Traditions are funny. Not in the ha-ha funny sense, but the other, the “you’re right, now that I think about it” kind of way. It’s interesting how they are created, and especially how fast things become tradition, or at least the way they’ve “always been done”.
Son, “in character”, Vanity Fair style.
Last week, I shared an elevator with a Russian man who was wearing a pink pullover and pink pants. We shared the elevator going down and I went to see if I couldn’t find a place where I could buy chips and a Coke, he to see if he couldn’t own the dance floor at the Piano Bar in the lobby.
He was successful. I wasn’t.
Seeing the silver man, the Roman soldier, the clown, and the human water fountain do their tricks – or in silver man’s and Roman soldier’s case, doing absolutely nothing – on the square outside the Cologne Cathedral made me think what I always think when I see street artists.
Well, maybe not faces, but names that make me think of familiar faces. In Germany, everybody is Anders.
For a guy who still has the 18 ‘Til I Die T-shirt from Bryan Adams’s 1996 European Tour and several other T-shirts that are twice as old as his kids, I feel surprisingly confident with my ability to spot – and even better, to create – fashion trends.
Every day, at around 2.45 pm, I get in the car and drive ten kilometers south, to the Finnish School in Stockholm, to pick up Son and Daughter. Or, every day when I’m not at the Olympics or the hockey World Championships for a couple of weeks at a time. But, as a rule, I’m at the school and kindergarten at three, and then we drive back up, singing, and talking about their day – and Star Wars.
We’re back home at 3.45, the latest, and then we hang around about an hour, before it’s time for me to start to cook dinner. When the kids are sick – I hear Daughter coughing now – or have a random Easter holiday, they can stay at home with me.
What exactly is going through his mind? Leave your suggestion in the comments. The winner will receive the high resolution image with the thought bubble s/he penned in it, in return email.
“I hate luck!”
– Son
We all hate luck when it works against us, don’t we? In Son’s case, the luck he so much despised was the wind in my sails as I moved my two knights into a striking position, about to kill his king in our friendly Easter holiday afternoon game of chess.
Of all the holidays in all the towns in all the world, Easter is my least favorite one.
It’s not a bad holiday, I have nothing against it, I just don’t have a relationship with it. Our family wasn’t big on eating lamb, I’ve never been out begging for candy dressed as a witch, and … that’s all I know about Easter traditions.
I have no special Easter memories, no Easter trip stories, no crazy relatives that always turned up at Easter. Besides, since Easter always closed all the stores and restaurants in Finland when I was a kid, the only fun thing it ever brought was mämmi, and while the 16th century traditional Finnish dessert was and is a treat, it wasn’t, and isn’t, enough.
However, today we returned the Santa Claus kit – the beard, the boots, the overcoat – to Wife’s parents, the Keepers of the Mask – a nice connection between the two big, religious holidays.
