I have spent the day wringing my hands and muttering oh me, oh my. Now, I shall tell you a secret about myself : unless I have a stiff neck or another muscle wing- wang, I rarely get headaches. I can dunk my face in vats of booze and the next morning, I’m fine.

I know, it isn’t fair. Eh, wrong side of the world or of the sixties for instant karma though, isn’t it ?

But I actually managed to succeed where the trashiest of boozes have failed, even nasty frat mixed drinks, with names like Purple Jesus ( don’t ask, I haven’t a clue) : I fretted myself into a headache today. Yes, oh- me, oh- my-ing can be quite taxing.

I pounced upon The Father in a very undignified manner when he finally returned to our kitchen, our soup simmering away upon the stove. It’s Tuesday after all, you should know that by now.

For you see, all day I had to face the fact that what I was saying, in essence, was that all of the teachers were wrong and we were right. Why, my children could never be at fault, no, each and every child in their classes is a vulgar brute and I don’t blame even wee Baby for avoiding the lot, swinging balls of burning rose petals about her as she passed the day in kindergarten.

Here is why I was so glad when The Father came home , for The Father has kept his educational background a deep, dark secret from the little school down the street: all of our children know that they must never, ever breath a word about it, but Papa was once a primary school teacher.

In fact, he was more than that. Papa’s studies made him the kind of person that primary school teachers called in when they needed an evaluation of suspected deviant behavior in one of their students.

Yes, Papa studied children with labels and children with drummers. He was considered a pro at that sort of shit.

And so, when Papa tells me that the problem isn’t our children but that the teacher’s have never learned the proper method in which to conduct a parent/ teacher conference, I lend great credence to his words.

That is how I spent my day. I now spend my evening arm- wrestling my computer to the floor : once again, every computer in the house is connected except mine. Uh, I function as the server, whatever, here….

Major WTF’s, head banging and no spell check for now.

This really caught my fancy , as I attempted to find the correct spelling for work wear ( workwear? work-wear?)

here

There are times when I am very glad indeed that The Father did all of that graduate work in pedagogy, that he actually was once a primary school teacher.

After I ran ( walked) The Boy over to choir practice, after I had sat here in my little room of my own for a half an hour and then headed out to pick him up from choir practice, I went over to the school to catch up with The Father, who was at the first of our three, back- to- back parent- teacher conferences.

For an hour and a half, we heard teacher’s assessments and concerns regarding our three children. We appreciated their interest in our children, but didn’t necessarily agree with their conclusions.

This is where The Father having once been a member of their coven comes in handy : he understands all of the knowledge, the theories and the language of the group.

The Baby’s fatal flaw : she prefers to play alone. We are not going to lose sleep over that one, sorry.

The Boy, well, what do you expect with that fey lad of ours ? But I have to say, no one is mumbling about The Boy being hyperactive anymore. Guess that diagnosis was wrong. All that The Father and I see is that every year, as The Boy learns more and more how to conform to the standards of acceptable behavior, his grades are getting higher and higher. Right now, no matter how flaky he is, no matter what drummer he marches to, it looks like The Boy will indeed be able to attend an athenaeum, which- for some reason- he has set his heart upon. Wants to learn Greek, dontcha know ( I never told him that I studied ancient Greek. Really. That is part of my sordid past, the bit we keep hidden from the children.)

His teacher suggested that we might want to take The Boy to a child psychologist, to learn how to improve his social skills. Mummy Dearest nixed that one and The Father stood right next to me, nixing it as well. The classroom of 30 children that The Boy has gone to school with for 6 years is not a reflection of The Boy’s social skills, we said, but of the niche into which he has been placed . But I liked his teacher very much, for she also had seen that special spark that is The Boy : his imagination and enthusiasm.

I liked The Girl’s teacher as well and she was quite aware of what has been going on at school this year with The Girl. We told her that The Girl had basically given up on this school, everybody who attended this school, and the horse they rode in on. She could understand that, she could see why The Girl might be looking toward a fresh start, a new school. But she was concerned about what might happen if The Girl became an outcast at her next school as well. She suggested a psychologist for The Girl too. I was thinking of Sunday, when The Girl had been surrounded by her Horsey- Girl friends, smiling and laughing with them, a part of the group.

By now you must be saying to yourself, my, all three children have- basically- been deemed social cripples, in need of professional help. Perhaps Mummy Dearest is blinded to the truth of it all.

Perhaps I am. I’ve never been that concerned about things social, they never rated high in my book, and – of course- there is always a chance that social- crippled- ness is a genetic disorder, you never know. Here is sortof what I think about this whole social element, as the teachers seem to be presenting it : that some where, there is this accepted norm of social interaction, a Platonic norm, if you will, and that the majority of children conform to this norm and so therefore are then deemed to be ( you have guessed it ! ) normal, with the implication that being normal is in some way better.

Having just gone through the U.S. elections, I perhaps have my strongest argument for my belief that how the majority behaves does not necessarily make it the better way.

I believe in distant drummers, and heeding their call.

And again, we have seen our children functioning and interacting with the world outside of their eight room school building, and we think that the teachers mean well, but… we just don’t agree with them.

It is as simple as that.

The Father and I spent the morning at the manege, looks of interest plastered across our faces and watched The Girl come in last place in her dressage competition. Afterward, her teacher ( who was also on the jury) came down and swung her arm around The Girl’s shoulders and- with a laugh – asked her what on earth she had been doing out there. The other Horsey -Girls all laughed with her, and with The Girl and I could see that The Girl has indeed found another world to be in, one in which people like and care about her.

The Father and I spent two hours in the snack bar, watching the ponies dosey- doe around the ring, having no clue at all as to what we were watching. The snack bar- one wall of which is made up of windows overlooking the ring- was filled with intense Horsey- Mummies and wholesome looking Horsey- Girls. There was also a rogue football player ( famous in the eighties) wandering around, from The Father’s favorite team. Right there, in the snack bar of a manege in the middle of no where. This just might have made The Father’s day.

When we first sat down, the mother of The Girl’s best friend at the manege recognized me and stated the obvious ‘Oh, you are The Girl’s parents !’. A murmur of ‘Oh! The Girl’s parents!’ rippled through the snack bar. All of the Horsey- Mummies seemed to know one another and know all of the Horsey -Girls by name as well. We sat and chatted with her and she told us many esoteric details about dressage, leaving The Father and I alternating well, wadda ya know faces with poorly disguised looks of say, wha ?

We were just two country bumpkins sitting on barstools not really giving a rat’s ass about the competition, just hoping that the kid had a good time.

And she did.

For whatever reason, in the midst of this holiday season, filled with tidings of comfort and joy, one of The Boy’s teachers decided that it was a very fine time indeed to sit around in a circle and chat about death. About the death of those that we loved. I assume that there is a point behind this exercise, although I question the timing. Picking scabs when you are 9 years old, well, I do wonder, but must surrender to their educated and informed choices.

This oh- so- very constructive day, coming right on the heels of Mr. Jo planting his daughter in the very cold earth, was , well, a bit of poor timing, here within Casa Kitchen. I had spent a number of moments with both The Girl and The Boy, discussing the funeral – and, well, its implications with both The Girl and The Boy.

The Girl wanted to know if they shoveled the dirt upon the coffin as we stood there, watching. I said no, I do believe that that would be more than a person could bear.

The Boy wanted a magic word or phrase, something that would make Mr. Jo feel better. I had to tell him that there wasn’t such an animal. When The Boy suggested that perhaps the best thing to do was- in essence- pretend that nothing had happened, since one couldn’t help, I found myself telling him that no, that wasn’t the answer. While there is nothing in this world that one could say, to make that pain go away, that any effort to do so would fail and, well, trivialize the occasion, one must always acknowledge the pain. Just say that you are so sorry. It is the thing to say, the best thing. Nothing else.

His teacher brought up the memories of Kitty’s death. It was simply The Boy and I. Perhaps if I could bring myself to lie though my teeth, chat about a kitty heaven,this would all be moot. But I can’t. I don’t know, really, where things go when they die- I tend to think no where. They are just gone and enter the great food chain.

But the timing was bad, on that teacher’s part. While Kitty was the target, the focus, understanding death was the point. Mr. Jo’s daughter.

What does one say, when one really believes that it is ashes to ashes, dust to dust ? How can one offer comfort, when it seems that there is none ?

Should I lie ?

Living without a God- of any sort- in the picture is at times….difficult.

I now have to buy a saddle for the beast. I suppose that I should see this as a learning experience, right up there with the grand old days when the world of HTML was revealed to me when Angie showed me how to make a black line around photos. Yes, every time that I have a photo up, that is Angie’s ( Tired Little Brit Girl) HTML.

For a person with so many and such vast lacunae of knowledge of the practical sort ( although I’m a whiz at the Early Church Fathers), the kind of things that gets one through day to day life, I have been blessed with the luck of bumping into the right people at the right time. Last night, The Father and I went out for dinner with another couple, the woman being a member of my beloved baby- board. Over an extensive rijstafel, I discovered that as a teenager, she had worked at a stable which focused on re- training horses with hang- ups. And she now lives right across the street from a store filled with doo- dads for horses.

Now, is that luck or not ?

Vet’s report pending, it seems that we now own a horse.

Well, The Girl owns a horse.

A pony.

She told me that when she sat on his back, she felt magic. The sellers ( remember : they want to sell this horse, told us that the horse seemed to like The Girl, something about his ears. Uh, ears ?) But she, as she brushed the horse and he licked her and rested his head ? large nose? upon her shoulder, fell in love with the beast. Although she wanted an older pony ( like 8), was afraid of a young horse ( pony), he simply charmed the cooties out of her hair.

So to speak.

We now have a dark brown, New Forest pony, 4.5 years old, shoulder height 144cm, a gelding ( ouch !) named Bennie.

I am almost as excited as The Girl. He seems a very happy and pleasant beast, and I want to keep him that way. Now to find the place to keep him, a place where he will be happy. Or maybe content, or maybe just not become the horse- equivalent of Baby Jane. Or be miserable all of the days left to him.

Oh, Mummy Dearest, you do indeed make a mountain out of a mole hill.

This is an animal being discussed, not a foster child.

An hour ago, The Father and The Girl went to see a man about a horse.

Actually, it is a woman, not a man.

And a pony, not a horse.

But I couldn’t resist .

Later on in the day, I realized that I should have named the earlier post Rituals, not Requiem, for I was overwhelmed by the symbolism and ritual of the mass . I was- in fact- taken back into a world which perhaps existed 30, 40 years ago. Perhaps back to the time when Mr. Jo’s daughter was baptized, when the southern provinces of the Netherlands were very different indeed. When different rules of social conduct existed, rules which everyone was aware of, abides by, understood.

But today I was very aware of the ritual nature of what we were doing, the rules that we were breaking. It was our duty to go to the mass, and we broke the rules not only by going to the grave site, but having the wives there as well ( that is me and Oma. For whatever reason, bringing the women-folk garners extra points.) : we did more than our duty required. The Father and I and The Father’s Mother over- ruled The Father’s father’s notion of what our duty was today by entering the cemetery, pausing in front of Mr. Jo, and walking around that pine casket which contained his little girl.

Oddly enough, in this day and age, everyone heard the message that we were sending out- our enormous respect for Mr. Jo.

Uh, doesn’t this sound like something out of The God Father IV, and isn’t it just so true ? It all still exists, at least here, and I was glad to show Mr. Jo my…respect.

The church was right around the corner from our old house. In fact, if you had stood in our cozy outdoor area , you could probably have lobbed something over into the cemetery which wrapped around the side and back of the church, a surprisingly large cemetery, considering that it is in down- town -13th -largest -city -in -the -Netherlands, with numerous headstones bearing Mr. Jo’s last name.

And while we had walked by the church, in the past, hundreds of times, heard it’s bells ringing day and night, we had never stepped inside it, until today. I found it to be beautiful in a rather exotic way, European way, especially the tolling of the bells. The ritual and symbolism of the Catholic Church were in full force today, complete with Latin hymns ( here I have to add, if I am indeed proved wrong and there are angels, they must speak Latin, not English and certainly not Dutch). Despite the soaring ceiling, the echoing vastness of the church, I could smell the incense in the air. And just because of the soaring ceiling and echoing vastness of the church, I became chilled to the bone very quickly. No heat in that church, but as The Father’s father pointed out, how could one begin to heat a place so cavernous ?

I didn’t know Jo’s daughter and yet when the Priest recalled her baptism by sprinkling drops of water on her casket, I could feel a thread of fire moving towards my eyes. And when I saw Mr.Jo following his daughter’s coffin down the aisle and out of the church, the tears- which made me feel very foolish- came.

The Father’s father wanted us to leave then, but The Father insisted that we go to the grave site, hear the last words, which we did. I passed by Mr.Jo as he stood in front of her coffin and nodded to him. We all walk around the flower covered coffin once and then leave the grave yard.

In the morning, both The Boy and The Girl had asked me separately if I thought that Mr.Jo would cry. I said that I didn’t know, probably.

At lunch I told them that Mr. Jo looked like his heart had been broken.

How does one spend the rest of a day, after a morning so sad ?