CHAPTER DCXXVI

A GOOD-HUMOURED MIDSUMMER CHAPTER, CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF A SOLSTICE, AND SOME OTHER NATURAL AND CULTURAL PHENOMENA: WHICH ALTHOUGH IN THEIR WAY ARE NOT QUITE SO FAITFULLY OBSERVED IN THESE DIGITAL TIMES

As brisk as bees, if not altogether as light as butterflies, will the Parker clan assemble on the eve of the twenty-first day of June, in the year of grace in which their familial adventures will be undertaken and accomplished. Midsummer is close at hand, in all her bloom and leafy beauty; it is the season of hospitality, merrymaking, and kinship; the year is preparing, like an ancient goddess, to call this family together, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to mark the longest of days. Festive and joyful is the time; and right festive and joyful are the hearts that are gladdened by its coming.

And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Midsummer brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of affinity and mutual merriment, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the horrors and sorrows of the world, that religious beliefs and atheistic attitudes alike number it among the unique joys of human existence, provided for the blessed and happy!

How many old recollections, and how many dormant relationships, does Midsummer awaken. Happy, happy Midsummer, that can take us back to the land of our childhood; that can recall to the aging woman the pleasures of her youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, hundreds of miles away, back to her own clan, hearth and home!

Tell me something good

Something. Anything.

I just learned my oldest cousin has died. Not old old. In his fifties.

Cancer. Fucking cancer.

There is a light that never goes out

And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.

From The Presence Of Love by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Don’t go yet

Temperature: dipping, it’s about to rain.

Eating: not a single brigadeiro or beijinho for a while, ufa.

Drinking: not a drop until…Saturday, when it’s party time all over again.

Listening: as those beautiful young people sang Je vole, and I tried to cry in dignified silence only to realize other mothers were attempting the same, so we just let rip for a bit.

Watching: another disaster unfold in Ukraine. Putin and his monstrous minions are an affront to humanity.

Reading: is food for thought, balm for the soul, good training for your concentration and powers of immersion.

Writing: more words I will be choking on when it’s time to deliver them, but I feel deeply and I let it show, deal with it.

Thinking: Are we really going to outsource thinking and decision-making to a machine? When even those in the know don’t know all the inner workings of these machines? Think we will always be able to outsmart them? Really? No, I’m no Luddite. On a branch of my family tree sit partisans and freedom fighters to remind me that I don’t have to just sit there and take it. Neither do you. Nothing in how technology is evolving is natural and inevitable. Decisions and choices are being made; by us, for us.

Feeling: So much to celebrate, so many changes happening this summer, my heart will surely burst. Oye, don’t go yet, don’t go yet…

O Natal tá chegando! 🎄

Temperature: 2/35.5 degrees with more snow on the way.

Eating: Greek chicken gyros. Yes, we do still eat meat on occasion at Casa Dita. I ruined the boys by taking them to a churrascaria. On every trip to Brazil. My infinite bad. Which I’ve been trying to rectify. But what did they ask for just the other night? Poulet au vinaigre aka Lyonnaise garlic vinegar chicken. It’s a process.

Drinking: a wrappucino. What’s a wrappucino? I have no idea, but I bet if I had one, I’d have extraterrestrial wrap-it-all-up energy oozing out of every orifice. Which sounds like sci-fi gone horribly wrong. Maybe just a cafezinho then. (Yes. Afternoon coffee. Again. It's a process.)

Listening: Kissing and a-hugging, dancing and a-loving, wearing next to nothing, burning hot as an oven… That would be the B-52s, folks, proud purveyors of love and unity through music and pop culture since 1977. What Christmas with my sister’s family will look like. On a scale of one to are-we-there-yet, how excited am I? Stoked, sweetie darlings.

Watching: I have never been less excited about the World Cup. As if the tournament in Russia wasn’t bad enough. Much ado about nothing or genuine reasons to boycott? No one does pissed-off-and-for-all-the-right-reasons-ones-I-will-explain-in-an-educated-yet-entertaining-fashion-if-you-can-focus-for-more-than-a-TikTok late night better than John Oliver.

Reading: Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat, and Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas. Highly recommended by yours truly, madly, deeply.

Writing: up a storm so that everything gets wrapped up before the holidays. Hmm, so that’s why I concocted that stimulant of a wrappucino...

Thinking: ...not that I’m in need of a stimulant, the smiles, giggles and shenanigans of my nieces...ai meu Deus, that's motivation enough.

Feeling: There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart. (From the poem A Grateful Heart by Celia Thaxter.)

P.S. I will stop by before Christmas. 🤝

I think I remember how this conversation went

 

"Get out of that pen."

"But I'm not in the pen."

"Get out of that pen. Now!"

"But I'm not inside the pen."

Yup, I could be a handful.

Thank you, dearest Mom and Dad, for all the adventures and this dear life. I'll raise a glass to our extended family, and I'll do it with gratitude, longing, and love. 

Happy birthday to me; I owe it all to you.

No more “I love you’s”

Oh, sweetie darlings, my heart is breaking. Nothing compared to the pain one of my oldest, dearest, nearest, till-death-do-us-part friends is feeling, of course. Like death, divorce might not come as a total shock and surprise, but once the decision is made and final the torment isn’t over no matter how relieved you feel that the push and pull, the fighting, the on-off-and-on-again misery-go-round is over.

Like in the death of someone close, you are required to keep a level head and start taking care of business when what you really need is a cabin in the woods and some privacy to sort out yourself first. But there is no time, and not all divorces are friendly, let’s-do-this-in-an-adult-fashion affairs; many (most?) are the result of a long period of infighting where the road to reconciliation crumbled along the way and neither partner has the will or strength to begin construction anew. Separate ways, then, new roads and vistas.

She has been accused of being strong (accused! sweetie darlings, as if strength were a handicap; is it, in women? is that what those men were saying?) and will now put all that resilience of hers to good use, I’m sure. But strong doesn’t mean impervious, cold-hearted or flippant. She will need her friends and family every soul-searing step of the way. So will he, and my godson, a family blowing apart.

It happens all the time, I know. I’m just so fucking sorry and saddened it had to happen to them.

Obrigado à vida que me tem dado tanto

 

Oh, sweetie darlings, I got the most wonderful gift for my birthday courtesy of my Dad. He had finally, after years of careful consideration (you know how these things go), digitized all the ciné films and slides he’d filmed and taken in Brazil and during our pit stops between South America and Europe (we did some exploring on the way). Filming and photographing are hobbies of his, so what I now have, oh dearest denizens, it's a treasure trove, a time machine, a magic carpet ride. I’ve been going through them all week, forcing my family to take part (“Mom, I don’t know these people!” “But you must remember that street, it’s hardly changed!”), and it has been so moving and rousing I’m sure I’ve been a bit…tiresome. Am I getting old, is it these times we live in, the forced separation? Don’t know, don’t care, I’m just so happy and grateful that these moments have been stored and that so many memories have been restored, and I know I can’t go back but I can look back, step back in time, just for a visit, and feel my parents smiling in my soul.

The abyss stares back

Temperature: 20/68 degrees. It hasn’t been this cool in…well over a month. It’s but a brief respite, the heat promised to return over the weekend and stay put for another X weeks. A subcontinent once preoccupied with keeping warm is now working fast to learn how to keep cool. That means changes to energy use and production, construction of housing and infrastructure, everything under the scorching sun and increasing rains. How to help the natural world adjust is another matter.

Drinking: I made rhubarb juice! Again!!

Eating: And like twelve different pies. It’s quite high-yielding, our patch. Not complaining, mind you. I freeze what we don’t use so we get to taste summer all year long.

Watching: my favorite Austen, Brontë and Gaskell adaptations.

Listening: to the sounds of summer, which my youngest has been recording, both audio and visual. I thought how wise and sweet of him until we chatted about it and I realized he is recording things he expects to lose over time, at least to some extent. I had to excuse myself and go cry in the bathroom. This. This is what we are doing. This is what our dawdling is doing. To our children and their future. They are being so very brave and hopeful, so positive and innovative, because the alternative is this…abyss.

Reading: my favorite Austen, Brontë and Gaskell novels.

Thinking: The Pegasus project revelations, ugh and duh, another Evil Corp at it, and not the only one, everything that can be done will be and is being done, so crying that this is not what it’s meant for is the Zuckerberg defense, and we all know his motives are both obvious and dubious, it’s like arming yourself for personal/national/regional safety and defense, the business end of your arsenal is still meant for threats and offense, and for all your, ahem, good and noble intentions, that is what it is being used for so zip it, or fix it, or have some standards, the bar doesn’t seem all that high so it shouldn’t be all that hard for a security software company, no, that’s like calling KFC a vitamins and supplements supplier, insecurity company then, and what good is end-to-end encryption when the whole device can be hijacked on the hush-hush, come to think of it, and you know what else I’m thinking, my blog so I’ll tell you, not interested then what are you still doing here, life is short, the clock is ticking, yes, so, with all your possible and probable resources, all your data and know-how, all that you could be doing, this is the scope of your ambition, this is what you’d rather do above all else, enable oppression, drive division, for profit, o-kay, but with everything going on in the world, all the problems waiting to be solved, this is your contribution, o-kay, okay okay okay, just wondering, always wondering, about everything, one of my favorite pastimes, truly, just endlessly curious, but, ew, eternal shame on you, if I were a vindictive person I’d wish long covid upon the whole lot of you at it, or maybe a visit from some other virus, something you only dreamt of but couldn’t quite make happen, you know, because this is absolute we-sure-are-being-humongous-dicks-but-do-we-give-a-flying-fuck-hell-no-show-us-the-money assholery, but since I'm not, what I wish is for some form of common agreement that this has gone too far for far too long and has to stop.

Feeling: This calls for more Austen, Brontë and Gaskell.

The mysterious Styles affair

Temperature: a drizzly 7.5/45.5 degrees.

Eating: almonds and raisins with some…

Drinking: …glögg!

Watching: Some documentaries I’d like to recommend and hope you have access to: Why Do We Dance?, Whose Streets?, A Word After a Word After a Word Is Power, and Bleed Out.

Listening: Don’t tell anyone but I’m already listening to some Christmas tunes.

Reading: Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis. Dearest denizens, you should read this book.

Writing: Christmas letters overseas. I still enjoy writing by hand. Gives you time to think about what to say and presses you to write only what is pertinent.

Thinking: Watching my son getting dressed for a date and being really meticulous about it brought back the Harry Styles on the cover of Vogue business. And the backlash, which in most evoked a big fat what-so-what-calm-the-hell-down. This is a threat to men and masculinity, to family values and children, some opined. How? Explain to me how a man in a dress is a threat. How is tulle, or the color pink or old rose, wearing makeup or heels, going all out peacock or just putting on some mascara a threat? Let’s step back in time and put this into perspective and think Highlanders or Baroque and Rococo; or the more recent history of pop and rock with no end of examples of men in heavy makeup, ruffles and attention-grabbing colors. What is so wrong with expressing yourself, your personality and identity through your choice of clothes and accessories? What makes some so uncomfortable with the individual choices of others? I ask again: where is the threat? There is more than a little homophobia, transphobia and misogyny in these alarmed worldviews, I think. A sense of real men, manly men (whatever the hell that means, and if Putin, Bolso, Trump and the likes are your touchstones then you need to rethink your preferences or at the very least stop trying to hang them on the rest of us) being under attack. By light fabrics and lipstick? Pastels and joie de vivre? Displaying an ability to be all you want to be, not some limited, superimposed, conventional version of manhood? Because those limits have reached a limit, that superimposed role hurts men, and punishing those who defy convention continues but leads nowhere. Climate crisis is a threat. Harry Styles is not. If you feel threatened by Harry Styles, or by anyone who isn’t a real actual threat to your health, safety and life, then that is your problem, not theirs; leave them alone. And maybe talk to someone about your insecurities? People usually only want to help. If you let them.

Feeling: thankful. The extended family is healthy, either retired or still employed, and hanging on to the hope that we will meet again soon and give one another the longest hug in the history of embraces and big giant smooches that border on drool. If that isn’t something to look forward to then what’s the matter with you? The Grinch pinch your spirit? Go pinch it back!

There will never be another you

Monday! Again? Stuck in a rut or getting busier where you are? Is it a brand-new day or Groundhog Day? I know, sweetie darlings. Everyone is feeling it in some form. No one is exempt. We are all being held back one way or another. But our spirits can soar. No one can cage them, impose a curfew on them, take them away from us. They can try but we won’t let them. And I know it can be difficult to find inspiration and come up with new ideas if you’re feeling anxious and afraid, but try to step outside yourself in those moments. Try to reach for things that give you joy and solace, because they are out there. Only you can give them away; you simply shouldn’t. For every thing that annoys you, find a thing that delights you. For every person that exasperates you, find a person who soothes you. Counterpoint every moment spent in dark thoughts with thoughts that enlighten and expand you. They are your thoughts, after all; you are in control. Easier said than done? Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Not a wishy-washy-yeah-right attempt. With All Your Might. All right?

I’m brightening my mood and days by celebrating some notable birthdays, today and in the past/next few days. On Saturday and Sunday, I honored the late, great Freddie Mercury by watching Queen: Live at the Rainbow (November 1974), and Queen and Adam Lambert: The Show Must Go On. When Freddie died, I most surely wasn’t the only fan who believed that no one in a million years could replace Freddie. Along came Adam Lambert with his strong, dramatic, melodic voice. He isn’t Freddie. Freddie was a rare beast. But Adam is a rare beast in his own right and I think he is the perfect successor to Freddie in this new Queen. A new generation of fans get to experience the music and the magic, and old fans get to see the magic and hear the music performed. Win-win!

Today, Brazil celebrates its independence from Portugal. The Bicentennial year is up in 2022. That same fall, Brazilians will elect a new president. Or the old one. And the two-term limit is not for life so anything can happen with this current president who treats democracy as a hurdle and not a touchstone. Thinking about Bolsonaro and his cronies makes me turn to all the tips I offered in the first paragraph. How they revel in the rage they incite, these wannabe dictators of our modern democracies. It makes us miserable while hurting them not one bit, so let’s stop giving them that power and start wrenching that power back into hands that aren’t out to grab all they can. Let’s vote like our lives depend on it, because more and more they do.

My counterpoint to Senhor B. is my maternal grandfather. He would have turned 100 today. He died in 2010, two months after his 90th birthday. My maternal grandmother would have turned one hundred tomorrow. (She died in the mid-nineties.) Yes, they were born on consecutive days, a few villages apart. They married at nineteen just before my grandfather set out to fight in WWII. I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately, filled with gratitude for every day we spent together, and they were many. Looking at pictures, talking to my children about them…I’m so happy they got to know him. Even my youngest remembers him. And I will never ever forget, not even when I am a hundred.

So today I wish you well, sweetie darlings, I wish my childhood home of Brazil well, and I celebrate my maternal grandparents with her favorite meal and his favorite cognac. And loads of love and longing.

Friends, family, countrymen, lend me your ears

"[L]ike a sunrise or sunset...we appear and we disappear, and we are so important to some, but we are just passing through."

~Natalia in Before Midnight

Happy Valentine's Day, fellow travelers. 💋💓
 

Bake the world a better place

My children love gingerbread in any shape or form, and I love the holiday season, so I decided to surprise them with these tokens of maternal love and devotion and it's-almost-Christmas-why-isn't-it-Christmas-already. No, I didn't get up at the crack of dawn to bake. They're teens, barely conscious at noon on weekends, so I had p l e n t y of time. 

Happy December 1st!

When all is said and done

 
Warning: verbal incontinence ahead.

Year-end review time! So how did you do, compared to how you expected to January 1, 2014? I started out all eleison, all merciful, not too hard on myself. And ended up, well...as the Mythbusters will tell you, failure is always an option. It wasn't a catastrophic failure, this year merely confirmed an observation: I'm an on-off person. When there's work to do, I'm all over it. When it's time to kick back, shoes and gadgets go flying into the depths and won't resurface until it's time to go back to work.

So. Maybe I should apologize for the radio silence here at the den but I won't. True to form, I've been working hard so I can enjoy some rest and relaxation over the holidays. Be with family, visit friends and take care of the new addition to the family, Chloe the cat. I know horses and hounds but I've never owned a cat. [I know. No one ever owns a cat, not really...] I've envied friends with cats and I've wanted one for the longest time, and now we have one, and not just because I wanted one but because the whole family did. She's a European shorthair and the sweetest, fiercest thing.

All in all, my life hasn't been very tale worthy. Work. Exercise. Family & friends time. Chores. Not always in that order but always some combination of the above. There's been some backstage drama worth a post or ten but that's personal and a business matter and nothing I can go into right here right now. It has certainly given me pause and another glimpse at the unsavory underbelly of a trade I've worked in for a long time in many capacities. So hardly a surprise, just another observation confirmed. People are the best, kind, loving and compassionate. People are the worst, cruel, selfish and unjust.

What else? I've been thinking about memory and identity and our lives, the only shot we have at doing everything we'll ever do, and I've been thinking about time, how it's become a luxury item [although I do believe that's an illusion, a creation after our own selves; there's still time, we're the wasteful ones and always in a hurry]. There are no winemakers in the family, only people who enjoy wine. Should you decide to become a vintner, from scratch, buy land and vines, it would take you a minimum of twelve years to see a grape worth squashing. The prerequisite of a quality wine is a quality vine, and those can take up to forty years to yield their best produce. Forty years. Still wonder why some wines cost a fortune? Someone somewhere waited half a lifetime for a vine to reach its full potential. Sometimes they wait by the vine in vain. Sometimes it comes to nothing. You can make bad wine from good grapes but not vice versa.

Take your time. Wait it out. See what happens. No time like the present. Carpe diem. Strike while the iron is hot. One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is that we make decisions based on cool careful calculation, on knowledge, the intellect, dollars, pounds and euros, the bottom line. Maybe lie is too strong a word, the wrong word. Maybe it's not a lie but a blindness to how much private emotions and past experiences factor. We like to think of ourselves as sensible beings who can keep our sensibilities in check when the limbic brain, the reptile brain gives the first and fastest response in any situation and most of us never learn to override it. Most of us aren't even conscious of it's workings but everyone knows the physical reactions, the swell of emotion that so easily takes hold of you when something unexpected happens, good or bad. If you have time, you reason. If not, you react.

Some are all emotion and reaction all of the time. No one is reasonable and sensible in everything they do. Feelings factor and that's a fact, one dictators have shamelessly milked since the first undecided human decided s/he needed a determined leader. How else would despots garner attention and gain followers? Why on earth would anyone raise a hand or their voice against another unless they're driven by a logic, a rhetoric, that stands and falls on the feelings they generate, the reactions that follow, the emotional satisfaction they can bring?

"I'm going to slaughter 6 million people. Who's with me?" "I will give you a strong, proud nation, the greatest this world has ever seen, a glorious kingdom that will last a thousand years. Who's with me?" The power of words. The power of emotion. Words can be used to generate empathy and respect. Words can be used to create conflict, to divide and oppress. The very same words in some cases. Take the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, their words too often misused for personal gain, selfish purposes, evil. Just listen. Look around you. Here I babble but the world, oh dearest denizens, sometimes the world just renders me speechless.

Like dearest Europe, for example. Where are you going, old girl? Anti-immigration, anti-Islamic sentiments, anti this and anti that. Hatred disguised as nationalism. Nationalism disguised as patriotism. Egotism disguised as reason. This is your answer, your solution? What's the question again? You make them up as you go to justify your actions or should I say reactions because the only brain I can see at work and in charge is the reptile one. You feel threatened, you attack. Is there a reason to feel threatened? That's what I'd like to know but man is it hard to have a conversation with someone deeply immersed in a monologue. Take Erdogan whose new palace is bigger than the Louvre. The Louvre! And don't get me started on Orbán. One of my oldest friends is half Hungarian, and she's just... Well, not living in Hungary for one and probably never will be if this is their trajectory. And Putin... Putin explains Russia and Russia explains Putin. Don't be fooled, though. Russia and the Russian people are two very different things.

And I'm at it again, aren't I, soapbox out and foaming at the mouth... Great, just great. Let's talk about something else, shall we. The holidays? Yea! Whether you celebrate at Christmastime or not many around you do. I know it's a hard time of year to be alone. If you are, I still hope you enjoy the peace and quiet the holidays bring, even for a few days. I hope you do all the things that make you happy, things you enjoy, and if that's too much self-absorption to your liking, I hope you take up people on their invitations for you to come over for dinner, drinks, coffee... Maybe they're not asking because it's the Christian, Christmasy thing to do but because they really want you there. Life will resume normal programing in a few, you'll be swept away and full of excuses why you can't thanks for asking maybe some other time. Go.

We most certainly celebrate Christmas at Casa Dita. There's not much religious faith at the heart of our celebration because of the different individuals and denominations coming together, but there's love and compassion, there's empathy and respect, the moral compasses of die hard worshipers, agnostics and atheists alike. A religion, a life!, not rooted in love, compassion, empathy and respect...what purpose does it serve?

From soapbox to pulpit. Religion and politics? I just broke some social media rules, I believe, like all two of them. It's just that... Gah. 'Tis the season? Up next: New year, new gear! Are you thinking of a theme for 2015? Share if you dare. I've been on Facebook and Twitter, can you believe it, on-off as per this year's/this life's theme, but still. So find me if you want to keep in touch on a more daily/weekly basis.

I haven't had time or energy for writing fiction lately and that's a shame because I write in my head all the time. I intend to be a good girl over the holidays and get some words down on paper. Yes, paper. Still enjoy that, immensely, both writing on some and reading print. The computer and keyboard need a rest and I need some rest from them.

The dark days have been a drag but we got some snow yesterday and there's more coming in today. No more dreaming of a white Christmas, it's here and so is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Which means longer days from now on, slowly but surely! Another cause for celebration, what our "pagan" ancestors celebrated before baby Jesus and St. Nick started facing off. Can't shout too loudly, though, this is the land of Santa after all. Since we live in the vicinity, he visits Scandinavian kids on Christmas eve.

You bet the wee ones are excited and so am I. I need a break and some downtime with family and friends. I hope you get some rest too or if it's an adventure you crave, I hope you find one. I hope you find what you're looking for. I hope you keep the faith, whatever lies at the heart of your belief/s, and I hope whatever it is, it's rooted in love, compassion and respect. It would be sooo easy to give in to despair and cynicism, the world bombasts us with reasons every day. But we're not quitters, are we, sweetie darlings? It's our world too and love is our resistance.

Merry Christmas, sweetie darlings, and a most excellent new year.

Love and anger

Temperature: 10/50 degrees and galeforce winds

Eating: see below

Drinking: such a sore throat I'm concentrating on hot beverages

Watching: Finnish Ismo Leikola win the first ever Funniest Person in the World competition. Also just watched Syria - Faces of War, Prix Europa 2014 winner in the Best Current Affairs Program category. Faces of War follows Finnish photojournalist Niklas Meltio to Syria where he's been documenting the war since 2012. I raise my hat and glass to you, Mr. Meltio. And if you're the praying kind, dearest denizen, put in a good word for him for me. He has lost dozens of colleagues in that conflict alone.

Listening: feeding the melancholia that follows the arrival of fall with the beautiful baritone of Matt Berninger

Reading: How We Learn by Benedict Carey

Writing: some unfinished business messing with my writing mojo. Not complaining or explaining, just stating a fact, a debilitating fact, but I'm working on it, one day and word at a time. Plans I had don't work anymore, and it's getting harder and harder to not feel defeated or deflated by recent events. It's a matter of trust. Principles. And I know I shouldn't go there and I shouldn't say things like that but you know what? Screw that. Facing facts is the road to both wisdom and freedom. And I do like my freedom. And I do looove my principles. And I sure as hell don't take kindly to being jerked around.

Feeling: the anniversary of my maternal grandfather's death is drawing near and I'm getting ready to lose him all over again. There's a fine line between sweet remembrance and rehashing the past past a point where the memories become hurtful not healing. You can actually reinforce a trauma by reliving it one time too many, by stamping the memory so firmly in your psyche you end up worse off than when you started your personal purge so take care. I don't want to forget him. Not what he meant to me, not what he taught me, not how losing him made me feel. I loved him. I still love him. And I know he loved me, too. I miss him. I miss you. The talks. The teasing. The somber moments. The fun. I won't forget. How could I ever forget.

Coming around again

How are you, dearest dearest denizens? Doing well, I trust, being as Tardis as they come, right? We came back late Friday night and on Saturday I celebrated my birthday in glamorous fashion by doing loads of laundry with some bubbly close at hand, estupidamente gelado i.e. insanely cold as Brazilians drink their beer. Vacation time is over but summer certainly isn't, the sun finally found it's way to Scandinavia and it's a hot one.

The last leg of our trip was a scorcher of a week in Denmark where we met a lot of very nice (and very tattooed!, what's up with that?) people, at least half of whom had probably done bit parts in Vikings (the TV series) at some point, judging by those tattoos I mean, which read like episode guides. If Finland is a forest spotted by towns and fields, Denmark is a (level) field of connected islands spotted by towns and forests. Using Swedish was just as useless as I thought it would be, apart for reading signs and such. They might understand what you were asking but trying to decipher the answer... Holie!

The World Cup now feels like a hundred years ago. I felt sorry for Brazil for a minute or two. So did they. And then life and the party went on. Germany displayed amazing restraint on the pitch, playing against a team playing in total shock, and admirable sportsmanship and support later on, on Twitter for example, and I second Mesut Özil: "you have a beautiful country, wonderful people and amazing footballers-this match may not destroy your pride! #Brasil".

Life resumed normal programing but they'll never ever forget. They're still talking about the loss against Uruguay in 1950. 1950! Brazilians still love football but many hated the Cup (read: FIFA) and are actually relieved Brazil didn't win because then all the insane amounts of money spent would have been forgiven and the protests forgotten. They didn't deserve to win and that's that, not with how they played, and maybe the pressure was too much, the expectations too great and the signals the team got, well, like I said they were mixed. What do I know. What I do know is football has always been fun and free and inclusive, an outlet as much as a doorway to a better future, everything the multibillion business the Cup is wasn't.

Next in line: the Olympics in 2016. We'll see how that goes. Don't know if we're going. Time to get back to work and down to business or we're definitely not going. Looking forward to it, actually, going back to work. No, really! Sure it was fun spending time with family, mine and Hubby's. On the rare occasion all siblings on both sides get together, I've counted 4 nationalities of 3 denominations with an atheist and agnostic thrown in who speak 5 mother tongues and all work in different fields. A family of many cultures and colors and creeds, some deeply rooted, some expats on the move, and it may look and sound like Babel but it's our life. It's life.

Such is my family, sweetie darlings, and such is the world and such a shame not everyone sees the beauty or respects the diversity of it all and I guess I can't make them, but we're all cousins on this planet, some more distant than others but cousins all the same. So when that's the world you know, your truth and your experience, how depressing was getting up to speed with the news after doing the Dark Side of the Moon Tour i.e. trying to unplug and avoid news outlets of all sorts. Pretty damn depressing. South Sudan and Syria, Gaza and Ukraine, Libya and Egypt, ISIS and Boko Haram, Ebola and terror, extremism and nationalism of the worst kind. Never again but always one more time.

What a family of feuding, belligerent clans we are. One thing I've noticed, no, four: In the middle of all the barbarity, it's easy to lose sight of all that's good and right and getting better. In the middle of all the savagery, it's easy to lose hope and trust and faith things will keep getting better. In some, any sign of vulnerability or helplessness, of distress or fear, rouses the need to protect. Some it just puts in a sadistic rage, and when that rage takes over you get a baby torn out of a belly sliced open with a machete. A five-year-old shot in the head. A woman raped to an inch of her life then buried alive. A man gutted like a fish. Not on the dark side of the moon. Not in some alternate sick twisted world. Ours.

I know you can't dwell on it all day long or you'll go mad. You cannot not think about it because it's like toothpaste oozing out of the tube. Good luck trying to push it back in. It's out, it's a mess, so what are you gonna do about it? What does this have to do with anything? Nothing, I guess. Everything, I suspect, because last night I dreamed I was back with my grandparents where I spent many happy summer weeks in my childhood.

I wasn't a kid in the dream, I was an adult and so were they. Not old like in the end, just adults. Funny that's where my mind went for solace. Logical, really. They gave the best years of their youth to a war that claimed her brother early on and a piece of his mind forever after. The very same years I spent at university having fun and getting a degree, he spent dodging and firing bullets while she worked her fingers to the bone in backbreaking labor so he'd have a home to come back to.

He rarely talked about it, any of it. She often told stories about life in the home front and what her brother was like, and one of my most treasured pictures is my great-uncle in his uniform, 19 years old, so very handsome and about to die. I could only imagine her pain. She missed him all her life. I could only imagine her fear. Would she lose her husband next?

He came back after years of fighting and close calls with barely a scratch on him. How is that possible? How do you go on in the middle of all that, after all that, with all you've witnessed and suffered and sacrificed? Play some football, meet up with family and friends, go out and see the world, not with a rifle on your shoulder but a backpack? You just do because you have to and because there is no option and it's not always your choice or voice that matters, it's not about you but the people around you.

So much randomness, a location lottery, a game of chance, an inch, a second that changes the course of one's life or spells death. So much love and selflessness, so much beauty and wonder, a word, an act that changes the course of one's life for the better. What a world we live in, sweetie darlings. What a family we are.

Running in the family

My aunt contacted me. She said she'd found something among my paternal grandmother's belongings I'd want to see. That my aunt had unearthed whatever it was I knew nothing about didn't surprise me. Geography and the uneasy rapport my mother had with her in-laws in general and her mother-in-law in particular resulted in my never being close to my father's side of the family as a child, a gap we've done our best to bridge in my adulthood.

My paternal grandmother was a complex woman who'd lived through happy and hard times alike. She was immensely grateful for all the good in her life but forgiveness was not her first impulse. In good and bad, her memory was infallible. She would recite lengthy poems, and often did on someone's special occasion, and when she spoke you got the impression she'd thoroughly thought through what she wanted to say before she uttered a single syllable. And you got the impression you weren't hearing the half of it.

What my aunt sent me only cemented that impression. My grandmother knew I wrote. I never knew so did she. Pages upon pages upon pages of thoroughly thought out lines I never knew existed. And here I thought that I was the black sheep, right-handed with some of the athletic and artistic inclinations running in both sides of the family but someone who'd rather be writing.

I don't know why she chose not to tell me. Was writing just a pastime? A private passion? A shattered or buried dream, just one of the things countless women of her generation couldn't cultivate because it simply wasn't an option, profession-wise? Where did all those lines come from? What was she thinking and how did she feel and did she have someone to share those words with, a reader, another writer? 

I stare at those pages and she's with me, breathing in every word. And then I lose her all over again. We'll never talk about this. I'll never get to ask all I badly want to ask and it makes me sad and it makes me angry and it makes me ashamed of myself because it's a selfish, childish wish. If she'd wanted to share she could have. It also gives me solace and satisfaction of the mischievous kind to think that maybe this was too important, too personal to share. My writing life was mine and mine alone. And hers was obviously none of my business. That is so true to character my first impulse is to forgive even when my gut reaction is anger and a vague sense of disappointment and regret. We had this in common and we never got to share it. And that's how she wanted it.

I hope she found what she was looking for when she sat down to write. I hope she dreamed and soared and reveled, lost in those innermost thoughts, that inner life that was hers and hers alone, that immovable, unshakable core we all possess. It's beautiful and it's powerful and I've witnessed people pull through the most awful of events and circumstances without losing their minds, hope, integrity or dignity because they never lost touch with it even if it seemed they'd lost everything else. Promise me you'll cherish and nurture yours, whether you're sharing it with all of humanity or never telling a soul, whether you call it soul, heart, spirit, grit... Whatever you call it, you know what I'm talking about. So promise me. Promise.

Something's gotten hold of my heart

'Tis the season, sweetie darlings, wedding anniversary season, a season that makes an insufferable lovey-dovey-shiny-happy-want-to-throw-my-arms-around-the-world girl out of me, a girl brimming with love; romantic, platonic, filial, maternal, sisterly...you name it, I'm feeling it, dearest dearest denizens. So I decided to celebrate this many-splendored thing with thoughts on the subject ranging across time and continents. Just because. Because love! So what's your favorite?

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few times. 
~ Rita Rudner

We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter. 
~ Mignon McLaughlin

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. 
~ Blaise Pascal

The eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love. 
~ Margaret Atwood

Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the senses.
~ Lao Tzu

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
~ Victor Hugo

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
~ Bertrand Russell

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
~ Dr. Seuss

A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
~ Jim Morrison

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
~ William Shakespeare

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
~ Pablo Neruda

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. 
~ Zora Neale Hurston

Love withers under constraints: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries live in confidence, equality and unreserve. 
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Stand by me.
~ Ben E. King

I'll stand by you.
~ The Pretenders

Proof of life

How was your weekend, dearest denizens? I know, it's Tuesday, but it feels like a Monday. So how was it, le weekend? I had a festive, family one. My sister turned thirty and my niece was baptized and we all got together and it was such a perfect day.

We now have an Amelie in the family and she looks just like my brother, which makes her a very handsome girl (as Austenites know, the height of beauty, so stop cringing, she's the cutest!). 

As long as there are babies and books and brothers and sisters and music and dance and bubbly, I don't care about the vitriol being projectile vomited through the nostrils of social media sites and news media alike. It's exactly what it seems: bad jokes in bad taste not to be taken seriously or to heart. (No, seriously. What gives? You need a hug? What is it?)

Have a great week, sweetie darlings, wherever you are.

December will be magic again

I'm sorry for the radio silence, sweetie darlings. It's all good, promise! It means I've been hard at work. It means I hope to have good news to relate in the coming weeks. 

So much to wrap up before Jesus faces off with Santa, but I deny being stressed out. There is no need to panic. Not yet, anyway. I'm on schedule with deadlines, even the self-imposed ones, and I've got a Teflon suit to don if the sound and the fury of the pre-X-mas fuss starts feeling a bit too much.

Mad Men beware, we have read our Seuss at Casa Dita. "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more." The kids have written Santa (and once again, he does not, I repeat, he does not live on the North Pole. At the Arctic Circle, okay?). They know Jesus put the Christ in Christmas. But what they're most excited about, what they anxiously wait for all fall, are the little things they remember doing last year, and the year before that, every year a bit more.

Tradition. The scourge of change and progress, and a source of comfort and continuity. Some traditions I've introduced, some come from Hubby's side. The best by far are the ones the whole family has had a hand in creating. New ones. Ours. Decades old or brand spanking new, traditions put the Christmas in my Christmas.

I will catch myself at the intersection of chronos and kairos, teaching something I remember being taught, having a meaningful conversation over a mundane task, hands hard at work, minds wide open. In the middle of giving instructions, telling a story, answering questions over the counter, I will look at my children, their faces glowing, cheeks full of cookie dough, hands breaded in flour, and see myself. In that instant, the past, present and future bleed into one. I'm a girl. I'm a woman. I'm an old dame. And everything makes such perfect sense.

P.S. Thanks for all the best wishes I've received during the year, Special Mention: chain letters promising fortune and fame. Alas, they didn't work. Maybe I jinxed them. Never passed them on. We'll never know. But. I've devised the perfect plan to ensure next year is glitch-free. Next year, just send me a check, some bourbon and bonbons, a Marlies Dekkers gift card, or an extra hour to my day. Or make a donation to your favorite charity. Support your favorite authors, buy their books! Get some for your friends, too!! Much appreciated!!! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have lunch.