Sylvia's Journal

A night full of wild dreams; maybe it was because of the overexcitement of the senses from last night’s reunion from the years of 1969-1976 of the Student Association Minerva in Leiden where I belonged to the year 1970, the first year women were allowed in. It was truly over stimulation of all senses indeed: taste (an extraordinary meal with wonderful wines), eyes (seeing so many suited and grey haired gentlemen – the women looked so much better – who were once classmates or even younger than that), ears (the noise from 300+ people make in a cavernous – concrete and wood mostly – hall that is famous for its bad acoustics), smell (the cigarette and rancid beer that they could not scrub out of the place even if they tried!) and touch (an elbow to elbow crowd with much hugging and kissing of people not seen in a long time).

Six from our student club (named ‘Pimpernod’) showed up; many cannot stand the overstimulation; some clubs, like my brother’s, show up for the cocktail hour (bier and bitterballen) and then eat in a normal restaurant in town where you can actually talk in normal voices and hear each other. It is puzzling why we are not doing this, since the experience is a bit harsh and it keeps some of us from cominig to the event. But there is something about enduring it with the vague chance of meeting people who were once fellow students and are now doing interesting, outrageous or important work. I am sure there were plenty of industry captains in the room who don’t sleep well at night these days.

The wild dreams were about having to recite the Lord’s Prayer in front of some mitered church official (and not remembering it but not wanting to let on either) and people doing powerpoints about their lives. It all fits of course. The mitered church official must be Sinterklaas who is already in the country getting ready for his annual duties that are fairly similar to Northpole’s Santa. The local Aalsmeer newspaper showed a front page picture of Sinterklaas arriving without his miter which was found later in the room of a female inhabitant of the old people’s home he visited. Sint blushed, it was recorded, when the miter was handed back to him later. Unlike Santa, Sint comes from Turkey by way of Spain and, with his entourage, reflects both the societal values and the fashion of life in 16th century Spain.

Weather wise it felt like we were on the bridge from fall into winter. Under sun, hail and fast moving dark clouds we crossed the imaginary line that separates the two seasons. But in Holland weather is never a reason to abandon a plan. We went on a walk in the Amsterdamse Bos (woods) with Sietske’s two dogs, her own old and tired Sheppard and a visiting young terrier-poodle that had been saved from the shelter and would be a good match for Chicha.

My brother, his wife and a friend, also on their way to the reunion, drove from the west of Holland. They picked me up on the way and dropped me off again around midnight, conveniently saving me from having to sort out busses and trains. It also allowed us some quality time together before having to share each other with hundreds of others.

The event in the association’s clubhouse was exhausting and a little hard on the foot which appears to know that a visit with the two top orthopods is around the corner. One of the distinguished looking gentlemen (probably more but I knew only one), and a high school classmate, is the orthopedic surgeon for the Dutch national ballet and gave me an impromptu consultation on my tendon problems – the one on the outside he is familiar with because dancers have that problem all the time (and so do the Red Sox, especially Schilling) – the one on the other site he had never seen; so far, no orthopod I consulted with has ever seen the condition, which is why I am going higher up. On Friday night Piet and I had surfed the internet and found one consistent conclusion on all relevant sites: no conservative measures possible. This means ‘cut’ I was told.