The Time of Our Lives

Don't ask me how we'll ever top this one, but for our first wedding anniversary on the recent 5 February weekend, Astrid reserved a floor of this windmill B&B.  See that middle window just under the platflorm?  That was our Bed part of the B&B, a full-fledged apartment.  With gale-force 'Level 8' winds swirling around us all night, 39-46 mph, we slept like babies.   See the window below us on the ground floor?  That was the Breakfast part of the B&B the next morning.

When Astrid first Googled, she discovered The Netherlands has only two such B&B windmills.  She picked this one in Onderdendam, in the NE of the country, 125 miles from home.  It can't be compared to anything else we've done thus far.  We had the time of our lives!

That got me thinking about the phrase, 'the time of our lives.'  In the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing, one of my favorites of all time, it was "I've never felt this way before."  That's the first thing I think of.  A FEELING.  Sure, it's a feeling often based on what you're doing but I'm guessing some have stayed in that same B&B and didn't have the time of their lives.  Not like we did.  So why did WE?  What makes something be the time of our lives?

I have a feeling it's more than what we check off our Bucket List or the Create-a-Wish thing we choose if there's only one wish left to be granted us.  It may not be something grandiose or hugely spectacular or at some exotic location.  It may be something as simple as playing golf on the pro-circuit course of Atlanta, as wished by an elderly lady when I worked in assisted-living years ago.  She got her wish and had the time of her life.  Why?  Because she used to play golf a lot as a young woman and just hankered to play again, even if only putting around on the warm-up green alongside the course.

Some things are just deep inside the chambers of our souls.  Where they came from and how they got there we may never know.  Windmills, for instance.  It's like I lived inside one in a past life.  How else do you explain it?  And when did I know they were there?  How was it that I 'recognized' them when I first came to this country of windmills, as though I always had known them?

When I Googled the phrase ('time of our lives'), I read about our internal, biological clocks...always ticking.  Always knowing.  About how we gain reconciliation with time like a valuable commodity. About the perspective we live it...in the past, the present, or the future.  About how we spend our days doing, feeling, hoping, and what controls our time.  How do we juggle our work and leisure, for instance?  How do we feel time?  How do we age?

Now throw this in:  staying in the windmill was a special experience for Astrid but she said it was planning the joy for me and seeing it on my face that gave her the time of her life.  She knows what's in the deep chambers of my soul and she recognized it when she saw it on my face!  Of course, it wouldn't have been the same for me without her.

And that raises the question:  can we have the time of our life alone, without someone else?  I would guess, so, yes...like the golfer.  But how can you beat sharing it with someone else.  Especially when the wind is blowing! 

Visual Realities

This may be a first (?), two Vision & Verb collaborators meeting each other in real life.  Not Kath and Margie, of course, because they're sisters and that doesn't count!

We're both here in this image, in case you wondered.  She, Petra, is reflecting on her own photography and I'm there in the background, reflecting on her.

Isn't this fun!  Petra told us about her photography exhibition near her hometown here in Holland, about 35 km. from where we live.  We have wanted to meet each other since forever, so why not now.  Just do it.  Besides, Astrid and I knew we could make a photo-hunt day of it, which we did a week ago Saturday.  It was cold but sunny.

That same evening, once we got home, we sat in our nearby movie theater (something we do maybe 4 times a year) and watched teenagers and young adults playing with their iPhones before the movie started...gaming and texting.  Couldn't help but comment about the different world our kids live in today, much of which is virtual.  My 10-year-old grandson would much rather play with his hand-held virtual toys than ride a bike, for God's sake!

But here's the thing.  Remember when we used to write long, snail-mail letters and had to wait days before getting a response?  How many of us do that anymore!  When Dad was dying in 1995, we 8 kids around the state/country did most of our communicating via the phone.  Two years later, when Mom was dying, we were all using the internet, keeping up via e-mail several times a day.  Today we also IM each other and Skype.  All forms of virtual reality.

How many times have we said in Blogosphere that our virtual friends...the ones we've never met in real life...are every bit as real to us, if not more so, than our families and friends.  We may even feel more understood and loved by them...to the point that we we choose them to be our 'real' family.  After all, they know only the bits we want them to know...and are therefore more forgiving.

In my 6 years of blogging on 3 different blogs, including this one, I have met in real life close to 50 bloggers, not counting family and friends.  A handful of them I never see or hear from anymore, and to be honest, a couple of them were not anything like I had created them to be in my mind.  Most of you know that Astrid is my wife today because I first met her on my photoblog.  After 3 months of daily e-mail contact, I met her in real life.  Would she be anything like what I thought she would be?  OMG!  The minute I stepped off the train that first day, it was like lightning struck.  The virtual reality we both had created was in fact...real.

Which leads to this question:  how do we view reality these days?  Apart from the creepy, scary internet stories we dread and the paranoia we might have about divulging our identity, do we gain more than we lose by our blogging realities?  Do you want to meet your blogging family in real life, or does it scare you? Do you trust your judgment of people enough to want to meet them?  I'm guessing we'd all say a hearty YES.  So we're downright lucky when it happens.

In two months Astrid and I will fly to Oslo to meet two of my longest blogger friends, along with their wives.  With Petra, that will make 3 virtual friends this year already, and counting.  Maybe you'll be next.  Isn't that fun!  I love it. 

Pennsylvania Dutch Art: A Tribute

Sometimes I totally shock myself and that's putting it nicely.  Sometimes I feel like a total dummkopf (excuse my French) and that's closer to the point.

Once before, as I recall, I talked about the Dutch Masters and mentioned how embarrassing it was when late in life I discovered they were 'connected' to a country called Holland...The Netherlands…where I now live!

The same thing happened with the 'Pennsylvania Dutch' term I grew up with my entire life in America.  They lived in Pennsylvania...DUH...but the Dutch part never meant a thing to me.  Once I figured out the Dutch Masters, the Dutch part of Pennsylvania started to make sense.  Bingo, right?  Wrong.  And this is when language is so crazy-making.  The Dutch this time has nothing to do, technically, with Holland/The Netherlands...where I now live.  Instead, it's about Germany, whose language is Deutsch...becoming the folk-rendered 'Dutch' when Pennsylvania is added, especially when talking about their folk-art, tole painting.

Kath recently said "Obviously the obvious eludes me."

Now that we've got that settled, I present you with Pennsylvania Dutch tole painting that has surrounded me the last year here in our Dutch apartment...not in Germany but in Holland.  And by a Dutch artist, not German or Pennsylvanian.  Every piece in the above collage has seeped into my blood as though it were my own heritage...painted by a woman I've never met but whose lineage feels like mine.  Remember all those times I've said I feel like I've come Home!

In fact, last week I found out sister Ruth (in America) "just started tole painting, cultivating [her] dormant Swedish roots from Grandma Olive."  Tole painting comes not only from Germany but from Scandinavia as well.  My Grandma Olive passed on her artistic flare to our mom who in turn passed it on to us 8 kids.

Now, watch this:  my Dutch wife Astrid's grandmother was from Germany before she moved to Holland, here where Astrid's mother was then born in 1924.  Astrid is an artist in her own right, straight from her mother's line.  Suddenly our lineages have criss-crossed in more ways than one.  When you marry into this art and come from it yourself, it's...(are you ready?)...Double Dutch!  In a Germanic sort of way.

I write more about Astrid's mom (with a photo of her) at my In Soul blog, in case you're interested.  I wish I had met her.  At least I have a sense of who she was, which I honor this month, 7 years since her death.  In this I honor all our moms who have helped shape who we are...even those we've married into.

Helena Jacoba Therese Wijdekop van Leeuwen
1 Aug 1924 - 17 Jan 2004

May you rest in peace.

The Dancing Queens

You know how one thing leads to another, or in this case, one thought within six degrees from enough others till they all somehow connect.  Someone else watching the process might wonder, "Say what!"  But it all ends up making sense.

Start with this image of sheep from the Dutch countryside on Christmas Day.  The One Who Would be Dog is so sheepish.  Actually, so nonchalant.  She surely thinks no one knows what she's been up to.  HAHAHA.  Every time I look at her I laugh.  She seems the epitome of tomfoolery, monkey businees, mischieviousness, fun and daring-do all wrapped up in one.  I'm guessing she's the one who gets everyone else in trouble.  The ring-leader.

Then...on January 2 this new year, we just happened to turn on the TV in time to catch a delightful program about ABBA, the Swedish singing group from the 70s.  As the songs played, Astrid and I both relived Mamma Mia, the first movie we saw together and one of my absolute favorites of all time.  How can you not watch Meryl Streep, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski and just be intoxicated over being "a woman of a certain age" with them! When they sing The Dancing Queen (from ABBA), who cares they're not seventeen anymore!

When I connected the myriad thoughts, I said, "That's who we are here at Vision and Verb.  We're the dancing queens!"

Remember, you're talking to a preacher's kid from a conservative background that didn't allow dancing or going to movies.  A preacher's kid who now watches 3-5 movies a week and dances every night after supper with her spouse.  Making up for lost time, I guess?  I love the irony.

You know me enough by now to know I'm not being careless or insensitive to the difficult situations many of us may still experience.  In fact, I've been writing this post simultaneously while feeling estranged from my family on the other side of the Pond.  I've needed connection to them and have reached out, especially during the holidays, but have felt it to be a one-way street.  In the gay community we often say "Silence = Death."  So I've been dying many deaths of late, even if I can come up with valid reasons for the void.

But here's where choice comes in and with this post I'm saying this is what I choose for 2011:  to be a dancing queen who's having the time of my life.  And why not!  As with photography, it's a POV... a point of view, a perspective, a way of looking at life.  Why not believe we all deserve the time of our lives.  Why not believe a good laugh will break the ice with enough silliness to bring the house down.  That house of brick and stone and in spite of our circumstances.  In spite of what the other sheep in the flock may think?!  Do I dare wish it for us all?  Why not!

You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen.