Move over, Speed

A friend of mine gave me a copy for me of a children's film for the boys. It is about a little boy named Pluk. The conceit is that Pluk rides around in a little tow truck looking for a place to live. Ultimately he finds an empty room on the very top of an apartment building. He has many adventures trying to understand the adult inhabitants of the building and to get them to accept him as a part of their little community. The kids all like him fine. He has some adult supporters and some opposers, and a lot who sort of don't care as long as he doesn't attract attention. But Pluk always comes up with plans. Sometimes they work the way he expects and usually not, but that Pluk, he sure can come up with a plan.

He's very, oh, plucky.

I have had it for some weeks and never put it on for them, one thing and another. Then Dowue was sick and Daan had a day that, well, shall we just say that he was very unhappy that his favorite playmate was not up to snuff and responded by bugging the life out of everybody. He raised harassment to a fine art. When I came in and found him sitting on top of Douwe bouncing up and down, I figured I had better do something or he would not see the age of 4.

Daan cannot stand it when Douwe is sick.

Luckily my eye fell on the Pluk film and I put it on in hopes of distracting the little beas- er, darling. It certainly did do that, Daan likes Pluk just fine. He especially likes the verrrry long horse, which is long enough to hold six people at once and has a wheel in the middle to hold up its belly. He thinks it is cousin to Dr. Seuss's seven hump wump.

But Pluk, well, Pluk may have even displaced Speed Racer in Douwe's fantasy pantheon. Douwe now has a cap just like Pluk's, we had to go buy it today. It replaced the Speed Racer fleece hat he has been wearing when he was being Speed. It turns out Nel had a copy of the book about Pluk, on which the film is based, which she had saved becasue it was a little old for the boys. Now it's Pluk every night and he has to have the book in bed with him.

Pluk's quest is for a "place for Pluk". This is made twice clear in the film, as the theme somng goes, "A place, a place, who has a place for Pluk?" (Well, ok, it's in Dutch, but that's what it means). This story has struck Douwe exactly where he lives. To say he likes the film and the book is to beggar the experience -- he is quite literally galvanized.

It has led to any number of conversations about his own feelings of course. Some part of me is sad I think, that Douwe is hunting for his place. Some part of me thinks that, at 5, he should not have to worry about his place. But, well, there is probably a reason it's a popular book, eh? It is sort of an eternal paradigm, innit?

And some part of me is just very pleased that he now has a paradigm, a structure to start to talk about it more explicitly. It's as though Pluk gave him permission to talk about that.

And some part of me is, I suppose, aware that he's not the only one looking for a place of his own.

To my brother

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday, dear Johnny
Happy Birthday to you.

See you in a week, old man.

Oh, yeah, by the way, remember how you used to say you would always be older than me no matter what I did? Guess what?

You will always be older than me, no matter what I do.

Bwa ha ha.

Milestones

I have now made it through another one, to wit, Douwe's trip to the emergency room.

He has had a low grade fever for about a day and threw up last night. Douwe does not run low grade fevers, ever. He runs high, spiking fevers in the "bake your brain" range. I don't even change stride for anything under 102 with that child. He does not throw up except under the direst of circumstances; the child has an anti gag reflex, I swear it. All of this was sort of disconcerting but not unduly so; I suspected an ear infection or something similar. He suddenly peed in his britches while sitting on the couch, which is also an unheard of event nowadays, and he was as surprised as I was. Also odd. But not exactly earth shaking, he is five, an age much given to, shall we say, putting things off until the very last possible moment.

Then he came to me and complained of pain in his lower back, and Paul picked him up and headed for the emergency room. Because what Douwe does not do, ever, is complain of pain when he is ill. He denies pain and discomfort most vociferously and declares that he is really quite well and wants to leave immediately for school. Even when he cannot move. When he has a fever of 104, he declares that he wants to go to school as soon as he gets warm again.

So Paul was momentarily restrained and we called the doctor (which was closed) and were referred to the evening service who heard this tale and said to bring him in right now. They thought the same thing I thought: kidney infection.

(Relax, Grandmary, he hasn't got a kidney infection).

It appears, however, that he has got a bladder infection. So he is on an antibiotic and will certainly be well by next Wednesday, I am assured. Which of course means he had to actually take the antibiotic. This was achieved by telling him that it will make him feel better and also giving him a Coke afterward (the ultimate bribe).

Daan was so jealous of the attention (and the Coke) that he insisted on having medicine, too. So I gave him some plum syrup in a spoon, which he made a great show of disliking intensely and then said the doctor said he should have some more.

Now, if I can just break a tooth or a bone or something, we'll be all set to come to the States.

Shopping list

I am now making my shopping list of stuff to get in the States to bring back here. This includes a lot of cold and allergy medicines as I have no plans to develop the strength of character which comes from suffering through the flu without decongestants. My character will just have to look after itself.

It also includes a number of Pixters; it appears we are about to start a new rage here in Holland.

Those of you on the left side of the pond, if you want any imports brought to you, now's the time to list them here or email them to me. They must be small enough to haul home on a bicycle; otherwise, have at it.

Whoppers

Being my offspring, my children lie a lot. This one I cannot put off onto Dearly Beloved; I am afraid that Dearly Beloved cannot lie convincingly. He is the worst liar ever born. The way to tell if he is lying is to notice that he is avoiding direct questions. He cannot stand up for one second to the Bullshit Test.* He really thinks you can tell, so you can.

And besides, he is an arrogant bastard and thinks he is above lying.

I dunno where people get he idea that children are truthful; maybe some children are. Both of mine started lying at around two years old. About the same time they started to use and get humor, the events seemed to be related.

Here's the whopper I got today. Douwe had to explain a certain kind of accident of a delicate nature this evening.

So it seems that Bassie and Adriaan** came in through the window and carried away the toilet to put in their car while they were being chased by the bad guys so they would not have to stop. If they had to stop you see, they might have to pee in a hole in the ground in the desert and then the pee would all come out whoosh bang in a geyser all the way to the sky + and then they would have to stop and clean it up so then the bad guys would get them.

But Douwe, I said, the toilet is right here.

They came back in through the roof window and put it back before you came upstairs but then it was too late.

How did they get back out?

Tinkerbell turned them all yellow and they flew away.

Of course.

*The Bullshit Test goes like this: If you think someone is lying, look them straight in the eye and say, "Oh, bullshit,". If you do not like to swear, you can always say, "pull the other one, it's got bells on" but not if you are American. Some people will fall apart immediately; others begin to protest. When they protest, say "oh, bullshit -- I mean, it's pretty good bullshit, but just bullshit,". Accomplished fabulists can get through the bullshit test. Silly people who feel guilty about lying cannot.

** Bassie and Adriaan are Dutch TV characters whom he he has seen on DVD -- Bassie is a clown and Adriaan is an acrobat and they run around the world solving crimes and hunting down bad guys and occasionally being hunted by them. He has seen them on DVD because the actor who plays Bassie died a year or so ago.

+This actually happens to the bad guy in one of the B&A films, he did not thankfully make this up.

The view

My bedroom looks out onto a roof. You can get to the roof from a door or a window. Most of the roof is flat, though there is a pointy bit sticking up. This space simply begs for a rooftop garden, with maybe a very small table and two chairs. I took one look at it and my memory dredged up a vision of Square Foot Gardening (who here is old enough to remember Square Foot Gardening?).

I should really introduce Square Foot Gardening to Holland, or somebody should. It was practically created for this land of maniac orderliness and limited space.

Anyway, my roof gets sun all the livelong day. And yet, my vista was until recently limited to those flowerpot looking thingies on a roof and tar paper shingles. Well, it looks like tar paper. This is partly because I have been clinging to the transitory nature of our stay here. However, what with the major adjustment issues we have been dealing with, there has been universal agreement on one thing: we have to work out some way to not disrupt things again at least until the new school year starts. Which means a comittment of at least one growing season to staying here.

So of course I loaded up my kids in the wagon (no, it isn't litle, and it isn't red, either) and went off in search of growing things. This dredged up a long standing argument in my home, which is what to grow. I believe in things I can eat; when I say "garden" you might just as well tack the word "kitchen" on the front of it. I want a 12 month kitchen garden. I want basil and I want thyme and I want mint and the occasional tomato. I want beans and if I had an arbor I would grow watermelons and squash on it. * My own personal specialty used to be edible wild plants -- drop me in the woods anywhere in Georgia and I can come up with a meal.

Hey, what can I tell you, my mother collected a basement full of canned goods against the depradations of life, I collected information on what to do when the can opener gave out.

Dearly Beloved wants flowers. Specifically, he wants cutting flowers. Dearly Beloved has a tremendous affinity for cut flowers. He can walk over to the flowers I put in a vase, touch them twice, and voila, a perfect arrangement worthy of the pages of House Beautiful appears from nowhere. He also knows what container to get for which flowers, and does not limit his options to vases. Cut flowers even live longer when he puts them in water, with or without 7-Up. It is very irritating, I must say.

Now, Dearly Beloved has no plans to mess about with dirt. It is my job is to make flowers appear in a garden, should we have one. He has been known to operate a tiller on my behalf, though this required my looking extremely small (no trick) and helpless at the appropriate time. Beyond that, forget it.

And I know nothing about flowers, except that they come in annual and perennial varieties and seem to require a great deal of sun. Well, okay that its't true either. I know a lot about angelica, carnations, dianthus, chamomile, nasturtiums, pansies, marigold, violets. **

So there I am looking at plants and seeds. I get a bunch of bulbs to toss about -- even I cannot screw up bulbs, and I have in my house two pairs of hands which very much like to get muddy, so bulbs are a natural. No, actually, I did not get tulips (even though they are edible, too) . I did get freesia, because I like the way it smells.

And I got a very few things to eat. Tomatoes and peppers and strawberries and basil and thyme and...erahem.

So I took them all home and we went to plant them. The strawberries went in two homemade strawberry jars which began life as containers for race cars. The seeds I put in plastic boxes to sprout and set them out with the rest.

The it started to rain. And rain. And rain. And I did not put drainange holes on my sprouting boxes. So I am now trying to spout seeds in a box which alternates between two states: dry and in full sun; or a puddle.

Oh, you mean like the rest of Holland?

I think I shall have to try again, with drainage holes. I think I drowned the little buggers.

But the strawberries are very happy, so I may just wind up with a view of strawberry fields on the roof. That would be okay, too. And I can eat them.

*Here's an oddity, by the way: Dutch does not apparently contain a word for "squash", that is, the members of the genus cucurbita known in English as squash. It has individual words for yellow squash and butternut squash and acorn squash and zucchini and so on. But of the three Dutch folks I have had occasion to discuss this matter with (hey, squash does not come up in daily conversation, does it?) not one of them ever related a zucchini to, say, a butternut or a pumpkin. The only reason it came up in the first place is that I was trying to explain why the best pumpkin pies either use canned or use a combination of pumpkin and butternut squash. +

+Because fresh pumpkin is watery and and has very little taste unless you have a massive volume to start with and then cook it down for ever, that's why.

**note to Carol: yes, I know these are all edible flowers, that's why I know something about them. Don't tell anyone else.

Exactly Zero

Dearly Beloved is now engaged in a business venture. He is very nervous about this, because everyone agrees that Dearly Beloved is not the entrepreneurial type. Mostly the problem is that he cannot be trusted with bits of paper. They flutter, willy nilly, from his hands and land in some sort of portable black hole which follows him around just for the purpose of sucking up important bits of paper and whisking them off to the Antipodes.

Bits of paper are, as we all know, the soul of entrepreneurship. Okay, not its soul; but maybe its digestive system. My better half bears the same relationship to organization that a box of figs has to a Monster Truck Rally, okay?

Happily for him, his wife is an obsessive compulsive nutburger as regards bits of paper. Sometimes I scan them and put them on my hard drive and sometimes I file them and sometimes I put them in big old honking D-ring binders with tabs and indexes. SOmetimes I even color code them. Very occasionally I throw away a bit of paper; but not often. I do not, however, lose bits of paper.

Also happily for him, his wife has been doing bookkeeping for small businesses since she could sharpen a pencil and legibly write the same thing in three different books with columns in them. Unhappily for him, the program he bought to keep his books is, erahem, in Dutch.

Well, of course it is; this is Holland. It is his native language. He figured with a little translation, this could all be worked out. So it went like this:

HE: See, I can't get it to come out right, this entry comes up twice so it shows I have paid this amount two times.

SHE: Well, you put it in your Accounts payable and also in your checkbook as a payment. So you did pay it twice. You have to put in a correcting entry in one or the other to move one of them from the debit to the credit column.

HE: I can't; it's already in the Big Book.

SHE: The what?

HE: The Big Book, you now, the Big Book.

SHE: The Big Book is a collection of fairy tales, what are you talking about?

HE: see, when you input the numbers it calculates the btw....

SHE: The what?

HE: The btw, it's a product.

SHE: uh huh. The by the way? The electronics store? The what?

HE: It's an acronym, it stands for >incomprehensible, mind numbingly long string of gibberish which apparently translates to the value added tax<

SHE: Uh huh, does that actually mean something?

HE: Yeah, it means the VAT.

SHE: Right. Why does it calculate the VAT?

I think we should draw the curtain over this little domestic scene at this point. Suffice it to say that Dearl Beloved is not so happy as I am to simply put in entries which say "correction of previous idiotic error" in order to make it all come out the way it should. He wants to knwo why. And there is no why, there is only do, as they say. However, this ultimately futile conversation somehow led to the following inquiry from my spouse: Why do the columns have to add up to zero?

I have never known the answer to this question. It is just an Ultimate Truth; as the sun rises and sets, as little pitchers have big ears, as what goes up must come down, the Columns Must Add Up to Zero. They may not flirt with an amusing little taste of +.75 or display a shocking lack of good taste with a -.47. Absolute Zero is required. If it does not add up to zero, you must perforce invent something else to put in (referring to your complete Chart of Accounts for the proper coding) in one column or another to make it equal zero. I am the only person I know who had once an entry in the chart of accounts for "Adjustment to make everything equal zero and keep Bruce happy". Bruce thought it was funny; I have not had occasion to check Warren's opinion.

Anyone with a good answer which will satisfy the existential wonderings of my spouse, please feel free. I am a practical person; "because otherwise the accountant becomes very unhappy" was always good enough for me.

I just think you all should know

What with the Looming Deadline and all, that I don't have to file my taxes until June. Pthththt.

I just found this out during an email exchange with my accountant, the Amazing Warren. I was worried about Warren: we found each other by default, which is never a good start to a relationship. It goes like this. The Charming Bruce, his predecessor, was a witness in a case I was working on. Under cross examination, Bruce just kept answering questions. Kindly. In a friendly way. Adding information as it occurred to him, right off the top of his head. Bruce had allegedly never been a witness before. It was an impressive performance, and one which could really only have been given by a person who really knew his stuff cold and was not at all worried about the answers.

So the following tax time, I called him up. He did a fine job. I sent him a couple of clients, even -- at that time I did a lot of domestic relations work and I had occasion to bump into a number of people with financial woes. One of the things I liked about the Charming Bruce was, if he didn't know how to handle somebody's problem, he told them so and sent them to someone who did know how. This trait is less common than you might think.

But then the Charming Bruce went to work full time for one of his clients and handed me off to The Amazing Warren. I was, to tell you the truth, not at all pleased. This is usually a bad sign in an accountant -- being handed off is sometimes just ine step from having your taxes done by office personnel plugging the numbers into a program. Well, if I wanted a half-assed job, I could do it myself.

However, The Amazing Warren (despite his annoying if very professional habit of charging me for phone calls) is great. He answers my emails. He asks questions. He nags me when I don't answer his emails because I am too busy going to school and back four times a day. Such a comfort to know that somebody cares about my IRA contribution getting there on time.

Ready......................

Set.............

Go!

Persistence

”An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.” --Thomas Fuller

My son Daan is a very small person. He is no longer beneath the growth charts in size, as you know, but he still makes the mommies of the two year olds on the playground nervous. Because he is exactly their size, you see, or sometimes smaller, but has the coordination of a three year old. The dads occasionally sidle up to me and ask my how long he has been able to do >that<. I generally say something soothing like, "Since he turned three, maybe a couple months after,". Sometimes I consider saying, "Oh, I guess about a year or so," but I usually do not. I only think about it; I find I grow kinder as I grow older.

However, Daan wants to do everything his brother can do. This is of course impossible, two years is a large gap at this age. But no one has shared this with him. So he just sets out to do it. And if he is not prevented due to his mother's concern for life and limb, it is astonishing how often he manages to pull it off.

Today at the playground, Daan decided he wanted to go on the big kids' climbing structure and slide. This thing is two stories high. It is essentially a metal cage shaped like a house, and you can either climb up the outside on climbing nets or the inside on ladders. The ladders are inside square enclosed tunnels which look like air conditioning shafts and the exits are on the side. So you have to climb the ladder and then transfer sideways out the door. Daan declared his intention to do it. I told him he should go on the other slide instead. So he went to the ladder and Looked At Me.

Okay, I said. (Secretly thanking all the saints that it was not the climbing net on the outside). But I am not going to help you. Not at all. If you can't do it, we go to the other one. He started climbing. I climbed after him.

At the first story he climbed directly out of the hole in the floor, stood up, put his hands over his head like a boxer and danced around. No, he has never seen Rocky, and he has never done that before. I have no idea where he got that. The Collective Unconscious I suppose.

He went to the second ladder. At the top, he sort of turned around and Looked again. Nope, I said. If you can't do it, we are going to the other slide. (Please don't let him be able to do it, saints, I thought).

He did it. He is too small to do it. But he did it. It took forever. I was glad I was there, because I at least held off the other kids who were coming up the ladder and routinely just climb over the smaller, slower kids. Including his brother, by the way, before anybody starts speculating on the childrens' behavior or parentage. But even the big boys know better than to pull that with Somebody's Mom on the ladder.

He stood on the top rung and put his elbow over the floor to his right. Then he put his weight on the elbow and brought his other hand around to grab the floor. (The floor is made of gridwork, you can see right through it. It was probably really scary for those unfortunate souls with a fear of heights of whom I do not know even one) Then he dragged himself off the ladder with his hands. He is too small to keep his feet on the ladder, it's just too far. Then he stood up and said "you can come on now," to me and went to the slide.

So it's a very fast slide, and two stories high. Polished metal in a tunnel. He was scared to death. But he did it agin. Twice. The second time, I had to stay on the gound and he did it really himself. But he went with Douwe on the slide. The third time he got all the way to the top and stopped. "You have to slide down, Daan, you cannot climb down," I said. "It's scary, though," He said. "Do I need to come get you?" I said. He considered the matter with great seriousness and said "Yes, I think so,".

So I did. And he went off to play in the sand.

The Bicycle

"I thought of that while riding my bicycle."
-Albert Einstein, on the Theory of Relativity.

Some people say there are more bicycles in Holland than there are people. Allowing for the number circulating on the black market, this may be true -- the rate of bicycle theft is enormous. It is a cheap and relatively convenient method of transportation in a country with a relatively temperate climate and no hills. The official numbers, I hear, are that there are 15 million people in Holland and 12 million bicycles. I have one, I got it second hand for 15 euros. It was, in the Land of the Giants, necessary for me to get a girls' bike. But it is big enough to put Daan's baby seat on the back and also to hang various bags of groceries from the handlebars, an operation which becomes second nature faster than you might think if the alternative is to haul 5 kilos of potatoes home on foot.

Douwe, of course, has one. It came equipped with training wheels, and he got it when he was just at 4 or maybe a little younger. There was a High Council on the training wheels, in which it was decided that maybe it would be okay if they stayed on, since he is after all American, a country where a bicycle is not a mode of transportation but a toy. However, the recommended practice I hear is to drop them on a bike without training wheels because otherwise they become dependent upon the wheels and don't want to take them off. Douwe might become overly dependent on the training wheels, after all. At four years old.

Did I mention at any time the enormous and unrelenting emphasis on independence in children here in Holland?

So anyway, the training wheels. Several High Councils have been held since on the training wheels. I do not actually care about the training wheels, he does not use them except when banking around turns at high speeds. So I welcomed anyone who cared to take it on to take the wheels off and explain the whole independence thing to Douwe while I read a good book. I got no takers and the High Council was in recess.

So yesterday we went to Eindhoven to visit friends. They have two lovely children, aged 4 and 5. We went to the playground, because it is Spring here and the weather is terrific. Douwe rode the pedal cart, Daan rode the push car riding toy, the kids of our friends rode their bikes. On the way home, the 4 year old got tired and wanted to be carried. So I would up bringing her bike, as the only person there short enough to do it without bending over. Douwe decided he wanted to ride her bike. Her bike has no training wheels.

Before I could point this out, he jumped on and rode away. Just like that. I hollered "way to go, look at you,". Or something similar, forgetting momentarily that this is Douwe. He looked around, startled, looked up and saw his father coming back to see what the commotion was about, and fell off. And refused to get back on, because of course by this time everyone was looking at him and trying to get him to get back on and telling him how great he was.

Finally we just went on back with him pushing the bike. (And me pushing the pedal car as my penance, oh my back). And we all resolutely ignored the bike for the next twenty mnmnutes, whereupon he got on it again and rode away. To no fanfare of any kind.

Today we went to the park in Breda with the bike, because he was riding the bike just fine but stopping the bike with difficulty. He kept falling off instead of getting off. HIs solution was to fall off the bike on purpose for about twenty minutes. I think a lot of Dutch people think I am insane, because I spent twenty minutes or so with my 5 year old like this: he gets on the bike, he rides it into the grass, he brakes abruptly and lays it down (just like riders of motorcycles do, actually, he just laid it down and stood up through the process) and comes running over to me shouting exuberantly that he fell off his bike. "I fell, mom, I really fell!!". To which I replied with great enthusiasm, "You really are getting good at falling aren't you? I think you should practice some more, though,". We did get a few Looks.

So anyway, within a short period, his grandmother took over and I took Daan to the sand box to play. And Douwe can now ride a bike. Without any lingering dependency on training wheels.

He has joined the ranks of Albert Hoffman, who accidentally ingested LSD-25 and set off for home on his bicycle, hallucinating all the way. Lillian Russell, who recevied from Diamond Jim Brady a gold-plated bicycle with mother-of pearl handlebars and spokes with chips of diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds and sapphires. William Hastie, who became Dean of Howard Law School, and rode a bicycle to school rather than sit in a segregated streetcar.

Well, and Einstein of course, but we already knew that.