During lunch with my parents at Het Trefpunt in Schoorl.
Dad: Yeah, I need to go to Berlin again, it’s been a while. I’m sure there’s a sub-100EUR ticket somewhere.
Mom: You could go by train.
Dad: Yeah… Maybe I’ll do that. Take the train, and go to Berlin by myself…
Me: Going to Berlin alone? That’s kind of [...]
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As I pulled out of my parents’ driveway earlier this afternoon, I noticed one of our cats sitting by the side of the street. Jari sat there, in his usual pose, his gaze resembling that of a supermarket assistant before his first coffee break. He’s rather old, 14 years now, and the years are starting to show. About two years ago he started to get thinner rapidly, his majestic black fur losing its glossy shine due to him being ill. While Jari reclaimed some of his physical glory from before the mysterious illness the vet couldn’t put his fingers on, he’s still noticeably different.
I clearly remember the day we went to pick Jari up. I was 9 years old, and wanted a kitten desperately. My parents already had cats, but they passed away before I was born. A girl in my class told me her cat had kittens, so I probably started my usual nagging cycle, and somewhere right around where I threatened to tie myself to the front of our car, my parents gave in.
A few weeks later, we were driving back home with a small black furball stuck in a cardboard box. Right there and then, Jari demonstrated his extraordinary strength and determination by completely ripping apart the thick box and going all mental inside our car. He jumped up against the car windows, jumped from back to front, and in general, made driving quite a challenge for my mother.
Back home, like all kittens, he showed a fondness for tiny, dark spaces, crawling in every little dark corner he could find. Within days, this behaviour passed, and he started to grow more confident by the day, slowly turning into the emperor he would become. I remember how my brothers and I used to take Jari into our bedrooms, and play with him under the covers of our beds.
As I drove passed Jari this afternoon, and looked him in his eyes, I realised why that stupid old cat means so much to me. He’s not as sweet as Roza, and not as loving and charming as Jobje - in fact, he’s grumpy, sometimes even aggressive, and he can be quite annoying too. Still, this cat means so much to me because he is the only tangible thing in this universe that binds everyone in our family together. No matter what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years between my parents and I on one side, and my brothers on their respective sides, we all love Jari.
Those memories, of playing with Jari under the covers of our beds, might very well be the last unambiguously happy memories I have concerning my brothers. And because of that, no matter how much I love my Twiek and Alice, it will always be Jari that has that special place in my heart.
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Some people have ‘wtf’ moments, others have ‘aha!’ moments. I do have the occasional wtf moment, and my aha! moments are usually about three weeks later than average. In addition, I have a third type of moment, the ‘wait, what?’ moment.
I don’t like garden centres. Mildly put. It probably stems from my inability to take of anything green, and my fear of small moving things with legs. When I still lived with my parents, I’d get total passive-aggressive over any chore related to our garden, which, after years of trying to get me to do anything in the garden, finally made my parents stop giving me garden-related chores.
My mother’s birthday is coming up tomorrow (56), and she wanted something from the garden centre - a specific garden centre a few towns west from here. I had never been to this one before, and from the start, it looked a little different. There was something about the entrance that just made it unfit for a garden centre. I soon found out why: this was the Ikea of garden centres. They had set out a path from product group to product group, and you were forced to see and look at everything - the magic Ikea trick that makes you come home with three Lack tables, two Benno CD closets, and a Billy when all you set out to buy was a Billy.
My normal coping strategy for the garden centre visit didn’t work here. Usually, I just RUN RUN RUN, hoping to bump into the right product. When found, I RUN RUN RUN to the register, pay, and then RUN RUN RUN to my car. And cry. Not this time. I was forced to find my way through the maze, and contrary to Ikea, they didn’t have the sneaky shortcuts that make you skip sections. I. Saw. Everything.
And then IT happened.
I had already found my mother’s gift right at the entrance, and as I made my way through the maze, I saw a bunch if differently sized garden pots, in red - and then it happened. I had a thought. In a garden centre. I had a thought IN A GARDEN CENTRE. That’s so not right. I am supposed to be totally numb and mindless in a garden centre. That’s how god intended it, that’s the status quo. And I broke it.
That looks rather nice, I thought, I want that.
I wanted something from a garden centre. I held the red pot in my hand, and it wasn’t until I put it back down again that it hit me that I had broken the status quo. From then on, it all went downhill. I continued my struggle through the maze, encountered a pretty girl but totally ignored her in my slight panic. I arrived at the indoor section, only to encounter a whole section dedicated to red glass vases, dishes, and similar things that men shouldn’t have thoughts about. And again my thoughts were along the lines of I WANT THAT I WANT THAT.
The status quo has been broken. It’s not going to be long now. Keep an eye on your mail box, you can expect a wedding invitation soon. And a birth announcement. And then I come to visit you in our Opel Zafira with my fed up wife washed out in the passenger seat and three crying kids in the back. And a rental caravan for a vacation to France.
Wait, what?
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Yesterday, my parents and I were back at the AVL cancer hospital.
I’m not going to say much about it, but there is this one thing.
Does anyone else find it unnervingly funny that dozens of people are frantically smoking cigarettes in front of the cancer hospital’s entrances?
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You’d think that, at one point, someone has gone through enough crap. That at some point, nature or god or luck or whatever says, hey, look, let’s give these people a break for a while. Let’s, like, not fcuk them for THREE DAYS.
Well, turns out that’s not the case.
Millions of brainless gutter sluts get breast implants every day, without a single complication, without a single problem. Yet, the one person that actually kind of really needs those implants gets screwed over. My mother’s left breast implant got infected. During emergency surgery, it was removed, and it was concluded that the infection was too strong to put anything else back in. This effectively means we’re back to square one.
They say that what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. In that case, my mom must be made of diamond right about now. SUCK ON THAT, DE BEERS.
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My mother went into surgery Tuesday. She had a complicated breast reconstruction done - her remaining breast (the other, cancerous one was removed 3 years ago) was removed, and two ‘new’ ones were constructed, using flaps of skin from her armpit, and… Well, it’s complicated plastic surgery, I won’t bore you with the details.
It was quite the ride too, of course. My mother was nervous ever since last Wednesday, when she got the call it was her turn. The hospital she’s at is most likely the best hospital in the country - the Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Hospital (the AVL) in Amsterdam. The AVL specialises in treating patients with cancer and patients with cancer-related issues - like my mom’s case. It’s so good because it doesn’t look like your average hospital - the atmosphere is almost cosy. You’d pay a good deal of money per night if it was a hotel. The contact with the staff and doctors is also very close and warm, and they guide you from the moment you enter through the revolving doors - literally.
The surgery went perfectly, and she already sat up straight and made a few first steps this morning - only twelve hours after a very serious piece of surgery. There’s like ten million tubes draining blood and fluids from her wounds into bottles that lie scattered around her bed.
When my father and I drove up there late Tuesday night, at around 21:00, I said to my dad, look, she’s probably gonna be all talkative already.
And she was.
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I regularly wonder, how on earth do you teach your children proper use of the computer?
On the ‘children’s news’ just now, they reported on an application for Windows which parents can use to timely shut down a computer. This functionality is of course built-in into Vista and OS X (parental controls), so I don’t really know why they had to report on this particular application, but hey.
I just don’t get this. What kind of parent are you if you cannot even control your own chlidren’s computer usage? When I was younger, my parents weren’t exactly very strict on this issue - they gave me enough time to play on the computer, and they quite effectively distributed computer time between my two older brothers and I. However, when my parents said, “and now it’s enough, shut the thing down”, I did just that. Of course, I did try to sneak in an extra few minutes, and of course tried to whine until they let me play longer, but in the end, when my parents really said “end”, it really did mean “end”.
I can remember one time I was playing Age Of Empires online, and since I did not want to ruin my online ranking, I kept on playing despite my father telling me to stop - he went back the living room. Since I didn’t stop, my father got quite angry (and rightly so), and after that, I never did it again. That is proper parenting.
I really don’t understand the present day culture in parenting; parents try to shove all responsibilities they have as parents towards the schools and teachers, the government, to programs that block computer usage, censorship, and more of that nonsense. ‘Modern’ parents in this country expect schools to teach their children morals and values, because they themselves are too busy at work and going out. They expect the government to teach their children condom use, the dangers of smoking and - of course, our biggest problem - alcohol (ab)use. And now, they expect computer programs to stop their children from sitting behind their computers for too long.
But in the end, all these things won’t properly raise children. Children ought to be raised by their parents. That is your job as a mother and father. Sure, it ain’t easy, but did anyone ever say it was? As a parent, you have to be strict, but at the same time, you need to be able to compromise. You need to make harsh decisions, but you also need to know when to let your children decide for themselves. And to make matters worse, each of your children requires its own specific parenting style - trust me, my own parents know a thing or two about that one.
You also cannot just take the easy way out - prohibing your children from everything won’t exactly work. It’s the classic story of Bluebeard - tell someone he can enter every room in the house except one, which room will that someone most desire to enter? Prohibiting your child form doing anything even remotely dangerous will not help in raising him - in fact, it will make him weak, unable to cope with the harshness of real life. In other words, a pussy.
My children will most likely be taught computer usage the way my parents taught me. Sure, you can use the computer, and do whatever you want with it. But when I say schluss, it’s schluss. If I have to rely on software parental controls, I probably failed as a father.
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Yesterday was the turn-around.
A few days ago I was talking to me mum on the phone. She said me dad and her would be going to my grandma’s Saturday by bike. That’s 35km… and back. So, 70km in total. Since I seriously needed to get more workout, she asked me if I would tag along. And I said yes. It was a very nice tour, straight through the old dunes and forests that top them. I live in such a pretty country [photo on the way].
Anyway. During high school, I had to cycle 30km a day, five days a week, for six years. That’s quite normal in this country, so please don’t pity me. It was good for me, it kept me in tip-top shape. However, when I finished high school, about four years ago, that workout ended. I got my driver’s license, had to go to university by public transport, and as such, I barely got any workout. And it showed, obviously.
Now, I don’t really care all that much about my physical appearance. What I find important is that one looks well looked after; decent clothes, well-groomed, you know. Hair done, properly shaved, all that shite. The fact I have a ‘belly’, as we call it, is irrelevant (it’s not that I’m fat - I have a belly but I’m not fat, as in, American). It’s not like I’ll suddenly be all Brad Pitt without it. However, health is important, and having a decent stamina ain’t all bad. And the fact that having a decent daily workout might reduce my belly size is of course a nice by-product.
So, after yesterday’s 70km, I decided I would go back to cycling daily. For 30 to 60 minutes a day, I’ll cycle.
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It’s so satisfying to see my mother act al happy when Sienna’s around. Sienna is the daughter of Jolanda, one of my mother’s best friends. Me mum met Jolanda at a sort of support group for breast cancer patients, and ever since, they’ve been very close. Jolanda is much younger than my mother, and, as you have figured out by now, mother of one daughter. I guess Sienna is about 3 or 4 years old.
Both me mum and me dad start radiating when they talk about Sienna, and I can certainly understand why. I’m not that much into kids (they’re manageable alone, but when in groups, it’s just chaos and pandemonium, and I like ordnung), but sienna is such a happy toddler. It’s contagious.
Other than that, my mother gave birth to three boys. No daughters. They’re not disappointed with that, but when I got older, my father teased me a lot about how they in fact wanted a girl (I’m their third and last child). I can see how Sienna kind of fills that gap sufficiently until the grandchildren arrive.
And since those won’t sprout from my two brothers, that task is up to me. Heaven forbid the day.
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I didn't know William Dember, but apparently, he was my cousin. He was my grandmother's first cousin - her mother's brother's son - which makes him my ...uh ...cousin. A few times removed, probably. Comments
I’m thinking about taking my oldest cat, Jari (he’s 12), to my new house. Jari never really was all that excited about our other two cats, and really enjoys his solitude. Giving him some peace and quiet by letting him live in my new house, as the only cat, might really please him. We’re thinking [...]
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