a metal detector.

a to å challenge : d is for drinking

i've had this post open for hours. i've had a hard time deciding what "d" is for. is it death? divided? downpour? depressed? diamonds? downward facing dog? i know it's not a regular dog, since i'm a cat person. and then it hit me...drinking. (i had to use this photo because it includes both a cocktail and a cat, which, i realize, both start with c, not d.) 

back when i got my first job in denmark, i remember being very surprised that there was beer at lunch in the canteen for those who wanted it. it was next to cokes and fizzy water and milk and people did occasionally take one. of course, i was surprised there was a canteen at all, since in the states, we'd go out and grab some lunch somewhere, but in denmark, it's very normal that there is a work canteen and that you pop down with your colleagues, eat lunch, talk and then go back to work, taking about 30 minutes together to eat. alas beers in the canteen are no longer the norm (not that i ever recall taking one). but, even still, in general, danes have a very relaxed attitude towards alcohol.

the same cannot be said of norwegians. i've been doing photoshoots of late and have had to work around a norwegian law that mandates that norwegians cannot even see alcohol in an advertisement. apparently it's too dangerous for them. so even photos of a wine or whisky tasting have to feature empty glasses, leaving the alcohol to the imagination.

and i would maintain that that just makes things worse. like with teenagers, the thing you forbid is the most attractive. so when norwegians get access to alcohol at reasonable prices, they go a little crazy. much like south dakota teenagers on a saturday night when someone of age has bought them some beer and they sit in their cars(!) drinking it.

here in denmark, we also have a relaxed attitude to young people and alcohol. the drinking age is 18 (to buy alcohol), but most young people drink at parties long before that and to be honest, it's their parents buying it for them. as i see it, this is a good thing, because then you know how much the kid has and where it's come from. there are these shots that are very popular "the small sour" they're called - they come in a variety of flavors and although they are ostensibly vodka-based, they are only 16% alcohol (rather than the usual 40% vodka boasts) and they, along with soda-sweet ciders, are what the young people want to drink at their parties. frankly, they are foul and i think they serve to put the young people off alcohol more than encouraging them to drink more.

interestingly, the relaxed attitude towards alcohol seems to make the young people more sensible about it. it's not forbidden and therefore much less attractive. we are always more compelled by the things we cannot have. 

* * *

i do not buy this argument that the way the rest of the friends treated ross signaled the beginning of the end of western civilization. ross was an annoying, mopey, whiny git from the first episode. he was the least appealing friend and quite frankly, he wasn't that intelligent. i never bought him as a paleontology professor.

* * *

and on that note, has the art world also gone to hell in a handbasket?

* * *

j.k. rowling's twitter is putting people off her work.

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on motherhood and the hard truths of messy, wonderful, full lives.
"When we lay our struggles and our worst selves bare, we help others feel less alone.
It takes a village to help us retain our sense of self."

i think i needed to read that sentence today in light of my revision to this post.

a to å challenge: c is for competition

today we went to one of the many gymnastics exhibitions the child's boarding school is participating in. as we watched the schools and clubs that came before flemming, it struck me that this aspect of danish culture is really interesting. i'd always been puzzled by it because of the lack of competition in it. the exhibitions are just that...exhibitions, performances of elaborate routines which took days and weeks and months to learn, but there is no winner at the end of the day. no scores, no medals. and for me, as an american, that's always been strange - how do you know you did well if you don't find out who wins?

but today, it struck me that what these kids are learning is much deeper than just a dance routine and a few flips. they're learning to perform both as individuals and as part of a larger team. they are each learning their part and doing it to the best of their ability, but it's only as a larger whole that it all comes together. when 200 kids are standing on the floor, doing the same routine and doing it well, it has a power and an impact that's much larger than a single individual doing the same routine alone. and these kids leave the floor, elated with the energy of a performance well done, so there's no need to know who wins to know you did well.  i suspect there's a lesson in that. i also suspect it's a lesson that will serve them well as they grow up and enter the workplace.

on parenting and advice columns and the natural progression of time

on the way home late last night, i listened to a couple episodes of the dear sugar podcast. it's the one with cheryl strayed of wild fame. i'm not sure what it is about advice programs on the radio - there's also one on saturday mornings on danish radio and it's somehow fascinating, even when people's problems seem far from my own. there's something comforting in listening to other people's problems and the opinions that the agony aunts (and uncles) have about them. cheryl and steve almond (who was sugar before her) are surprisingly compassionate and deep. i'll admit sometimes when i hear the letters people write in, i wonder how they're ever going to take it seriously and not just tell the person to suck it up or piss off, but they always do, in a compassionate and empathetic way, without being sappy. it's a delicate balance and they strike it. 

it seems like parenting and especially motherhood is often a topic and it got me thinking. i never wanted children. i was traumatized by my high school boyfriend's older sister getting pregnant in high school and going to her wedding instead of her senior prom, missing out on a basketball scholarship and not going to college. i also viewed my own mother as singularly unselfish and doing everything to give my sister and i all of the great experiences she could and i felt i could never be like that. so, i went around for 30 some years, not wanting children. but then i met husband and it started to seem like a good idea. and although along came sabin a bit before i was entirely ready, i have not once regretted becoming a parent. of course, parenting has its moments of frustration and no sleep, but overall, i have generally been in awe of this whole, amazing person that i made and feel like some kind of privileged bystander who gets to watch her grow up into the confident, funny, opinionated and smart young woman that was somehow there within her all along. 

she's away this year at a boarding school, coming home one or two weekends a month. next school year, she'll be in the states, getting a high school experience. people often ask me if i'm not horribly sad that she's not at home. and perhaps it will make me sound like one of those dear sugar parents who hates being a parent when i say that i'm not. i love watching her blossom into who she will be - confident, finding her way, learning who she is and what her style is. and being away at boarding school was the natural next step in that process, just as going to the states next year is the next step after that. it's how she will find her way to being who and what she wants to be. she needs us less. it's completely normal and natural and i don't feel sad about it. i feel happy and proud that she's come so far and is ready and embracing these experiences and finding her way. 

but, i can see on some of the faces of people who ask me, that they think i'm a bit heartless for not missing her more. of course, i do miss her, but i get texts from her pretty much daily, so it's not like we're not in contact. but there are parts of her life, her inner life especially, that are hers now and not mine to share. and that's just fine! it's how it should be, it's time for that. i hope that we've given her a solid foundation from which to unfold her wings and i am secure in the knowledge that she knows that we're here, should she need to rest them. 

* * *

amazing photos of a place both frozen and abandoned by russian photographer andrei shapran.

the yearly christmas tree hunt

most years when we do this, it's raining. it was muddy, but dry this year.

sabin, in despair over the trees we liked.

she was hoping she was adopted.

husband, pointing out where he could cut this one so that it was the optimal height.

husband's requirement for the tree was that it was a "brave choice."

this would have been pretty brave.

and rather alternative.

see, you want brave? 

this one was my first choice.

i liked the light green ombre effect.

sabin said it was so 2013.

this was the one the girls picked.

it probably would have been the best choice.

however, husband did not deem it a "brave" choice.

sabin tries to interfere at the last moment.

alas, to no avail. we got the tree with the weirdly bare branches.

sabin said it was the tree equivalent of one of those hairless cats.

this wasn't our tree (ours was already netted when we returned),

but i think this may be my favorite photo of 2015.

resisting fundamentalism

amber waves of grain in denmark, but it could just as easily have been taken in south dakota

with the child away at boarding school this year and with plans for her to go to high school in my little hometown in the states next year, we are easing back into the life of an adult couple around here. we're less likely to eat dinner at a specific time, we watch netflix or hbo nordic until midnight, we sit in the garden and have deep philosophical discussions, or lie on the trampoline and stare at the sky, we spontaneously decide to go out to dinner. we do miss her, but it continues to be ok in our minds that she's moving on to the next step. plus, without her around, there's no one plaguing us to build a pool.

it might be different next year when she's an ocean away, rather than just 30 minutes. i also worry about how religious that little town i grew up in has become. yes, there were always 12 churches, but it seems that aggressive christianity is just so much more pervasive than when i was a kid. even in the answers given to reporters for stories like this one. such a tragic and yet heartwarming story and yet they had to go all jesus at the end. i worry about that. i see it as a symptom of fundamentalism no less heinous than that purveyed by the taliban and isis. 

in denmark, some immigrants talk about sending their children back to their home country for genopdragelse - or "re-raising." this, in most instances, means back to pakistan or turkey to learn the old ways and be more in touch with their native religion. in my case, while i want sabin to learn more of where she comes from and how much her grandfather meant to the community, i do not want her to be steeped in religion while she's there. i love the secular life we lead in denmark. i love that what people believe is personal and private and not flashed in everyone's face all of the time; you don't have to participate in religious rituals to be considered a good member of society. i love that the child wisely said, in choosing to be baptised and confirmed, that you can be interested in god without believing in god. in denmark, there are even ministers who admit they don't believe. that would never fly in small town south dakota.

i am confident that sabin is a strong person with a good head on her shoulders. she has a quality where she is able to float above the fray without being snooty or arrogant. she seems at once grounded and above it all, which is a delicate balance to strike and i don't think it's something you can learn (i certainly don't have it), i think it's something you must have in you innately. i'm hoping it gets her through the year in a community where the aggressive, fundamentalist christianity of the local youth group forces the young people to hammer hundreds of nails into a cross to represent their many sins. talk about a need for genopdragelse...

my cousin, who she's going to stay with while she's there, isn't like that, but it may be hard to resist when the social life in the little town is steeped in religion. i understand that they may have forgotten some of the separation of church and state mandated by the constitution - with ministers speaking at graduation and prayers at the sports ball games. we'll have to see what can be done about those things, without placing the child in the middle of a fight. we simply have to be vigilant against fundamentalism in all of its incarnations if we're to stop this downward spiral the world is on...maybe we have to do that right here, in our own backyards, just by beginning to question it and not just accepting it when it's shoved down our throats. it must be possible for a community to rally around an orphaned young man without bringing god into it.

the next stage begins

slightly dark iPhone photo of her room.

we dropped the child off at her efterskole today. it's a boarding school about a half an hour away, where she, along with 199 other 9th and mostly 10th graders, will focus on academics and gymnastics for the next school year. she was packing for days and was very much looking forward to going. i think the only thing she's worried about is missing her friends, but she made sure she spent loads of time with them over the past few weeks and it's not like she isn't still in a group chat or two with them.

we helped her unpack her things into a single small cupboard and make up her single bed in her 3-person dorm room. the other girls and their parents were there doing the same and there wasn't much chat between us, but that's typical in denmark. i think they were probably freaked that we were speaking english, which sabin and i always do and that made them hold back even more than usual. her roommates seemed like sweet girls, so i'm sure she's going to be fine.

they gave the parents quite a stern lecture about allowing their young people the freedom to unfold and truly experience life at school and not text them all the time and expect them to come home every weekend. i didn't really feel that the lecture applied to us as sabin's parents, since we have been known to leave her unattended in the country (just for a few hours when our flight paths crossed) or to put her on an 8-hour plane ride by herself or let her take the train to copenhagen for the weekend to visit friends or go off to italy with a friend on summer holiday. we're not clingy parents and have spent her first 14 years preparing her for this day.

looking around the room, there were parents (mostly mothers) with tears in their eyes at the prospect of letting go of little anders and little camilla, but i didn't feel sad, what i mostly felt was excited for her. i think i've said it before, but it feels like the next step. it's what she should be doing. getting very into her interest (gymnastics) and working on it intensively with the support of talented teachers/coaches. learning how to buckle down and study. learning to rely on herself and find her own inner strength. figuring out who she is and who she wants to be. we've given her a strong foundation, she's a good kid and she's going to have a n awesome year.

it will be a bit quieter around here, but we'll be ok. and so will she.

pondering the ways of teenagers

teenagers seem a bit like raptors at times

the child came home from italy more of a moody teenager than when she left. i guess two weeks of sunshine and eating real pizza and lying on a beach and staying up too late will do that. she was, in any case, tired and not really that happy to be landed back in this little town in the middle of nowhere. apparently, she's convinced that within her beats the heart of a city girl, or at the very least, the heart of a copenhagen girl (little does she know that copenhagen, with a population of only a little over half a million, isn't really a city in the strictest sense).

over dinner, she expressed dissatisfaction with plans to spend a year in the states (school year 16-17) in the little town where i grew up. apparently going from one middle of nowhere town to another isn't appealing when you're tired and have just been hanging out in italy. but i imagine she'll go willingly when it comes down to it. we may have scared her last week with talk of extreme religious nutcases and long distances to amenities like movies and proper shoe shops and apple stores. but then, i got out of there non-religious and there's always the internet for shopping, so she'll be fine.

initially, her negative reaction to studying for a year in my little hometown hurt. it felt like a rejection of me. i think it's important for her to know her roots - to get to know the extended family still living there and to have a taste of what it means to be a member of our family and to have a sense of groundedness in that place. but then i realized that rejection is a natural part of the rebellion of growing up. and i had to admit that i too cannot imagine ever living there again, so how can i expect her to imagine it, if only for a year?

but i'm also confident that she'll get over it and will undoubtedly want to go and look forward to going. she'll be able to get a driver's license (something she can't do until 18 in denmark, to my great dismay), make new friends, spend time with family, participate in competitive cheerleading (after a year at a gymnastics-focused boarding school, she'll be awesome) and try a whole host of other things that you can only do in a small high school, where the very life of the place is dependent on everyone participating in everything. and she will get in touch with a part of where she comes from. it will undoubtedly be uniquely her own perspective and grounding and that's ok too.

in a few weeks, she's off to boarding school. it's only 30 minutes away and she will come home some weekends. people keep asking us if we're freaking out and sad about it and i keep looking within for those feelings. and they aren't there. i love seeing her taking flight, setting goals, working towards them. it's the natural progression in her growing up into the person she will become. i think i've felt all along that as a parent i'm witness to something magical, but which i have only had the smallest modicum of control over. and i feel privileged to be there for each stage of a natural progression of this amazing child coming into her own. going to the gymnastics boarding school for her final year of primary school is exactly what should happen next. she's ready and so are we.

100 happy days :: day 66

somehow with this happiness project, happiness has become something visual. and as i look back on a day that was rather busy and hectic and rainy and grey and dark, i don't really have any visual happinesses to reflect upon. maybe the beech leaves, which are springing out in their special, brilliant light green shade, but it was getting too dark and too rainy to snap a photo of them as i drove hurriedly home, chinese takeout cooling in the back seat. these moments of happiness have largely been something i wanted to preserve in photos, but maybe happiness at times is just an overall grateful feeling. gratefulness for laughter at work and good conversations and good collaborations. and did i mention laughter? and moments in the car, having a talk with my child, since she wasn't glued to her iPhone, due to it having been sent in for repairs and having been given a lame old samsung that couldn't even download facebook messenger (oh the horror), leaving her left with only talking to me to entertain herself. and that talk ranged over various pronunciations of words and accents and the vast differences in danish, despite this place being about the size of wisconsin. and how her pronunciations and accent are a large part of her identity - she was born in copenhagen and clings to her sjælland accent. i can't say i blame her. how we speak and sound does play a large part in our identity and in how the world sees us. and that conversation was definitely a happy moment in the midst of today. it's there, in the middle of everyday life, that the happiness really happens. sometimes you just have to stop and think about it.

100 happy days :: day 56

this stylish little foot bridge, connecting the old and "new" harbors in landskrona was named after my late father-in-law on saturday. we went to the ceremony. the ceremony was a bit strange and confusing and it became clear from the passers-by that the bridge had actually been open for some time, as people kept wandering across, just lifting up the ribbon which hadn't yet been cut. there was also an odd potato-head woman who did the actual cutting of the ribbon. since i couldn't really hear that well and my ability to understand spoken swedish is a limited at best, it was unclear to me what her connection to it all was. perhaps she's the one who drove to holland and picked up (stole?) the bridge in the first place. 

because the bridge looks like it could have been lifted out of amsterdam (and quite possibly was), but pretty cool that it can be raised up so boats can sail through. they demonstrated that with a little rescue boat of some kind, which sailed through and then sailed back, to show us all how it works. another weirdness of the ceremony was that i'm not sure they mentioned peter's four children, who were all in attendance. i would have thought they'd have been invited up to at least be close observers of the ribbon cutting, but oddly, they were not. i was left wondering if those organizing it all had ever attended such a ceremony before.

me, i mostly wished there would have been an exciting corpse lying the bridge, leading to another season of broen, that fantastic nordic noir murder mystery series that's a danish-swedish cooperation. of course, that program is about a slightly larger bridge.  but still, a murder mystery would have added a bit of spice to the whole thing.

as it was, probably the best part of the day was that we had a long wander down to the beach and around the castle grounds. we'd been there a lot when husband's two oldest girls were little, so we did all of the old, traditional things, despite the grey day. it was fun to see the three sisters together, talking and laughing and looking so grown up.

in all, a very nice day, seeing family and having more than one good laugh and toasting to peter broberg's bro (bridge). worth the long drive, for sure.

how is she already 14?

13 was a pretty awesome year. it will be great to see what 14 brings. happy birthday, pooka. it's a pleasure to see you growing up into an amazing person with your own style, opinions and thoughts. i am ever in awe.

the view from sunday night

another 4-day weekend. i love the cycle of spring holidays in denmark. aside from a windy saturday, the weather was largely glorious. we really do mostly benefit from the global warming here in our northern climes (aside from when those storms blow through and take out the odd building). since we're preparing for sabin's big party in a couple of weeks, we bought a lot of beautiful flowers and i filled the entryway with them. last year, i had tomatoes there, but we've put the greenhouse back together, so the veggies are out there. amazing how a few plants make coming into our falling-down farmhouse much more inviting.

i used to think of germany as a boring place where people wear weird socks, but the more i pop down to border town flensborg for gin and proper groceries, the more it grows on me. the harbor was just gorgeous clad in friday's sunshine. there were booths selling all manner of fun things...from smoked salmon to hats to handmade soap.

there were strolling musicians entertaining along the quayside (note the weird socks). but on the whole, it seems to much more ok to be a little different in germany than it is denmark, where the pressure to conform is almost oppressive. (tho' i continue to resist that whole dress with jeans thing they've had going on for over a decade.)

there was a regatta happening and i guess this beauty was one of the ships involved. just lovely to see. days like this will keep us coming back to germany (tho' the variety of gin helps as well).

now we're all stocked up and ready to make cocktails for all of our summer visitors (yes, that's two bottles of St. Germain and two bottles of Aperol). (and yes, they are important enough to use capital letters.)

sabin had about 8" of hair cut off on saturday. she was cool as a cucumber about it, tho' our hairdresser was quite shocked and even tried to talk her out of it. she wanted her dip-dye gone, so i guess that fashion moment is over now. i was pretty proud of how sure she was about what she wanted. if that continues, she's going to be just fine. she had a good friend over all weekend and they had several photo shoots. i'm also hoping the desire to do that continues. love the docs with her confirmation dress. and it is a super cute cut, tho' it makes her look older. i suppose it's now that looking older is a good thing, tho' i don't think that was her goal. i think she just wanted to go back to her natural hair color and have healthy non-bleached ends again. she's a sensible kid. i guess she gets that from her dad.

* * *

is email dead? (let's hope so.)

* * *

minifigs make even risqué comments sound ok.

* * *

poignant and beautiful. a rather lovely thing.

* * *

check out my new super(heroes) board on pinterest. 

i'm a little in love with batman. 

at least someone's floating on air

after a horrendous european parliamentary election yesterday, where an actual convicted racist from denmark's xenophobic party (the so-called danish people's party) won the most personal votes of anyone ever, the part of the country with functioning brain cells is reeling. i guess tho', that an awful lot of the country cannot be said to be sensible, but instead insular, protectionist, fearful, racist, xenophobic and easily fooled by a smooth talker. hmm, sounds familiar somehow...

but in the garden, the sun was shining and sabin was levitating and somehow that made it seem like everything would probably be all right in the end.

rite of passage

her father took this blurry shot of her at the church today and oddly i think it's my favorite photo of the day. and perhaps blurry is appropriate, since she went through the rite of passage that is a danish confirmation today. and tho' she's only 13 and confirmation no longer means she'll be sent off to make her way in the world as a maid or farmhand, like it once did, we don't know what the future holds for her. it's unclear at this point, but like this photo, full of beauty and promise anyway.

i've had my share of angst over this confirmation thing, but it was a nice ceremony and the sense of community that we all shared at the church, watching our beautifully-dressed young people go through a cultural rite of passage was palpable. i was also touched at how a number of our friends sent her flowers and cards at the church today to congratulate her. and she was touched as well. although we're not having her party for another 6 weeks, she thoroughly enjoyed her day and now she's off at the parties of two of her friends, laughing and having fun in the sunshine as they celebrate together.

religion and culture intertwine

we didn't baptize sabin as a baby. i was reminded today, during easter services at the local church, why we didn't baptize her. there were two babies being baptized and in both cases, when the minister asked the question of whether the child believed in god and accepted the whole jesus christ story, the mother answered "yes" on the child's behalf. so two children were indoctrinated into a faith without having any say in it or knowledge of it themselves. which is precisely what i didn't want for sabin. i wanted her to understand and accept for herself when the time came. it's what my parents did for me (tho' i'm not sure if it was on purpose on their part or if baptizing the baby just wasn't really in fashion back then in the late 60s presbyterian church). whatever the reason, i am grateful and have done the same for sabin.

after the baptism part of the service was over, one of the families just left and didn't stay for the rest of the easter service. that struck me as a little bit harsh. kind of like a drive-in baptism. let's get it over with and get on to our party (and most importantly, our gifts). the grandparents sneaked out during the next song, as they missed out on leaving when the family themselves left.

the minister himself, a down-to-earth fellow who clearly didn't feel like shaving this morning (or possibly yesterday morning), despite it being probably the most important christian holiday, took it in stride, seeming not to even notice. he went on with his sermon. it was an easter sermon, of course, based on the reading of the easter story from one of the gospels (i'm not a biblical scholar, so don't ask me which one). it was the verse where the marys find jesus' tomb empty and there is talk of an earthquake and the appearance of an angel. he talked about how in the orthodox faith, people take it quite literally and on easter, greet one another with "he is risen, praise be, he is risen," or something along those lines.

he seemed quite cognizant of the fact that in today's denmark, people don't take the gospel quite so much as, well...gospel. it's more of a story and a culture and a metaphor that something bigger than us is there for us. we have chosen, in our culture, to call it jesus and god and the holy spirit, but what really matters is that this is a story that endures through the ages. and that, if we let it, it has the capacity to be a comfort to us in the midst of all of our other personal crises - deaths of those close to us, divorce, losing jobs, and the like. and somehow, it felt like he was ok with the family leaving after the baptism of their child, fully aware of the purposes the church serves in danish culture and his contribution to it. and the church was full (we and about a dozen others actually sat in extra chairs in the aisle, because every pew was filled), so he must derive some satisfaction from that.

confirmation is a big thing when you're a 7th grader in denmark. the preparations are held as part of the school day (thursday mornings from 8-9:30) throughout the school year, so if you should choose not to be part of it (which you are free to do), you would just go to school late that day. but i've told you about this before, so i won't rehash it all here. suffice it to say that sabin has chosen to be confirmed, which means that today, she had to be baptized. she's a teenager, so she didn't want to make a public spectacle out of it, so we arranged to do the baptism after today's easter service. i've had my issues with this minister, since he made sabin feel negated since he hadn't married, buried and baptized her family for four generations before meeting her at the first confirmation preparation course, but i have to say he won me over today with his pragmatic sermon and his scruffy beard. he was kind to her and understanding of her teenager-y angst about not being on public display. he talked to her kindly and when she answered for herself that she was accepting the christian faith, it was ok.

some part of me wishes she had chosen not to do it, mostly because as i heard those mothers accepting on behalf of their children today during the service, i thought about what a hard time i would have had, standing there lying in a church. because although i'm also raised in the tradition, i don't think i believe in it all in the same way anymore. but i believe she has gone into this with open eyes and that what she has accepted is to be an active part of the culture in which she is raised and in the western cultural tradition as a whole. i am also confident that she is an enlightened young woman and she is aware that the bible is a collection of stories with a historical basis and which are metaphors for meditation on the larger questions of life. we didn't baptize her because we wanted her to choose for herself and now she has, which is precisely what we wanted for her, that she would be the one to choose, not us. and next weekend, along with the rest of her peers and social group, she will be confirmed, not only into the church, but into the culture.

and there is something special about the ceremony of it all. i think that we, as humans, need ceremony in our lives. ceremonies around the different junctures - marriage, birth, puberty, winter and spring transitions and yes, death. the christian religion gives us that. and maybe that's not all bad.

why have i never felt young? #tbt

sabin and i in chicago in, i think, 2005. i was clearly still in my morning news anchor hair phase. i put this on facebook and a friend remarked that we were sweet and oh, so young. and it's true, i can see that (especially with sabin). but looking back, i don't think i felt young then. i can't remember ever feeling young, actually.

ever since i left college after my first year and lived for a couple of years in california (finding myself? losing myself?) before going back to a different university to finish my studies, i've felt older than the rest of the pack. because i'd spent those couple of years, i was then a couple years older than my fellow sophomores when i did return to university. that left me older than my fellow students in my various master's programs as well. tho' less so at arizona state, where there were other "mature" students in the program. i was a couple years older than my fellow fulbright scholars back in macedonia. i was rather old when husband and i got married (31) and pretty old when i had sabin (33), my first child.  that would put me at about 37 in this photo and i have to say that i didn't feel young. i was an older mother. older mothers are the norm now, i realize, so it's not with any sense of shame i say that. it's more that i feel a little regretful that i can't remember feeling young.

what is it about the times that we are in, that we can't appreciate them or really see them until later, in retrospect?