Monday

2 April 2017

— my patio, now a place of joyful debauchery for the wood doves

Good Morning All,

After bemoaning yesterday that I had to say good-bye to my kids, one of my Peace Corps compatriots, generous hearted Musa, wrote: "I assume they'll be returning after a while, or now and then.”

Which of course they will, but it is still good to be reminded of that. Johs thinks he and his friend Helen may make it over in May, and Johs and Holly both will likely come in August. In between, I shall be crossing the Great Waters sometime in June to see them in Washington, New Hampshire, and out at our dilapidation of a summer cottage in Wales, MA.

In the meantime, I shall take much pleasure in rehearsing this past week’s highlights that included visits with Britta’s two sisters, Esther at her story-telling best, and Hannah, the family archivist, presenting me with a whole album of snapshots from Britta’s and my wedding, plus—mirabile dictu!—my 33-page single-spaced typewritten account of that wedding. Over the past ten years I have once or twice each year gone on a determined  search for that account, but with no success. And suddenly here it is again, in pristine condition! 

I wolfed down the first six pages almost immediately, but have determined to limit myself to four or five pages a day all this week, so as to give myself time to savor the details of what a thin, bearded, hopelessly in love, semi-stranger had to say about this knot-tying business.

Parts of the first five pages were remarkably poorly written, but there are a couple of paragraphs that work pretty well, maybe even well enough for me to inflict a couple of them upon you in the days ahead. 

I think Ryan’s highlight of the week must have been a tour of the Niels Bohr Institute, Ryan being a physicist, after all. The Institute is not actually open to the public except on our annual Culture Night. But Maria, my nephew Mikey’s wife, has a friend who works there. (As Johs’s points out, Denmark is so small everyone tends to know somebody who knows somebody.) So Ryan, Holly, and Johs were treated to an hour-and-a-half  tour, which included a trip up to the attic where they were storing some of the stuff and clutter of Bohr’s good friend Albert Einstein. (Since I was parked in a Permit-Only space, (fine of 750 Danish crowns; $107.00), I stayed in the car and enjoyed Will Shortz making me feel like an idiot with last Sunday’s crossword puzzle.)

Yesterday afternoon, Holly, Ryan, and I made it up the Round Tower. Curiously enough, I found the climb a lot easier than my last one. My three workouts a week at the gym and all the box moving and unpacking must have done me some good. 

Now that most of the boxes are unpacked, I must find a new Fatness Emporium and get back on the treadmills and bicycles. With any luck, each machine will have tv reception, so that I can watch the afternoon reruns of Columbo, Inspector Morse, and other English-language mysteries with Danish subtitles. (An unexpected fringe benefit of my weekly regimen has been a marked improvement in my Danish. I can usually get by in conversational Danish now, a mere thirty years later!)

Johs is now safely back in Washington after his Denmark-to-Finland-to-NYC-to-DC trek. He did miss his plane connection in NYC, so took the train. Holly and Ryan are in Reykjavik, swimming in the Blue Lagoon. They will catch the bird for Boston at 5:00, so Holly should be reunited with Cardigan her cat sometime late this evening.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron