Category Archives: daily life

Beaches and Beers, Pancakes and Paying

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The day after our biking and museum-going expedition, Ingrid took me to the beach.  The beach, you ask?  I know, it’s something I associate with Florida, not Holland.  Still, I had read in a guide book that the beach is a thing in the Netherlands in the summer, so off we went.  We walked a couple blocks to the bus stop, took a bus into central Utrecht, then took a train to the seaside town of Zandvoort (“zand” meaning “sand”, a Dutch word even I can memorize).  If I were in Minnesota, I would have driven the distance – about 45 minutes – to Zandvoort, but I don’t think it ever occurred to Ingrid not to take public transport.

It was a cloudy, blustery day.  We sat on a restaurant patio that had clear plexiglas walls to break the wind.  We ordered some food; in Minnesota such a restaurant would hardly be worthy of the name restaurant, you would only be able to get a frozen burger and fries and ice cream.  But here, we had smoked salmon and pate and incredibly lightly fried battered cod and good bread, plus my favorite mid-day traveling beverage, cappuccino.

We went down to the beach and strolled.  Like kids everywhere, the Dutch kids were having fun in the waves and sand while their parents watched, bundled up in sweaters and wincing at the wind.  Ingrid and I were deep into some profound subject so we didn’t notice the cold.

There were cabins aligned along the beach—for rent?  I suppose it would be fun for kids and dads and dogs to have the family vacation at the seaside, but it would be miserable for moms.  The tent-like things in the background are pop-up wind breaks.

We moseyed back up from the beach and sat at a table on another patio.  I had a beer that was really, really good.  I wonder if I’ll be able to find it again.  I wonder if it just tasted so good because of the atmosphere.

Ingrid went to the toilet and the sun came out for the first time that day.  I leaned my head back against the cushions and half fell asleep.  It was one of those rare moments when I was completely content and at ease and I could have stayed there for hours.

—

When we got back, we rode our bikes by Ingrid’s son’s baseball game.  Baseball, you ask?  Yes, I was surprised too.  Baseball is catching on in the Netherlands, and Ingrid’s son Simon is an ace pitcher.

That night we went out for pancakes. Pancakes for dinner, you ask?  Yes.  But not just any pancakes, and not just at any old pancake house.  This place, Theehuis Rhijnauwen, was in the countryside with tables on the lawn leading down to a stream.  We had to move inside because it was chilly, but then the pancakes came.  As you can see, they’re the size of pizzas.  Mine was savory, with red peppers, onions, and cheese.  Here is the menu in English.

Now I faced a dilemma.  Chris and Ingrid had sprung for Indonesian take out the night I arrived.  We had gone to a nice restaurant the second night, and Chris had insisted on paying.  Tonight he did the same.  I didn’t know how hard I should push to pay—at least for my own.  The Dutch have a reputation for being very frugal, and of course there is the phrase “Dutch treat” which means splitting the bill.  I was also drinking their coffee and eating their cheese, their most valuable possession, in the mornings.

I never know if this is all about my insecurities growing up in a hard scrabble household, or if everyone else is thinking, “Wow, what a leech Anne is, not paying for anything.”

—

The next day Ingrid and I were leaving for Salzburg, so being a little anxious, I awoke even earlier than usual.  The house was silent.  Needing coffee, I crept down to the kitchen and turned on the fancy machine that makes coffee, tea, cappuccino, and espresso.  It went “BRRRRRRRRRR!!!” like an alarm clock and woke up the whole household.  And that was the start of our day.

 

Boeren Bonenstoofschotel on Schoenlappervinlinder

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Greetings from Eton, England.  Tonight I will sleep in my 11th bed in a month.  I’ve spent the last 10 days in the southwest of England—in Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset—where the internet connections were not much better than in Ethiopia.  So I’m going back to write about some of the places I visited almost a month ago, and now that I’ve got a good connection I’ll write forward and eventually join up with the present, in Eton.

—

After three whirlwind days in Copenhagen and being forced to buy a second plane ticket thanks to Expedia, I arrived in the land of long words, the Netherlands.  I was so happy to see my old friend Ingrid waiting in the arrivals hall.

Ingrid and I met in 1986 at a Volunteers for Peace “work camp” in London.  I’ve written before about how she visited me in the US twice and I visited her in the Netherlands twice, including being a bridesmaid in her wedding.  The last time I saw Ingrid in person was after her son was born, about 11 years ago.  Of course we are friends on Facebook but it’s not the same.

By the time we got out of the airport parking ramp and onto the highway headed to Utrecht, where she lives, we were talking about whether god exists, the meaning of suffering, and how humanists can be as inhumane as anyone. Our conversations continued like this for the next six days.  Don’t get me wrong; we also talked about hairstyles, houses, families, health, and jobs, but I can talk to most people about those things.  It is so good to have a friend you can talk to about the big questions.

Plus, she fed me Boeren Bonenstoofschotel, a Dutch folk food, from what I understand.

The street Ingrid and her family live on is called Schoenlappervinlinder, which is named for a butterfly.  By the time you’ve pronounced the word, the butterfly would be long gone.

Here are some photos of a typical Dutch side-by-side house in what Ingrid referred to as a “suburb” of Utrecht, which felt pretty urban by American standards.

The house was similar to many American homes with the exception of exceptionally steep stairs leading from one floor to another.  They all shrugged when I exclaimed over how steep they were.  There was a bike shed in the back yard to accommodate the four family bikes that they use to go to work, school, and most everywhere else except to the grocery for a big shopping load.  The attic which served as my room had home-painted Mondrian thanks to Ingrid’s husband Chris, and more English language books on the bookshelves than most American homes.

Speaking of grocery shopping, I got to go with Chris and Ingrid to a Jumbo, which is a mid level grocery chain.  The Dutch love sweets.  Stroop koeken/waffle are typically Dutch cookie or waffle “sandwiches” filled with sugar syrup.  There is every other imaginable form of cookie, cake, and candy, plus lots of breakfast sweets stuff, like sprinkles for toast and an entire Nutella section.

Eggs and milk were not refrigerated.  I guess in the US we refrigerate both because it makes them seem fresher, but it’s not necessary.  If that’s true, what a waste of energy!  If it’s not true, then there should be lot of people retching their guts out every day in the Netherlands.

We have an image in the US of how everyone in Europe eats artisanal, organic, free range food.  There is plenty of it, but they also eat junk, just like us:

This item in the deli case, “FiletAmericain Naturel,” turned out to be Steak Tartare.  Ironically, I believe you can’t buy it in the US.

Then there were the cheeses.  The Dutch love cheese at least as much as sweets, and there must have been 500 different kinds on offer. I could have taken photos of cheese all day.

Finally, this was in the magazine section.  It’s a mag for gay men, and in an American grocery—if it was even allowed—it would have a colored plastic sleeve to hide the content, a la Penthouse and Playboy.

In New Orleans

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This continues a series of posts about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

And so we spent five days in New Orleans, and it was pretty much as fun and relaxing as I had expected.  Different places have different vibes.  You can’t explain why, they just do.  New Orleans and Los Angeles feel similar to me—like “anything goes, no judging.”  Within limits, of course.  There’s plenty of crime in New Orleans, and my friend who lives there has a bar near his house that’s a noisy nuisance.

Did it feel relaxed because I was on vacation?  No, that’s not it.  I’ve vacationed in Berlin and Dubai, in Edinburgh, Scotland and Scottsdale, Arizona.  I had some relaxed moments in those places, but they didn’t feel inherently relaxed.

Was it because the car had been towed and was now in a shop?  Maybe. The most memorable part of that was that the tow driver’s name was Earl, and Lynn and Christine thought that was hilarious.  I guess if you think about it, coming from England, no one there would name their kid Earl—you either are an Earl or you’re not—but you wouldn’t be named Earl.  It would be like if I had named Vince Vice President.

—

I had chosen the dates for New Orleans to coincide with French Quarter Festival.  FQF is smaller than Mardi Gras and more musically encompassing than Jazz Festival.  There were concerts featuring blues, rock, soul, and all sorts of jazz, all performed by Louisiana musicians.

My favorite afternoon was when we were lucky enough to get a table on one of the rickety-looking balconies overlooking Bourbon Street.  Here is Molly demonstrating that we’re on a balcony:

Miss Molly

When we ordered beers, the server asked if we wanted large, medium, or small.  That was an odd question; I’d never been asked that before.  I figured a medium would be the safe choice.

Now, I don’t allow my photo be taken in potentially-compromising situations.  But there are plenty of people who do, so here is a photo I found on the Internet of the “medium” beer, along with the “large,” which I think you’ll agree is an understatement.

Huge Ass Large

We had all afternoon to sip our beers semi-responsibly, and we were lucky enough to be perched above a Dixieland jazz band which had attracted some energetic dancers of the Charleston.  Here’s what the Charleston looks like.  It’s athletic, exuberant, and just makes you feel happy.

—

We started each day slowly, which is how it should be when you’re on vacation.  I was always the first up; I can’t help myself.  Still, the freshly-made breakfast would already be waiting for me in dining room.  It was different every day, and a labor of love.  There would be a frittata, muffins or some sort of fruit bread, veggie or meat sausage, homemade marmalade, and of course, coffee.  You could make toast or bagels, or instant grits or oatmeal.  The fridge was stocked with milk and orange juice and yogurt.

I sat on the front porch and savored the morning quiet with my breakfast and a couple cups of coffee.  There were the usual morning sights, like the trash men collecting the trash, parents walking their kids to school, cats skulking by the fence, and people commuting to work on bikes.

Back inside, my crew and the other guests slowly filtered out of their rooms.  There were two women there from Vancouver, one of whom got up early to run despite how late they stayed out every night.  She and I stretched together on the living room carpet a couple times and chatted.  There are six guest rooms at the Ould Sweet Olive, so counting our suite which slept four, its capacity was 14.  The rest of the guests were couples from England, Scotland, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Molly, Lynn, Christine, and I would sit in the front room for hours, chatting and drinking coffee, before we got our day underway.  We talked about places we’d been, places we wanted to go, kids, pets, and—in hushed tones, politics—because our hostess had numerous photos of herself with Donald Trump on the walls.

The Slog

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This is the third of three posts, the first and second are here. If you started reading this blog for the prison theme you may be wondering, what does any of this have to do with Vince going to prison? I don’t know if it does—you tell me.

—

And so I informed people of my decision, which I had known from the moment I’d found out I was pregnant again: I would give the baby up for adoption.

I told Judy, the Catholic Charities social worker, and her eyes lighted up. “I do have a few reservations,” I told her about what I had learned about adopted people in my Abnormal Psychology class. Judy laughed lightly and handed me a clipboard with forms. While I was signing them she said, “We have to trust that God knows what’s best for us. Even if it’s painful—especially if it’s painful, we just have to put ourselves in God’s loving hands.” I thought this was muddled but made a mental note to try to pray in my spare time.

I told my college advisor. “My due date is right before finals but I promise there won’t be any interruptions in my attendance.” She looked a little stunned and said, “We’ll understand if you need to take some time off.”

“No, no—that won’t be necessary,” I cut her off. I didn’t want them to cut me any slack. I would graduate on time. The whole point of this plan was to do what was best for all three of us, so I needed to graduate and get a job.

—

The other point of the plan was to keep it all hush-hush. I would stay away from the family, my friends, and the whole neighborhood where they all lived. If my grandma called and asked if she could visit me, I would make an excuse to keep her away. It would only be for six months, right? It wasn’t as extreme as the case of Margie, a girl I knew in high school, who went through her whole pregnancy and adoption while living in her family’s house. None of them ever talked about it. Now that was weird.

—

So there Vince and I sat, alone, on his first birthday. I had called The Creep and invited him but he had “some really important business” to take care of. In other words, a drug deal. I only saw him once again in the ensuing 36 years.

V 1st Bday

I did what you’re supposed to do for a baby’s first birthday. I made a cake with one candle and let him eat it with his fingers and smear it all over the place. And I cried…and cried.

Then I stiffened myself and plunged my feelings way down into the deep freeze and didn’t feel anything again for a year. That’s the thing about avoiding negative feelings—it makes you unable to experience positive ones, either.

—

Life went on as before. I trudged through the snow to the daycare, studied furiously, and cleaned the house as though I was in boot camp. As happened during my first pregnancy, perverts tried to pick me up at the bus stop, in stores, in the elevator of my building.

The student who had pressured me to have an abortion was disappointed when I told him I was going the adoption route. “That’s…I’m sorry, but that’s just selfish,” he said. “That poor kid,” he said, staring at my belly.

Sometimes students I didn’t know would try to strike up a conversation.

“When’s your baby due?” they would ask brightly.

“April,” I would respond flatly, giving them fair warning that proceeding with the conversation would be a mistake.

“Do you want a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t really care, since I’m giving it up for adoption.”

This would result in sputtering and something like, “You’re so brave—good luck!” as they backed their way out of the room as fast as possible. I hated that line—“You’re so brave.”

Now that I had set my course I didn’t second guess it, but if you had asked me I might have said I was just being practical.

The Dilemma

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Vince has mentioned in his blog that he would like to write about his brother, so I should probably get out ahead of that.

—

It was 1979.  Nine-month-old Vince and I lived on the 18th floor of Skyline Towers, a subsidized 24-story high rise overlooking Interstate 94.

I had just started my second year of college.  In the spring I would earn my two-year Occupational Therapy degree.  I would be able to get a job and get off welfare, maybe even move out of public housing into a quaint little brick four-plex with wood floors and a stained glass window.  That was my dream.

Here was my routine:

5:30 am: Get up, shower, feed baby Vince

6:00 am: Strap Vince into the collapsible stroller, put on the old beaver fur coat I had found at the Salvation Army and the moon boots I bought new after saving all summer.  Sling my backpack full of text books over my shoulders, and head down the hall to the elevators.

Moon Boots

6:15 am: Exit the front door into the winter morning darkness.  Cross the parking lot, then the pedestrian bridge over I94 where the wind was always biting.  Push the stroller across the athletic field on the other side of the freeway (extra hard if there was fresh snow on the ground), then walk two blocks to drop Vince off at daycare.

6:30 am: Pry Vince off me, ignoring his crying and screaming.  Ignore the guilt.  I had to do this to get ahead, to better our lives.  Walk two blocks to the bus stop.

6:45 am: Catch the 21A to Minneapolis.  This is a slow bus that stops at every corner.

7:30 am: Catch a second bus that drops me off a block from school.

8:00 am: First class.  Study and go to class all day.  Pathology, Anatomy and Physiology, Abnormal Psychology, Medical Terminology, and Fundamentals of Occupational Therapy.

4:00 pm: Repeat above, only backwards.  Sometimes necessary to stop at the grocery, which slowed things down considerably because I had to haul the stroller and one of those little-old-lady shopping carts.

Cart

6:00 pm: Arrive home, make dinner, feed Vince, clean, pay bills, make phone calls, etc.

7:30 pm: Put baby to bed.  Thank god he is such a good baby and loves to sleep.  But I still like our routine of reading books, singing songs, and rocking.

8:00 pm: Study for a couple hours, in bed by 10.

—

Then I found out I was pregnant again.  I had been using birth control and breast feeding.  Taken together, these were supposed to protect me against getting pregnant.  Lucky me, I was one of the one out of a hundred or whatever who did.

—

I’ve written about the guy Vince and I call The Creep.  Why had I let The Creep anywhere near me after Vince was born?  Because I felt obligated.  He was Vince’s father, after all, and my boyfriend.  Even though he was terrible at both, I was a doormat.  I can hardly believe this was me—it feels like it happened to another person.

—

I loved being a mother.  But how could I keep up my schooling with two babies?

I loved babies.  But how could I be a good mother to two of them?

I loved college—I was the star pupil in my class.  But how could I keep it up with two kids?

—

I told The Creep.  He looked like a badger caught in a snare.

“I spose we have ta get married then, huh?” was his response.

I don’t know what I had wanted from him, but it wasn’t that.

I told my mom.  She was furious.

“This will kill your grandma,” she said, and she wasn’t exaggerating.  My grandmother had run into the bathroom and thrown up when I’d told her I was pregnant the first time.

I told the head of my school program.  She looked so disappointed.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, not expecting that I’d have any answer.

 

Hedgehogs, Mice, and Echidnas, Oh My

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I pride myself on writing realistically about life. You can count on me to tell the truth as I know it, to question everything, and to imagine the worst case scenario. I don’t know why the Pentagon hasn’t called me yet to offer me a disaster-planning job.

But that doesn’t mean I’m depressed, or even “unhappy”—the more generic term. Being a highly-analytical thinker has its rewards. I notice and think about things that other people do not. There’s often absurd fodder for laughs. Sometimes I’m the only one laughing, but that’s okay, right?

—

There was an article in the Sunday paper about a study that debunked the popular myth that “happy” people are healthier and live longer. Yes! My friend who works in an old folks home—or whatever they’ve been rebranded as now—has always said, “There are plenty of miserable, crabby 90 year olds. And they’ve always been that way, because their kids tell me they have.”

—

About five years ago, I kicked the depression that had dogged me all my life. Since then I have felt mostly contentment, punctuated with the normal situationally-appropriate emotions. I felt angry when my landlord raised my rent $300 a month, which forced me to move. I was stressed when I moved again three months later so Vince could live with me. I was anxious when Vince was in solitary confinement. I cried for everything my sister and her kids went through when she had cancer. I felt awe hiking in Petra, in the Jordanian desert, and nervous about crossing over into the Palestinian territories. I felt powerless rage when I was banned from visiting Vince. I had a blast with my friends in Berlin. I’ve been bored at work. I was proud when Vince led his squad at his graduation from boot camp. I am excited at the prospect of remodeling my kitchen.

Hey, I guess I just wrote my Christmas letter!  What a year it’s been.

—

None of it lasts. Some people figure this out somehow, much earlier in life than I did. Emotions come and go. The pleasant and the unpleasant, they’re all fleeting. So enjoy the nice ones while they last and know that the bad ones will dissipate. Don’t panic if you feel blue once in a while. Don’t latch on to the negative feelings or thoughts. If the blues don’t go away for weeks, of course, seek professional help.

—

In the last week I’ve had some really good times with people I love.

Yesterday I took my mother to tour the Purcell Cutts House, a prairie-style home build in 1913 and owned by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. This is the living room:

Purcell Cutts

The guide explained that the simple, serene style was in part a reaction to the chaos of the age. The architect was from Chicago, which was the industrial center of the U.S. Meat packing and other industries attracted droves of immigrants and African Americans from the south. There wasn’t enough housing, and the water and sewer systems weren’t up to par. There were no child labor laws, workers’ compensation, welfare, or social security.

So architects brought nature and art inside. Obviously this was not a house that could be produced on a mass scale. The immigrants and African Americans still lived in poorly-heated hovels. But at least this one architect could escape all that and find sanctuary at home!

Last weekend, I hosted a cookie-baking party for Vince and his cousins.

Hannukah HedgehogsTaisei n me

They’re not pretty, but we had fun. Strangely, Vince and I had prepared enough dough to yield 16 dozen cookies but only nine dozen made it to the final stage. Hmmm…or should I say, Mmmmm….cookie dough?

—

So enjoy the moments that contain things you love. In my case: design, craftsmanship, nature, history. Kids, creativity, and cookie dough.

Lasagne, Interrupted

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I came home from work, tired and famished.  I was lifting a big slice of lasagna out of a pan to a plate when the landline rang.

This is the phone I am required to have as a condition of Vince’s probation.  He was in the shower, and the phone is in his room.  I respect his space and don’t go in there except to the do the laundry.  (He shares his tiny space with the washer and dryer.)

Brrr-ing…brrr-ing…brrr-ing….  I stood with the lasagna poised between pan and plate.  It stopped.  Then Vince’s cell phone started up—vvvbbbb….vvvbbbbb…vibrating on silent.  It went on and on and still I stood drooling over my longed-for lasagna.

I heard the shower shut off and Vince’s voice, “Hello?  I’m in the shower.”  He repeated himself.  Did the person on the line not believe him?  Then: “MOM!  Will you let the agent in?”

I lowered the lasagna into the pan—it was lukewarm now anyway—and went to the front window.  Yep, there she was, sitting in her car at the bottom of the stairs.  I moved to the front door and opened it, waving down to her.  I stood waited while she got herself out of the car and moseyed up the stairs.

Do not sound sarcastic or mad, I told myself.

“Next time, why don’t you knock on the door?” I suggested.

“Oh, yeah!” she replied, as though she had never heard such an idea.

She stood in the dining room with the urinalysis cup while Vince threw on some clothes.   She smiled, I faked a smile back.  Vince entered the room, retrieved the cup from her, then returned to the bathroom.  As he was returning down the hall, the agent said loudly, “Be sure to tip the cup on its side so the urine gets on the test strip.”

Yum!

Maybe I should have exited at that point but I didn’t realize she was going to linger.  And did I mention I was hungry?

Vince sat at the dining room table.  The agent and I stood in opposite corners in the room.  I was half way into the kitchen, with one eye on the lasagna.

“How’re things goin’?” she asked.

“Fine,” was his reply.  He told the agent he was planning to buy a $300 car.  It would help him get around quicker and he could tinker with it on “the property” which includes the parking lot of the condos where we live.

“The big challenge,” I volunteered, “will be for him to find a landlord who accepts ex offenders.”

“That is a big problem,” she said, “Most landlords take advantage of them, because they can.”

My crabbiness quotient quadrupled.  Or maybe it was just plain anger.  Well, I’ve rarely had a good experience with a landlord, so why was I shocked that they would exploit ex offenders?

“We do know a guy who is open to ex offenders, and fair,” she continued.

One landlord in a metropolitan area of 3.5 million people.

She told Vince she would get him the landlord’s information, and left shortly thereafter.

Finally!  My lasagna.  I sat across from Vince and when I saw his face I thought, “Oh no, I’m in trouble now.”

“Mom,” he began slowly, as though he was talking to an utter moron, “Don’t ever bring things up to the agents.  Now the next time one comes, they’ll grill me about why I want to move out.  ‘What’s wrong at home?’  ‘What’s going on with your mom?’”

“But…last week you told me you had that tip on a sober house.”  For a few days we had both been excited but it fell through.  “You want to move out, don’t you?”

“Yes, but we agreed I could stay a year.”

“Yes, but…you were talking about that house….  I thought she might have some resources.”

I ate my lasagna without gusto and offered him some, which he accepted.  “Do you really think I would try to get you in trouble, on purpose?” I asked.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he said.

Just like when he was inside, I didn’t know the rules until I broke one, and trying to be helpful only got me in trouble.

Poppies of Expectation

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There’s a saying: “Expectations are disappointments in the making.”

That sounds so cynical. And as with all self-helpy kinds of things, I had to struggle with this concept intellectually before I could accept and employ it.

Some expectations are reasonable. I expected Vince to graduate from high school. I was bitterly disappointed when he didn’t. In this case the saying still holds true but you couldn’t fault me for the expectation, right? It’s a pretty minimal one held by most parents. (Vince has since earned his General Equivalency Diploma and finished two years of college.)

But there are other expectations that are unreasonable.

Vince wrote numerous times from boot camp about how he had spent four hours scrubbing the baseboard in the gym, or all day moving manure from Point A to Point B, or how he made his bed with sharp corners and ironed his clothes with exact creases. This was not the Vince I knew from before boot camp. “Wow!” I thought, “How wonderful that he’s learned to be a perfectionist clean freak like me!” I looked forward to him moving in. It would be great to have someone else in the house who would wash windows, dust and vacuum, wash the car (and here I got really carried way), paint the spare bedroom, clean the spider webs out of the basement, tear up the old patio and cart all the bricks away, maybe even wallpaper the dining room!

Ha. Suffice it to say that none of those things has happened. And why should they? Vince met the expectations of boot camp because his freedom was on the line. I had never even voiced my expectations to him—I was barely aware of them myself.

The progress I’ve made is this: I used to be completely unaware of my expectations, then feel shocked when they weren’t met. Now I catch myself—maybe not in the moment but eventually—and I laugh at myself a bit. The only disappointment I feel is in myself, for having unrealistic expectations.

Vince will never be a neatnik like me, but he does clean up after himself. He takes out the trash and puts gas in the car when the tank is low. He picks up items at the grocery that I forgot to get the day before. He replaces the toilet paper when it’s gone. He makes ribs and bakes cookies and offers them to me. He pays rent. He works full time and volunteers at the Goodwill on Sundays. He exercises. He’s started his own blog. He’s going to meetings and has sober friends.

I still have thoughts like, “I hope he goes back and finishes his degree,” and “I hope he meets a nice girl and gets married and has kids.” I notice these thoughts. I name them as expectations. I am kind to myself. I acknowledge that they could happen but that there are no guarantees and that Vince’s designs for his future may not match mine. Just for today, I’ll be grateful for what’s right. I will not go romping into the poppy field of expectations and disappointments.

Enough, Already!

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This post has nothing to do with mass incarceration or terrorism or any of the other lighthearted subjects I write about, but I wonder if it wears away at me nonetheless, day after day.

Have you noticed the proliferation in unnecessary noise and lights?

For instance, I spent a night in a hotel this weekend and I counted the unnecessary lights as I tried to get to sleep.  There was a white light on the smoke detector, a red one on the TV, another one on the DVD player, one on the phone, a green one on the key card holder by the door, another on the bedside clock.  Why?  I had closed the drapes to block out the millions of lights from the skyscrapers surrounding the 23rd floor room, but that didn’t do anything to block the lights inside.  Were the technicians who designed all these gadgets worried I might get up in the middle of the night and crash into the TV screen because I can’t see it in the dark?

—

The previous week, my friend Sarah and I were hanging out at the Mississippi River.  We meet up there every couple of weeks on nice days, bring chairs, and watch eagles soar and the sun sparkling on the water as it rolls by and we update each other on our lives.

There is an off-leash dog park across the river from the park we hang out in.  It’s a source of occasional irritating noise pollution in the form of barking, but on this day it was incessant.  There must have been 10 dogs barking for a half hour or more.

Then, a guy backed his boat trailer into the river and proceeded to rev his engine, which in addition to generating annoying noise, produced billows of diesel fumes.  Sarah and I and the others around us exchanged looks.  How long would this go on?

Being a direct person, I walked over and waved at the guy to get his attention.  I asked how long he would be revving his boat engine.  He said, “Five minutes—why?”  I said, “Because it’s noisy and the diesel fumes are unpleasant.”  He said, “It’s a boat landing!”  I replied, “It’s a boat landing that’s part of a public park.”

Sarah and I and our neighboring nature lovers picked up our chairs and moved upwind of him, which didn’t do anything to decrease the noise.  We expected him to purposely keep on for longer than five minutes but true to his word he finished and left.

“I was thinking the other day,” said Sarah, who is as curmudgeonly as I am, “of all the ways this park could be ruined.

“First, they’ll install wireless, and put up signs everywhere announcing it as a great new feature.”  As she said this, a couple strolled by on the beach with their two young children, both the parents staring down at their phones while the kiddies toddled near the river’s edge.

“Then they’ll install a massive screen across this space in front of us, so we can watch videos of the river, at the river …”

She was interrupted by a loud buzzing noise.  I’m not kidding.  It was a drone.  Everyone stared over at it, and Sarah whipped out her camera to take a picture.  “Don’t encourage him!” I pleaded.  But she wanted a photo to show her son.  The drone droned on for 10 minutes or so, then the owner must have gotten bored and left.  So much for watching eagles soar.

There are lots more unnecessary lights and noises at work, at home, in bars and restaurants, on trains, and especially in airports.  Argh!  Don’t get me started on airports and airplanes.

Does all this screen presence and beeping/barking/buzzing/bloop bloop blooping bother me so much because I am old?  Do younger people, the so-called digital natives, just not notice it?  Maybe they actually like it?  Maybe they actually need it?

Beautiful France

1 Reply

ANNE

I am writing this the day after the latest terrorist attacks in Paris. There were multiple terrorist attacks in Lebanon the previous day which are getting a lot less attention in the west. I don’t think this is callous disregard for people in the Middle East. I think it’s about what Paris stands for.

I’ve been to Paris and it’s wonderful but the trip that helped me appreciate joie de vivre was to Provence in 2012. I went for a Mini Cooper festival. Yeah, it’s a thing. Specifically, Iggy Pop was the festival headliner, and seeing Iggy Pop in concert was on my bucket list. So off I went.

I had taken a heavy-duty meditation class for three months prior to this trip, so I was as chill as I will ever be. I missed my flight from Paris to Marseilles because I was too absorbed in watching planes come and go through the cavernous windows at Charles de Gaulle airport. I got to Marseilles after dark and chose to drive the two-hours to my hotel in the dark instead of spending the night in a hotel. So part of my perception that France is “so laid back” was my own state of mind, and the fact that I was on vacation. If I actually lived in the south of France, had to get up and go to work every day, pay bills … well, I’d be willing to try it to see if it was as stressful as daily life in the U.S.

I turned the corner out of the rental car company into the enormous tunnel under the port of Marseilles and ran smack into a thousand-car traffic jam. Here’s where I first noticed something different. In the U.S., people would have been laying on the horn, screaming the F bomb, and abandoning their vehicles to “go get someone to straighten this out.” I witnessed something like this when I was in a 25-car pileup on the freeway in St. Paul during a blizzard a few years ago.

But not in the south of France. People were honking, but only in a half-hearted, “I’m bored so I’ll toot a tune on my horn” sort of way. We all had our windows rolled down because it was a hot evening and there were diesel fumes and of course most of the people were smoking. My fellow travelers were listening to a comedy show on the radio. It was in French so I didn’t know it was a comedy show until the people around me started laughing and it echoed throughout the tunnel. Some of them looked over at me and I fake-laughed. Not one of the thousands of us got out to “go find someone and get this fixed.” Eventually we started moving and were on our way.

—

My friend Heidi flew over from London for 24 hours for the festival, but after that I was on my own for however long I was there. A week? 10 days? I can’t even remember. Time seemed to slowed down.

I went for a hike along the Mediterranean:

The Med

Yes, there were vineyards, and sections of the trail smelled like pizza because they were planted with rosemary and oregano.

Vinyard

I drove around the mountains in my rental Peugot, which was smaller than my Mini Cooper. I stopped at a farmer’s market and bought some fresh produce, Roquefort cheese, a small bottle of champagne.

French Farmers mkt

I ate at a seaside restaurant. I was there for hours—no one came to whisk my plate away and deposit my bill the moment I’d taken my last bite.

?

France, in my mind, stands for beauty and enjoyment of all life’s moments and pleasures. Food that tastes like food, drinking (and—gasp!—even smoking) in moderation. Seeing and appreciating beauty, not just rushing blindly through life checking off items on a to-do list. I know France has got plenty of ills, but I believe these are some of the reasons she is targeted—because fundamentalists (of any faith) hate beauty and pleasure. Not to mention topless sun bathers.

Sun bathers

Today, I will be French.  I will appreciate the sunrise from my front window.  No terrorist can take that away from me.

Sunrise