Responsibilities

This blog was written almost six weeks ago.  It seemed a bit tedious and detailed at the time and I was hesitant about publishing it.  But I decided to post it anyway.  Hope you like it.

It is 11:30pm. I just finished my third sauna cycle and am sitting comfortably on our small porch area of a vacation cottage near Ringkoebing, Denmark. We’re several hours north of our geographical location in Champaign-Urbana and evening light lasts markedly longer here than it does at home. Words don’t get close to describing the silence around us. The only sounds left tonight are ones that became dear to me four decades ago, when my family and I would travel to Denmark many times for summer vacations. They include the beautiful song of the European robin (a black bird slightly smaller than its American cousin, with a bright yellow beak), the call of a cuckoo in the far distant and the sound of an occasional gust of wind as it blows through the rugged looking pines surrounding our house. These are sounds that have always instilled in me a strong sense of home and an equally strong sense of longing. Longing for something that, still, I don’t really understand in its full depth.




We’re on a mini-vacation nestled into an already short vacation (12 days including travel) to see my parents in Hamburg Germany and to celebrate my father’s 75th birthday. We, that is my three sons and I. While I deeply enjoy this time with my boys I also have to admit that the constant responsibility of such a trip often feels like a rock in the pit of my stomach. When I say “responsibility” I don’t mean things like watching they don’t get in trouble or making sure they eat enough and are polite to strangers. No, these days my sense of responsibility is centered around their “entertainment needs” which I happen to know are quite different from what I consider entertainment. It is a responsibility that always leaves me quite agitated as it feels as if the distance between their needs and mine cannot possibly be straddled. When I am controlled by this responsibility I feel an almost unbearable nagging that I will never really get to being myself again. I feel as if the things I really love—like sitting out here after a relaxing sauna cycle—will never be mine again.



The house I rented for us has a satellite dish and an old-fashioned small tv, but it has no internet connection and we’re far enough from the next phone network to not even get reception on my German bought cell-phone. This means that our phones are useless and our computers are useful only as word-processors. Noah has been typing away furiously this morning and afternoon, working on a story he won’t share with us. I am typing on my computer right now. But for the most part even our computers have been rendered temporarily useless as well.



So a part of me feels that I have selfishly brought the boys to a place only I really enjoy. It’s a place that offers nothing which I would condescend to call “entertainment.” The house is only about a 1000 feet away from the Ringkoebing Fjord, a body of water indirectly connected to the North Sea but sheltered from it by a thin peninsula that reaches almost all the way around it. While the peninsula itself has beaches and waves on its western side, the inland side, ours, has a vast sea of reed as a shore and calm inland-like waters. One can take long walks along the sea of reed that lines the shore and we have already done so four or five times since we arrived yesterday. Today, on our second walk, Jacob confessed to me that he is bored and would likely not choose Denmark as a vacation destination again. I fully understand what he means and tell him so. It must, I tell him, almost feel like a kind of withdrawal not to have your usual amenities (a good hot shower, the internet, x-box and familiar foods, friends, etc.)/



We keep talking about this. Withdrawal, I tell him, sometimes means that we become aware of other things. Things we normally would not pay attention to. For example, I say, the voices of birds: What do you hear right now? He is walking in front of me and I cannot see his face, Gabriel is chattering away as Jacob and I are having this conversation. I can hear four different bird voices, he says. Yes, I say, and I can tell you what all of them are. All of this, I say and draw my arm in a wide circle, speaks to me, the water, the lonely white swan on it, the glittering setting sun, the “Denmark” clouds, the smell of the wild rose bushes and the sounds. I am thinking, but not saying, that this is what makes me feel human, an experience I find myself increasingly craving these days. He doesn’t say much in response and I’m not forcing it. I really do understand what he is trying to share with me. By now we have stopped to let Gabriel play in a sandy beach-like area and Jacob and I have settled on a wooden bench overlooking the Fjord. We have moved on to another topic, I forget what, and I remember an analogy that recently came to mind for our conversations. When he and I talk it feels like there is a USB cable running between us. The information that’s coming to me mainly comes in the form of observations and questions, many questions, to which Jacob is down-loading my answers, opinions and perspectives.



It’s a calm and serene moment and after a while we get up and move on towards an unfamiliar path that leads through a few reed covered dunes to a small play-ground. Both Jacob and Gabriel are excited because it features a large basket swing in which one can sit almost like in a hammock. They give each other turns in it, push each other and are incredulous about this “new” swing. I am excited too, swings like this one were not around when I was a boy (if there were any swings at all). A wooden play structure invites Jacob to climb up it (not into it like its design suggests, but on top of it). Here he decides to balance across the two inch-wide beam on which hang another set of swings. He is hesitant, waivers, tries different methods, but finally walks across the six feet stretch, about 12 feet above ground. He does it a few more times then jumps off. His body control is absolutely amazing. Gabriel is excited too. He is back in the swing and demands to be pushed more. When he gets out he starts banging on the metal scaffold that holds the basket-swing. As I often like to do I begin humming the note it’s making, probably and F or G. I turn to Jacob and ask him to harmonize to it. We play around with the G-chord. Inversions, seventh, ninth. We fool around with the sounds, I go into Falsetto. He tries but cannot get it. His fourteen-year-old voice is not allowing him this yet. I assure him that it will, but also that my voice-teacher warned me not to use Falsetto too often, because it undercuts our efforts to get to a naturally higher pitch. We talk about how the body engages when we sing, stomach muscles (which interest him quite a bit right now), the diaphragm and larynx.



Suddenly I realize: this evening has reached an incredible playful density and depth. Nobody seems bored. Instead we all feel deeply connected.



It’s time to leave and we walk back through the dunes towards the water. I ask Jacob about what just happened. Pointing out that, going back to the beginning of our conversation when we started this walk, we had a lot of fun. And it’s just us, I say, no tools, no computers, just us—our thoughts, voices and bodies. He agrees but doesn’t say much more. I assure him I don’t want to force an answer, but then he begins to sing. Our favorite harmonizing song “He’s got the whole world” and from there to “O when the saints” on to “Sound of Silence” and “Let it be.” We talk about harmonizing and he wants to know when I learned to do it. I tell him about my friend Katrin and the first time I sang Cat Steven’s “Father and Son” with her. It was an awesome experience, goose-bump producing. Were you in love with her, he asks. (He knows how mystical and romantic the experience of singing together can be.) For a short while, I answer, but that didn’t work out. What stayed, I say, is our friendship, even though we rarely talk to each other nowadays. But when we see each other we usually sing a song or two together.



As I was sitting in the sauna I wondered what it might be that my boys will bring home with them from this trip, from the many conversations that we have with each other. I was thinking of my father’s 75th birthday on Sunday. I am beginning to feel my age. It’s emotional more than physical. So much “down-loading” could possibly be done. Yet its occurrence is always serendipitous. Certainly this is the way in which I am still receiving and exchanging information with my father. I wonder if he feels he would like to tell me more, perhaps even like for me to ask him more questions.



It is surprising to me, every time, how much these times together give me a sense of self, of having connected with myself. It is possible that the intensity of this responsibility is getting me to myself after all.