People in Holland asked me how the government shutdown is hurting us. Compared to people who work for the TSA and others who have to work without pay if they don’t want to risk losing their jobs, we cannot complain. But now my first income producing activity of 2019 is also in jeopardy as my trip to Senegal cannot take place until approved by government officials who are currently not at their desks. I had another three days of income attached to this trip by an organization that is also in Dakar (but doesn’t need any US government approvals for internal corporate work). But since they are not paying for the travel, that activity is by extension also in jeopardy.
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All of my siblings have moved in the last few years. They sold their old house and bought a house in another town. They fixed them up/modernized them – at considerable expense, time and plenty of headaches and stress. But all are now all completed and they are all happy with the result. We got to spent time in their dream houses and admired each one of them.
Our first stop was Amersfoort, a town not well known by Americans – lovelier in the summer than winter but interesting any time. It lies at the center of Holland where the major north-south and east-west traffic axes meet (train and road).
We visited the ‘Caravaggio in Europe’ exhibit at the Utrecht Central museum where I learned about Dutch, Belgian, French and Spanish ‘caravaggionists’ I had never heard of and whose masterpieces were at par with those of Caravaggio himself. Some of the enormous altarpieces were done by those painters when they were still in their twenties! Impressive.
We had beer and ‘bitterballen’ before taking our evening meal in a specialized ‘Pannekoeken’ (Pancake) restaurant called the ‘Shrieking Maid’ (this is also the name of a type of firework that is very popular with 13-year old boys, even a week after New Year’s Eve). The giant menu (24”x18”) consists of countless combinations of bacon, apple, cheese, mushrooms, onions, molasses, confectioner sugar (a la carte) or American, Malaysian/Indonesian, Mexican, Italian ready-made combinations that can be guessed.
Day 3 and 4 we drove further east in our wheelbarrow-wheeled Daihatsu to my Irish-twin brother, and visit him in his very new house. The rather boring two storied back of the house had been replaced by an enormous floor to ceiling glass wall that brought the outside in: a meadow with tiny little ponies grazing in the rain. The yard in between the house and the ponies is still awaiting planting season and looked rather sad but there is a plan to make the view even more spectacular.
We visited another museum I had never heard of, the exquisite Modern Realism museum ‘More’ in Gorssel. Here too we discovered artists we had never heard of but from another period, the modern realists who produced their work during the 20th century. We had dinner afterwards in what appears to be a chain (Loetje) that is famous for its gravy – the tenderloin Axel order was served in a bath of (rather salty) gravy, with slices of wonderbread to sop up the liquid – a rather unhealthy combination it seemed to me, but apparently a selling combination for the chain.
The flight to Holland was uneventful. But then, as we were walking towards the baggage claim area I discovered that I had dropped my iPhone someplace, probably on the plane. Two hours later, thanks to some concerted efforts by various employees of Delta, KLM and Schiphol I had it back (it was under my seat). After a nice breakfast at the airport, we continued our journey. The first leg was by train to pick up a car in Den Haag, courtesy of another brother. Then, after a cup of coffee and an ‘oliebal,’ (a traditional new year’s eve food, kind of like fried dough but rounder and with raisins), we drove to Amersfoort (in ‘the green heart of Holland’), where my youngest brother and his wife live. The car is tiny; the wheels no larger than those of our wheelbarrow, with just enough space for our two small bags – but one cannot look a gift horse in the mouth: a car is a car, saving us a pricy rental or cumbersome public transport with suitcases and much walking.
Last year the siblings came together with their spouses to celebrate each other and the new year. We are all still here, all 10 of us (5+5) – with Axel and me being number 7 and 8 out of the 10. I am very aware that this is not something to be taken for granted. Last year I was still employed and without enough vacation days to make the trip – we joined the dinner via Facetime but it was less than satisfactory. This year there is another meal planned, on January 6. I guess it now has become a tradition. Not having to count vacation days anymore, and having enough frequent for the two of us to fly for 90 dollars (taxes) there was no reason to stay away from the event. And so we are in Holland now, till January 8.
The joyful holiday season, which tend to dread, passed quite pleasantly this year. It was, as it is supposed to be, rather joyful. It was also chaotic, with the 6 of us adults, two grandchildren and three grand-dogs in our not so large living space. The space shrinks when you add a Christmas tree, however small.
I would prefer to have the Christmas tree outside, but Axel insists it is inside. At the start of December, he always says something like: “this year I will get the Christmas tree early.” I don’t encourage this so I don’t do any reminding. He gets busy with other things, until Christmas is nearly there and only small and scraggly Christmas trees remain, the Charlie Brown kind. I like it. Additional benefit of late buying: there is always a discount this late in the game.
I trim the tree (because he is still busy). As soon as Christmas is over I remove the ornaments and return the boxes to the (unplugged) freezer chest that holds the Christmas stuff. And the space opens up again. I can handle a short week of Christmas clutter and cramped ness.
We left for Easthampton on Christmas Eve to witness the waking up on Christmas Day kids’ experience (joyful and frantic). Later on Christmas morning we drove back to Manchester where Tessa and Steve joined us bringing a complete Mediterranean Christmas meal, nearly fully prepared. This is a Christmas gift I wouldn’t mind getting every year. Tessa also brought home made gifts, including a perfect gingerbread house that would make Martha Stewart jealous (and I would have killed for as a kid). It had stained glass windows made from melted hard candy, an indoor carpet made from red and green M&Ms, a fence from red striped white Hershey kisses, roof tiles made from white chocolate pastilles and frosted snow in even little florets along the roof line and window sills. Her home-made white chocolate body butter and olive oil presents were equally perfect. Tessa goes for ‘prefect,’ unlike her mother who has adopted a ‘good enough for now (or for the occasion)’ attitude long ago.
The gingerbread house got demolished the day after Christmas, as if a bomb had gone off inside it. It provided Faro with even more sugar than he had already been consuming. He particularly liked the stained glass. It was kind of sad to see it destroyed, but then again, as a kid, you don’t always want to look at a gingerbread house. You want to eat it.
We ate our Lebanese mezze and other Mediterranean delicacies all day long, opened gifts, read Christerklaas poems and searched for hidden presents all over the house, while the dogs licked up any of the foods spilled or dropped by careless little and big humans. It was a good Christmas, leaving Axel and me grateful for our blessings and with anticipation of art classes we will take in the summer at Snow Farm in western Massachusetts (https://www.snowfarm.org) – a gift from Sita and Jim.
New Year’s Eve was passed with friends and a good night sleep while 2018 quietly made way for 2019. The next day we were on our way to see my siblings in Holland.
We are closing in on Christmas. This means that my teaching semester is nearly over, one last class tomorrow and then the grading of papers. The hectic fall season, my first very busy season as an independent consultant, is nearly over. I am looking at a much quieter new year. If the fall was too full, the next three months look rather empty. So far I have only one assignment in mid-January for which the contract hasn’t even been signed. I had to hand over so many papers, as if I am applying for full-time employment: a bank statements to prove that I had indeed been paid by this or that company and not made up the numbers; my university diploma – long since lost in my multiple moves, etc. Familiar and unpleasant memories of working on federal contracts.
Talking about contracts, Sita has assembled a motley but extremely creative, experienced and competent crew of people around her, far and wide, to bid on a municipal town (her own town) planning contract with an unusual and very creative proposal. It is due in 2 days. She and her partners in crime are up at 6AM and going to bed probably very late to fulfill all of the bid requirements. I don’t know where she gets the energy (or maybe I do know, and it is mine, now passed on to her).
At home we have started a de-accessing process. We are carting away boxes and bags of stuff we no longer need and that get in the way of simplifying our life. It is amazing how easy it was to give away stuff that I once valued. The difficult part, not yet tackled, will be the children’s books from my youth which we found tucked away in a far corner of the barn attic. It is amazing how the sight of a book let loose a whole host of memories that were stored, all along, somewhere in my memory library (the brain’s hippocampus). I did throw away a booklet with a dedication in the front from my primary school headmaster. He was a Seventh Day Adventist and gave us homework for the weekend, tested on Monday, to learn a hymn or psalm by heart (also in my hippocampus). The dedication urged us, boys and girls, to read the bible every day. The booklet contained verses from the bible, explained to the young mind. It went in the paper recycling box. I must admit I never read it, only just before tossing it out. The other booklets were also gifts – at the end of each of my Kindergarten years – when I couldn’t read yet. They were stories to be read by a parent I suppose – or else I must have been a spectacular reader at 4 and 5.
One story is about a little African girl and a parrot, another about a girl whose new dress was ripped because she was a bit of a tomboy, and the third book is about a toddler on a farm who was stolen by a bad wild dog and then saved by his own good dog – all good endings. The book about the African girl and her parrot, the weekly contributions (10 cents) to Christian missions in Africa and my father’s three-month tour of Africa when I was 3 or 4, must have laid the foundation for my fascination (first) and eventually life’s work in Africa – the workings of an impressionable young mind. The books and booklets have moved with me to Leiden, then Beirut, then Brooklyn, then Georgetown and now Manchester. Oh, what to do with them? One last glance and toss – or start reading in Dutch to my grandkids so they can read the chapter books on their own, later? And how likely is that?
A de-accessing on a grand scale started today at the end of the driveway where a large bulldozer brought the old proud carriage house (built in 1869) to its knees. All that is left is a pile of rubble that will hopefully be carted away today. Our environment has changed, opened up (Tessa remarked on a photo we sent her, “crazy, so much blue sky.”) We will have to change the directions to our house (turn right at the yellow barn) now that the yellow barn is no more.
I got out of the habit of writing – I am too busy and have not been spending much time in airports where such writing is a pleasant pastime. But now I am in the KLM lounge in Amsterdam, probably my last visit as the Delta lounge membership will no longer be honored by KLM as of 1/1/2019.
I am stunned at how busy Schiphol is. I walk slowly and baffled, as if I just came from a remote rural village in a faraway land. And I wonder, maybe I am done with traveling to Africa, or close to done. The crowds are spectacular at this early morning hour.
I am on my last trip of the year, this time to Zambia, a country I have never visited in my nearly 40 years of traveling to and from the continent. My other trips, since I left MSH have been to Chapel Hill (three times) and Japan. Not as much as I used to travel and so Axel and I got used to being in the same place, waking up together, having breakfast together, lunch even, like newlyweds. We like it, and the parting was a little more difficult this time because of our new routines.
I have been much busier than I thought these last 6 months. I teach two online MBA evening classes which requires an enormous amount of prep work as I am learning the ropes of this new venture, learning to grade, and plowing through many articles and videos. It is as if I am a student myself. I am getting exposed to a whole array of new articles and videos that are so very relevant to my other work of organizational consulting. I realized how stale I had been getting, swimming in circles in the same small pond.
I am also deepening my coaching skills by attending several webinars a week and registered in a peer-coaching program sponsored by the International Coach Federation. I am coached by one peer and coaching another. I asked my coach to help me (or us really) get some clarity about this next phase of our life which I have only halfheartedly entered. She asked what I was transitioning to and I realized I didn’t know. That was my homework for the week.
Axel and I talked about it – I am transitioning to a less frantic, calmer life, with time to look at our stuff and start carting boxes and boxes to the secondhand store. After I was laid off I said I was going to go through one kitchen cabinet a day and remove everything that we had not used in a year (never did so); then I’d tackle the books with the question “Am I ever going to read this book again?” It seemed a simple question but it was difficult – I have Dutch books I will not read again, and they can’t go to the second-hand store. But to throw them away?
We have reduced out inventory by several boxes but you wouldn’t notice it. And the kitchen cabinets are still full. I alphabetized the spices and threw some old spice jars out. I think they may be from Penny’s young bride days – but Axel says they are quaint and maybe even antique and pulled them out of the trash. At this pace it will be a long time to uncluttered our house.
Because we had the roof of the barn/studio replaced we needed a large container to dispose of the old shingles. Axel ordered oe size up form the one the roofer recommended, so we could throw things out, stuff that even the second-hand store won’t accept. It’s only half full with the roofing debris, just as I left for my trip to Zambia. It is better that I don’t know what is going in there – if I haven’t used something for a long time I probably won’t miss it.
Christmas season has descended on us with the promise of getting more new stuff…so the major transition (in the short term) is from a lot of stuff to less stuff, in spite of Christmas. In the long run it is about staying in touch with people who matter, spending money on that rather than on more stuff.
When we arrived Sita whisked me away quickly to the piece of land in Westhampton she has had her eye on for some time. It is 70 acres that used to be a summer camp – remnants of it still visible here and there; cabins slowly rotting back into earth, some pipes, street lamps, an asphalt parking place, cement basement walls caving in foot by foot. And all the rest is back to the wilds, overgrown trees and bushes, brush everywhere.
Sita wants to buy it and turn it into a kind of retreat center, with tree houses, cabins for her parents and her sister (the dogs would love it!). It’s a wonderful vison I have already fully bought into but the owner of the land doesn’t want to sell – holding out for ever rising real estate prices in this part of Massachusetts. Although I can see what Sita sees, I also see a money pit and a project that will outlast us by decades, maybe even outlast Sita.
Sita gathers the most amazing people around her, far and wide, like burs on a fall walk jumping on one’s furry coat. They traipsed along through the woods (the friends, not the burs), sharing her vision, even picking out the place where her parents will be living.
The friends are creators, inventors, optimists, go-getters, driven by a strong passion to make the world a better place for everyone, especially those having few chances now. Social maps, Future Scouts…all very exciting. If anyone from my generation is worried about the millennials they are completely wrong. We discovered we will be in NYC at the same time as one of Sita’s new friends. I am sure we are unlikely to see each other, we have a full program, but we pretend as if.
And then, a week later, when we are in NYC it turns out the this person amazing is embroiled in a fight with his partners about IP and a lawyer is needed quickly. Axel’s cousin is mobilized to find a lawyer. And so we don’t see Sita’s friend but rather Axel’s cousin and my nephew and his wife. And then we see the fabulous performance of Duda Paiva’s Blind – the reason for our NYC trip.
We are lodged at the midtown YMCA to save money for nice dinners. It means Axel has to climb in the upper bunkbed in our tiny dorm room and we share bathrooms with about 100 rooms on our floor: two toilets for women. One is occupied a good part of the night by a young woman – constipated I suspect.
But down in the basement of the enormous Y are two swimming pools, two enormous and well-equipped locker rooms with a sauna and steam room and a large exercise room with bikes and treadmills and ellipticals. We can exercise to our heart’s content which leads to slow starts in the morning.
Every night we eat with abandon in interesting restaurants handpicked by Tessa who is good at this sort of thing (as we learned last year in New Orleans). We are always in the company of whichever family (or near family) members are around and enjoying the time together, with only me seeing the bill. It confirms why sleeping for less and eating for more is so much more fun.
I gave Sita for her 38thbirthday a bag full of daffodil bulbs. I added the planting of the bulbs as an additional gift. The bulbs have to go in before the ground is hardened by frost. Since we already had two nights of frost – killing off the last reminders of summer – and next week we are in New York, this was the weekend. The weather forecast was rain, but hey, I am from Holland, rain does not have to interfere with yard work.
After two hours of hard work I was done: first there was the digging of soil full of roots, then putting in the fertilizer, placing the bulbs in neat round circles for special effect, shoveling compost on the other side of the house, trying first one and then another wheelbarrow with flat tires, carrying the compost in small buckets, and finally covering the bulbs with the compost. With that the last part of the bulb present was provided. All this happened under rain that started as a drizzle and then became a downpour. I was as wet and muddy as the kids, leaving a mess behind in the mud room..a kin mud room I wished we had in Manchester.
Tonight is the last part of the present: babysitting while Sita and Jim have a night out on the town, a dinner and a music show.
Sita whisked me away quickly to the piece of land she has had her eye on for some time. It is 70 acres that used to be a summer camp – remnants of it still visible here and there; cabins slowly rotting back into earth, some pipes, street lamps, an asphalt parking place, cement basement walls caving in foot by foot. And all the rest is back to the wilds, overgrown trees and bushes, brush everywhere.
Sita wants to buy it and turn it into a kind of retreat center, with cabins for her parents and her sister. It’s a wonderful vison I have already fully bought into but the owner of the land doesn’t want to sell – holding out for ever rising real estate prices in this part of Massachusetts. Although I can see what Sita sees, I also see a money pit and a project that will outlast us by decades, maybe even outlast Sita.
Sita gathers the most amazing people around her, far and wide, like burs on a fall walk jumping on one’s furry coat. They traipsed along through the woods (the friends, not the burs), sharing her vision, even picking out the place where her parents will be living.
The friends are creators, inventors, optimists, go-getters, driven by a strong passion to make the world a better place for everyone, especially those having few chances now. Social maps, Future Scouts…all very exciting. If anyone from my generation is worried about the millennials they are completely wrong.
While my relatives in Holland are (were?) enjoying wonderful autumn weather, we are skipping what is usually referred to as Indian summer and moving straight into blustery November weather, before the leaves have fallen and before the end of Daylight Savings Time and even before November itself.
I was corrected on the use of Indian summer because it refers to ‘the falsity’ of Indian promises. But that is only one of many explanations and so no one really knows and I will continue to lament that there was no Indian summer in new England this year. Interestingly, in my explorations I learned (whether true or not as we know about ‘the falsity’ of the internet) that in Germany this phenomenon is called old wives’ summer (falsities as well?)
I completed my first assignment for MSH after an absence of 4 month. It was a strange and yet familiar experience to drive the familiar route, park my car in my habitual space, and reconnect with people in the coffee area as if I had just been on a long trip. It was a joyous reconnecting, learning about babies being born in the meantime, projects won, some colleagues gone and new ones added.
For one and a half day, with the new occupant of my desk, we entertained three (socially) entrepreneurial Japanese women how to prepare for, or improve their leadership and prepare for the pitches they have to make. Their visits to several Boston-based social entrepreneurial organizations or initiatives, as well as a week long course at Babson, serve as a practice run, before they head back to Japan to scale up or extend the impact of their organization (existing or still to be founded). All these young women, the founder of the program hopes, will undermine the walls of patriarchy in Japan and help those who have been sidelined over the centuries to become productive citizens of this new Japan, somewhere over the rainbow.
When I returned home after the 2ndday at MSH I was relieved that this was my one and only a two day commute for the rest of the year. I had to get up early again, drive one hour each way and miss having breakfast and coffee with Axel and simply being in charge of my time.
Being in charge of my own time has allowed us to do a lot of fun things, like going to concerts and plays, taking walks and making music (me the ukulele and Axel the guitar – though not yet together), watching movies, reading books. I also picked up my knitting needles again, a reflex when the days get shorter and there is a fire in the fireplace. We are also looking forward to some exciting trips, one in a couple of week to see Duda Paiva’s Blind [http://dudapaiva.com/en/portfolio/blind/] in Manhattan with Tessa and Steve, and planning a short ski vacation in February with the whole family. Life is good.
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