Just before 7:00

Sunday

24 December 2017

— Johs and Holly sound asleep.

Good Morning All, 

The sun will not be up until 8:38, over an our and a half away. My cat Skype is perched on my lap (she is not a sitter), her front paws kneading my left thigh and her purr box working overtime. She and her tail are not to tickled that I am insisting upon tapping at these keys. 

My chilluns, after long journeys across the Great Waters, are snug in their beds. It’s funny how I always semi-forget what a cosy feeling it is to be up and about while one’s family sleeps safely in other rooms under the same roof.

Yesterday, the house, excluding the chaos in and around this desk, was absolutely  up to snuff by the time I went to fetch Johs at Ringsted Station at 3:30. We dropped his luggage back here and then set off for the airport, chatting about this and that and everything else the while. Some Trump, but not too much, and with more optimism that his days are numbered. Some about Helen’s mother and sister coming down to Washington for the holidays. And some like gentle surf along the shore, though thanks to my new roof rack and a gale-force wind, we had to talk louder than usual to overcome the wind tunnel effect.

At Kaastrup, when Holly came through the final doors not much after 5:00, Johs and I each had our two Danish flags waving, and she immortalized us with a snap. Lots more chatter on the way home, including excitement about Norman’s and Jo Ann’s moving to a new house in Barre at the end of the month; who was feeding Holly’s cat Cardigan; and Holly and Ryan’s many adventures back on her birthday on the 21st.

Johs also happened to mention that on his flight someone let off the absolute worst fart he had ever encountered. Including his own. The person did not identify him or herself, understandably, and when Johs could not detect anyone looking more guilty than usual, he considered notifying a stewardess of the possibility of a gas leak in the fuselage. (Which, in a manner of speaking, it was.)

Maybe I should mention here that though I cannot speak for your family,  the topic of flatulence in my family gets frequent airing. Such that I then told them about my single best fart ever. I was on the third floor of school in Ashland, New Hampshire, at the top of the staircase, talking to a colleague, when it escaped. It was in the category of SBD (silently but deadly), and—fortunately—of the heavier than air variety. It set off down the four flights of stairs something like an invisible Slinky, until it reached the basement a minute or so later, and I had the satisfaction of hearing one of my students complain, “Jeeze, who died?” 

We stopped at the grocery store for a few supplies, then home for tomato soup, Johs and I getting in one game of cribbage while Holly showered, and off to bed went we.

If you read the history list for today, you will have noticed Du Fu was a Chinese poet from the Tang Dynasty in the mid-700s. It’s astonishing to me how much of his poetry has survived from way back then. The one below is a favorite of mine. I’ve done my best with the translation, but my command of ancient Chinese characters is no better than it once was. (On the other hand, it is no worse than it once was.) (Which is to say, yes, I am only kidding.)

To My Retired Friend Wei

Du Fu

人生不相見， It is almost as hard for friends to meet
動如參與商。 As for the morning and evening stars.
今夕復何夕， Tonight then is a rare event,
共此燈燭光。 Joining, in the candlelight,
少壯能幾時， Two men who were young not long ago
鬢髮各已蒼。 But now are turning grey at the temples.
訪舊半為鬼， To find that half our friends are dead
驚呼熱中腸。 Shocks us, burns our hearts with grief.
焉知二十載， We little guessed it would be twenty years
重上君子堂。 Before I could visit you again.
昔別君未婚， When I went away, you were still unmarried;
兒女忽成行。 But now these boys and girls in a row
怡然敬父執， Are very kind to their father's old friend.
問我來何方。 They ask me where I have been on my journey;
問答乃未已， And then, when we have talked awhile,
兒女羅酒漿。 They bring and show me wines and dishes,
夜雨翦春韭， Spring chives cut in the night-rain
新炊間黃粱。 And brown rice cooked freshly a special way.
主稱會面難， My host proclaims it a festival,
一舉累十觴。 He urges me to drink ten cups—
十觴亦不醉， But what ten cups could make me as drunk
感子故意長。 As I always am with your love in my heart?
明日隔山嶽， Tomorrow the mountains will separate us;
世事兩茫茫。 After tomorrow - who can say?

Merry Christmas Eve!

Go Well and Stay Well, 

Bhekaron

P.S. One Holly and one Johs snap:

 

 

Saturday 
23 December 2017

— Too excited to sleep much after 5:00.

Good Morning All,

Around 10:00 last night, I wrapped my last Jul Gaver (Christmas present) both for out at my nephew Mikey’s house Christmas Eve, where traditional pork roast with all the trimmings is in the offing, and Christmas day here in Fjenneslev, with Chief Chef Esther and her friend Assistant Chef Gitte supplying the traditional turkey and all the trimmings.

I must say the house is looking mighty spiffy, both down the basement and here on the ground floor. Before heading for Ringsted Station to pick up Johs around 3:00, I still have some vacuuming, and I’ll run around once more with the duster and a flashlight (torch) in search of ceiling cobwebs. But all things considered, we look pretty shipshape.

Johs and I will swing back here (8 kilometres) to drop off his luggage and possibly get in a game of cribbage, before heading for Kaastrup to pick up Holly around 5:00.

With the Messiah on the box, I’ve put up some—but not all—the Christmas decorations, including the red/yellow/blue/green plastic bells on the silver sparkly green string that used to hang in the archway to the living room back at 42 Brunswick Road. I’ve no doubt whatsoever my mom tied those bells to that silver sparkly green string. She may have done so back at our house at 7910 Sleaford Place in Bethesda, Maryland. If not, the string has since Arlington been up at my folks retirement apartment on the Cape, at our house in Sengeløse, and now here in Fjenneslev. Counting Arlington, that’s four places in 54 years.

I’ve put up some of our Danish Christmas decorations as well, including a small Danish village made from ceramic buildings and churches into which we slide tea candles to light up the windows. There are also the woven stars and red-and-white laced hearts Britta and the kids have made over the years.

It’s hard to believe the poem below is fifteen years old. I’m pretty sure it did then what it says it did back then, but also made me sad. Today, five and a half thousand days later, it still does what it says it does, but the sadness has softened into a glow of poignant memory.

First Christmas without You
Bheka Pierce

In June our lilacs bloomed and came to pass
July crickets fiddled Mozart in the grass
While fireflies beneath the pines
Sparked their tiny lights
Like August meteor flocks
Surprising summer nights.
September’s honeysuckled vines
And ripe apples on the bough,
Leaf-lovely October afternoons,
Hushed November dusks, and now
Has Christmas come,
Your favorite season through all our years,
The carols, candles, gifts of love,
All brimmed with family cheer;
Though I’ve ached the hours of all these months,
Time’s fine linen torn,
December feared I the most
Without your flame to light our Yuletide morns;
But grief is filled with mystery,
And love learns through its own command,
For when I took the bells and boxes out,
All neatly labeled in your hand,
And hung your woven hearts and stars
And all your Christmas art
At once and with relief could I
Rejoicing hear you carolling in my heart.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. One Johs snap and one Holly snap:

 

 

Friday
22 December 2017

— Second day in a row of a sunny dawn.

God Morning All,

Yesterday evening, I had a pleasant Skype with the birthday girl. She was on her iPhone in her car, but was quick to say Ryan was driving. He’d taken the afternoon off to go to Plymouth with her, so that after she’d seen her four kiddos (and/or their parents), he could take her out for a birthday dinner. (Yes, by the way, it’s the same Plymouth where she was born these gathering years ago!)

When we moved to Arlington in 1953, we had—at first--a party line, and you rang up the operator to make a call. If you got lucky, the call went through, and you got to speak to the disembodied voice of your friend. But here was I, yesterday, talking face-to-face with my daughter as she rode through the New Hampshire hills. For free. I guess all those young whipper-snappers running around today take that for granted, but to me it remains flat-out miraculous.

My set of spare keys has, needless to say, returned. They are back on their usual hook in the kitchen, smugly saying, “Well, old duffer, now that you know we’re worth over a 100 bucks, perhaps you’ll show us a little more respect.”  

At the bottom of our driveway stood our old, rusty, and leaky postbox on a sturdy arsenic-treated four-x-four. After deciding a couple of weeks ago reading damp mail wasn’t the thrill it used to be, I purchased a new box, took the old one off the post, and put the new one on. A two-hour project performed pretty much in the kind of rain that floated Noah’s traveling zoo. To get the old box off, I had to unlock it to get to the screws on the back side. (Virtually all postboxes in Denmark have locks, as opposed to in America where there is a law stating you will be castrated and sent to prison for 100 years for some much as putting someone else’s flag up without cause.)

Once I convinced the screws of the new box to quit falling into the hedge and hiding, once I was about as wet as someone shoved off a dock, the rain sliding down my forehead and along the ridge of my nose, once I finally got the last screw in, I picked up the old box, carried it up the drive, and put it on a ledge beside the front door. I should have put it in the garage, of course, but all’s I could think about by then was getting inside and into a hot shower. 

(Well, I was also thinking: Just out of curiosity, Bheka, is it possible you are even dumber than you look? Who said that postbox had to be replaced on this unusually soggy afternoon? It’s not exactly your daily dance card is so filled up.) (Yeah, well, and also just out of curiosity, feel free to blow it out you backside sideways, because whaddaya know about the sanctity of postbox replacement?)

Anyway, the old postbox remained on that ledge, its door hanging down, such that the keys still in the lock were hidden from view. And there it stayed until two days ago when I packed up a bunch of junk for the dump. Including the old postbox. I picked it up, raised the door to close it, and—'lo and behold! 

Of course I was—before anything else—pleased and relieved. Good job, Bheka, hang the keys right by the front door for two-plus weeks. Next time, why not leave them right in the front door lock, along with a big sign inviting strangers in to browse and take what they fancy.

Enough. Kids arriving on the morrow! Time for the final rush to the summit in house beautifying.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Two shots of Johs at work in Ethiopia:

Thursday
21 December 2017

— not much before dawn

Good Morning All,

On the 20th of December 1979, in the woods maybe fifty yards down from our cosy little A-frame in Plymouth, New Hampshire, I cut up a fallen yellow birch tree, sawing it into stove lengths. Since it was getting dark by then, and I was a bit tuckered from a day of teaching and then the dragging and sawing, I left it semi-stacked in the ferns. I’d fetch it on the morrow.

Today, thirty-eight years ago, a Friday, at breakfast, I made the mistake of telling Britta not to get any ideas about going to get the wood, not even one log at a time. Her doctor had told her expressly she ought to spend as much time in bed as possible since she was leaking a bit of the amniotic fluid, and she still had six weeks to go.

Telling Britta not to do something, however, was like telling a bear there was a honeycomb up in yonder tree, and he (the bear) better stay away from it.

Not that Holly minded arriving six weeks early, so as to be born in the same decade as her brother and be in time for Christmas. She was so small though, Britta couldn’t get a good enough grip on her to fire her out. It took a while, during which Britta had a few choice words for your humble scribe.

Britta already knew from the amniocentesis test we were awaiting a daughter. I’d asked her not to tell me, and she'd been so careful with pronouns she slipped up only once. Even then, she said he. I pretended not to notice, but I thought to myself, “Well, okay. A son and a daughter would be perfect, but two sons is also fine."

The poem below (which I hope I’ve not sent before!) tells some of this glorious event, the tip of the iceberg of this glorious event, but I’ll add that when I eventually drove home in the wee hours, I stopped at the motel where my folks were taking care of two-year old Johs. I knocked and my dad came to the door in his pyjamas and hair every which way to let me in. Johs sat up in bed, looking groggy. My mother, who’d always wanted a daughter, said, “And?”

“We have,” I said, “a brand new daughter.”

“Yippee!” exclaimed my mom, not normally given to such outbursts, but Yippee! she exclaimed again and clapped the flats of her hands together three times.

My sentiments exactly!

 
O Holly Night
Bheka Pierce
 
Expected on Groundhog’s Day, our daughter,
Not to miss Christmas, set out early across the Great Mystery,
Arriving with the winter Solstice, bringing the light
Back with her to our northern hills.

Before my eyes she nestled at her mother’s breast,
Her forearm no longer than my index finger,
The delicate scallops of her ears yet clinging to her scalp;
My wife never more beautiful, her exhausted eyes exultant.

Later, having held our new daughter thanks
And kissed my wife’s eyes thanks, wool cap on,
As I walked to the car under heaven’s high ebony dome,
As the universe floated in the chill, clear air,

As Polaris twinkled nearly within reach, sang I:
Not bad, you splendid stars and wheeling diamond galaxies,
But you cannot hold a candle to the beauty of the tiny
Cosmos I have this wondrous night beheld.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Holly’s poem in the Day Book is about a letter from Britta.

P.P.S. Two Holly snaps:

 

 

Wednesday

20 December 2017

— Two mourning doves at my new makeshift feeder atop the rose trellis.

Good Morning All,

Well, as it turned out, Esther and I did not go to the cut-your-own-tree farm. Instead we went to a Plante Skole (read: Nursery) where Esther has been doing business for years and years. The municipality is putting in pipes along the only main road leading to the place, meaning you really have to go out of your way to get there, and Esther figured the husband-and-wife owners could use the business. (Eric, the husband, in fact, told us business was down fifty-percent, and the road would not be repaired until April.) 

There were no other cars parked in front of the greenhouse. There were a dozen cut trees lying against the glass. I found a good one, but the price was 400 Danish crowns ($63.00), which was out of my price range. I was heading back for the car when Eric came out, looking hopeful. He found me a tree just as good for 300 crowns, and then Esther and I went into the shop, so that I could find an orchid, a Christmas present, for Maria, my nephew Mikey’s wife, and so that Esther could have a chat. As usual, I was impressed that virtually everyone in the country knows Esther.

Two days ago, Hannah, Esther’s older sister, came down to visit her, since it is unlikely Esther’s going to be feeling up for the trek up to Hannah’s for the usual family get together on Boxing Day. We had a good visit. Hannah,  going through her archives, had come across a seven page letter written by Britta to her parents on her birthday, 10/10/62.

Britta was in Johannesburg, starting her first year at the University of the Witwatersrand. Esther was a nurse at the Queen Victoria Hospital not far away. A day or two earlier, Britta had telegraphed their folks back at the Mission Station in Swaziland that Esther was in hospital with a concussion, but was okay. The letter was to explain the circumstances. Some medical students after their last day of classes and a week before their exams had all gotten drunk and then for a lark in the wee hours had invaded the nurse’s quarters, tipping all the sleeping nurses out of their beds. Esther had hit her head hard on the radiator.

Since Esther’s eyesight isn’t what it once was and since Britta would never have won any awards for penmanship, Hannah read the letter aloud for us. It was in Danish, of course, and I think I got about a third of it, the gist of it, anyway. Not that it mattered, because the experience itself, the two surviving sisters joined together by the words of their kid sister from fifty-five years ago, the words of my future wife, who I was not to meet for yet another seven years … well, I won’t kid myself or you, there is no way I could find the words for a feeling surpassing wonder and mystery by several country miles.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. Two Holly snaps: 

 

 

Tuesday

19 December 2017

— No snow left, but I have my fingers crossed for Sunday night.

Good Morning All, 

Recently from the mailbox:

1. Concerning yesterday’s Day Book: This better be good. It’s my birthday. F. (Happy yesterday’s birthday, Fred! As it happens, I thought yesterday’s Day Book and natter better than average, anyway. That elegant poem from Langston Hughes, the opening of my favorite Saki story, Saki being one of my favorite short story writers. Even C. R. Magwaza’s Mrs. Ladd poem seemed slightly better than his usual fare, despite no responding readers thus far appreciating that it actually encapsulates the true and deepest meaning of life.)

2. From my friend Jacky Carroll:  I can verify what is mentioned in the last paragraph. I was ahead of Ron on the dark steps leading from the cellar to our first floor.  I saw nothing, but Ron instantly told me. My family had moved into that house in 1958. My guess is the incident occurred in 1959 or 1960.

And yes, all school aged children in Arlington hoped for  that magical moment when those in charge yielded to nature and gave us a day to frolic in the fresh winter wonderland.

3. Under the heading: When Insults had class:

— I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. — Mark Twain

— He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. — Winston Churchill.

— Benjamin Disraeli, told by a member of Parliament he would either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease, replied, “That depends, Sir, whether I embrace your policies or you mistress.”

— Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it. — Moses Hadas.

— He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends. — Oscar Wilde.

— I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I’m afraid this wasn’t it. — Groucho Marx.

4. My initial response to your critic is Mel Brooks’s defense of his making fun of Nazis in his films, “Until you can make fun of something it still has power over you.” But then I remember Brooks often says, “Hey nonny nonny,” so he has read this Shakespeare poem, too.

5. Signs that make you smile:

— In the front yard of a funeral home: Drive carefully. We’ll wait.

— At a Propane Filling Station: Thank heaven for little grills.

— In a Veterinarian’s waiting room: Back in 5 minutes. Sit!

6. Loved the key story! So familiar. And the photo of the little flower girl is so sweet!

This after, Esther and I will being going out to get a Yule Tree.  (Jul Træ.) She knows of a tree farm in this area where they hand you a saw and tell you to go find the one that fits your home. Happily, the new rack on top of my Colt will accommodate it nicely. I’ll keep it out on the patio ’til the kids get here on the 23rd, at which time we shall decide where in the living-room to put it up for our first Christmas in our new home.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. One Holly snap and one Bheka snap:

 

 

Monday
18 December 2017

— the season when the forest pines get to shine.

Good Morning All,

I wrote the poem below one evening last week after spending the whole afternoon feeling homesick for snow. Real snow. Proper snow. Good old New England snow. The blizzardy kind coming at night when we kept our fingers crossed to hear early in the morning the fire station siren signalling No School, and then having it confirmed on WHDH a little later with that most wonderful of all poetry: “No schools all schools all day in Abington, Acton, Allston, Arlington … “

And then out all day sledding and shovelling under the impossible blue sky and the air so crystalline in its clarity one's lungs tingled to inhale it.

The elderly lady in the poem did live in the big house across the street before our friends the Carrolls moved in. I don’t think she was completely blind because—as I’ve mentioned—she always called my dad to thank him on the day he put our outdoor lights up on the yew bush. Still, when I was in her house, it always fascinated me how well she navigated the rooms and the furniture in them, as often as not in the dark.

My friend Neuman who lived on the other side of her and I visited her often, to read her the Globe, especially the funnies, and to sample the chocolates mentioned in the poem. It did not occur to us—at least not to me—that when she corrected our pronunciation of some word or other, she was helping us learn to read. Now that I am old myself, I can understand what a pleasure such small acts can be.

She’s the woman whose death so spooked me I was afraid to go past her house, sure that she was watching from behind the curtains, until—and I know I’ve told this story before—she appeared between my friend Jackie Carroll and me in the pitch-black basement as a hovering ball of ethereal light that somehow let me know she was doing okay, and I had nothing to worry about.

After the Snow Storm
C. R. Magwaza

I knocked on the door of Mrs. Ladd,
The white-haired lady across the street.
Need any shovelling, I asked, your drive,
Your flagstone walks, and steps? My first
Venture ever into the world of commerce,
She was blind and I was nine, must have
Weighed eighty pounds with the shovel.

She had no car, never went out, no need.
Thank God you’ve come, my boy, she said,
And added, I hear it’s quite a lot, you know.
Nothing I can’t handle, I replied, eight inches
Of light fluff that took me three hours,
Since even then I was meticulous, since even
Then the snow poetry to money angle escaped me.

Come in, she said, have a cup of hot chocolate,
These buttered muffins from the oven,
Adding, no, no, it’s fine, the floor’s linoleum.
She asked how much should she pay me,
Since I’d been at it three hours. I replied,
Let’s call it two, since I work slow. You
Shall have the three, she said, a dollar for each.

For four years, I shovelled her walks, mowed her
Lawn. A marshmallow afloat in the Coaco mugs,
Iced lemonades. On Wednesdays I fetched her
Groceries in my wagon, then read to her from my
Donald Ducks, and we killed ourselves, and she gave
Me chocolates from a big box. People who helped
Give me to myself? Blind old Mrs. Ladd, for sure.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. One Holly snap and one Johs snap: