Elf on the Shelf

I've been hearing about the trials of having an "Elf on the Shelf" from my sister-in-law's Facebook page, but I really didn't understand what this was about. It seems, however, that this is all the rage here this year. The princesses were telling me excitedly about all the other kids they know with their own elves.

It is a doll, dressed up like an elf. Apparently, he listens to the kids in the house, trying to find out what they want. The kids can talk to him, but not touch him. He flies to Santa's place every night, to tell him what the kids want, and he's in another place the next morning when the kids get up.

A spa day for Rudolph and Barbie

That's the challenge, finding good places to put him. My sister-in-law has been setting up "dates" between their elf, named Rudolph, and some of the assorted Barbie dolls found around the house. The princesses find this scandalous, although as I pointed out, Rudolph didn't actually marry any of them, so he is free to go on a date with a different Barbie every night, if he is so inclined.

Last night Rudolph apparently returned from Santa pretty wasted, so he treated himself to a spa treatment with the Barbie of the night, including real cucumber pieces on their eyes. Everyone had a good laugh about them.

While we were shopping in the morning, the dogs managed to jump up and eat the cucumbers, luckily Rudolph survived. We look forward to seeing what he will be up to tomorrow, when he gets back from Santa again.

I know you!

I was accompanying WiseMan to a Christmas party in his department that one of the postdocs was hosting. The postdoc had also included families and kids that their kids knew from school and kindergarten, so there were quite a lot of kids milling around.

After most of the kids left and we were able to enjoy the punch in relative quiet, the woman sitting next to me stood up to gather up her kids. She stared at me, and then exclaimed "I know you!" I'm used to people kind of knowing me, so I just smiled, as I had no idea who she was.

"You were my advisor for my thesis!" Oh my. I just counted - I have had 145 theses that I have advised over the past 18 years. When she said her name, I recognized the name, but could not remember the topic. But I asked what she was doing, and was very happy to hear that she had a great job at a largish company here in Berlin. And we connected up on a possible project with another professor in my department.

Berlin ist ein Dorf, as they say here, Berlin, this place is a small village. That's one of the things I like about this city.

Why are all these people here?

We had the service of lessons and carols this evening at our church. We normally have about 20-25 people at service, often 3 of them kids. This evening there were about 130 people and a dozen kids, people come for the Christmas carols.

One of our regular kids, Leonie, age 5, grabbed my hand as I was collecting the offering. "Why are all these people here this evening?" She was seriously irritated. I explained quietly that since we had a choir, many people wanted to listen to the choir and sing with us. "But there's no place to sit!" We had many people who had to stand in the back, as all the chairs were taken. "Why don't they come every week?"

Kids are very observant!

No more midnight calls

There's a strange feeling about this evening. It's Sunday night, time to connect with the family night.

For years, my mother wrote a letter to her parents every Sunday evening while watching TV after dinner. When I moved to Germany, I got a Sunday letter every time the German post office was so moved to deliver the letter. Sometimes I got them 3 days later, sometimes 8 days, sometimes 2 weeks later. I tried to get into the habit of writing as well, and rescued a big pile of my letters when we were cleaning out their house in 2004.

As telephones from Germany to the US got cheaper, I couldn't be bothered writing anymore, and would just call. After putting the folks in the home in 2004 I made sure to call every Sunday at midnight (6 pm their time, just after supper). Daddy would pounce on the phone at the first ring.

Every now and then I would forget (being busy with something or other), and he would be so sad that he had missed me. So I tried to call from where ever I was in the world. Skype was wonderful, I got the call out so I only needed Internet to be able to reach him.

I'm glad I tracked him down last week. It had gotten difficult because you had to find out in what hospital he was in that week, and talk a nurse into holding the phone in his room to his ear. But we got it to work last week, and so I had a last, short conversation with him.

This week - deafening silence. I feel the need to talk to someone, manage to find my brother for a short chat. I'll miss the calls, terribly.

Sad Nikolaus

Strange - when I got dressed this morning I somehow couldn't bear to have color on, although it was our grand foundation laying ceremony. Black was the only thing I felt comfortable wearing, with a grey and black coat. Someone remarked that I was all in black and I noted that at least the top button was in the school color.

It was a rough day, for other reasons. I got home, wanted to just sit down and listen to the music, but the phone noted that there was a call on the answering machine. It was my brother. Calling back, I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

Daddy died today. He had a good breakfast, then had trouble breathing. They called the hospice worker, she came and gave him morphine. He fell asleep, and died in his sleep. He didn't get to see Mommy again - that will have to wait.

We're going to bury his ashes on that piece of the farm he refused to sell, to keep the buyer from putting in a street to his housing development. It's next to the house Daddy built with his own hands. I'll fly over and we'll do a service in the village church and the burial between Christmas and New Year's. Let's hope the snow stays away.

Thanks Daddy, despite everything, thanks. And say "Hi" to Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Jean.

Daddy's dying

My brother flew down to see what was up with the parents, the rehab clinic had insisted that he come, and come soon. I've been having trouble reaching him, he's been whisked off to this hospital or that rehab, but in general I've been able to track him down for our weekly call.

He's dying. We've known that for years, no, decades. He spent the longest time trying to drink himself to death, but when we put them in a home in 2004 he perked up, actually got his drinking under control, and enjoyed life! The hardest thing he had to do was put Mommy in the memory care unit. I was in Iceland, and we spoke by mobile phone, it cost me a fortune, but it was important to be speaking with him that night.

I left home at 19, put an ocean between me and my folks, that was the proper distance. I wrote letters every week, and called when I could. I have always been an expert on how to organize cheap transatlantic calls, and have tried out many schemes over the decades. Once it got cheap enough, I would call every Sunday evening. The midnight call (6 pm for them) got to be a very regular habit that I have continued over all the years. The past few years he would pounce on the phone, pick up at the first ring, so I tried to be punctual about calling.

He was always a busy man. When I was very young he was working as an engineer, working on a Master's degree in industrial engineering, and building a house for us with his own muscle power. He was just like his mother and dad, farmers who were in constant motion from the moment they hit the floor in the morning until they said their evening prayers. We moved around from job to job. He used to joke that he had to move when he got a house perfect so there was nothing else for him to do. My best childhood memories are of going to the hardware store with Daddy on a Saturday, and helping him with the weekend project. I still love hardware stores.

He was often away on some building project or other, he built or managed railroad systems. Westinghouse; Union Railroad; P & LE; Washington, D.C. Metro; some strange desk job in Atlanta managing the American Institute of Industrial Engineers where he drank heavily with the heavy-drinking top manager; the "Tijuana Trolly" in San Diego; The San Francisco BART system; car production for subway systems; a number of other jobs after I left, the last for Matra, designing systems for Kuala Lumpur and the driverless people mover in Jacksonville. His heart broke when Jacksonville decided not to continue building the people mover. He made a proposal for Pittsburgh, that didn't get accepted either, and he retired to a life of hard drinking.

They made it over to Europe a few times, especially after there was a grandchild. We were in Berlin in August 89, ventured over the wall into "Commie-Land", visited Sweden. They loved Sweden, you could buy milk with a credit card and no one batted an eye, not like that horrible Germany where they rolled up the sidewalks Saturdays at 1pm and you could starve by Monday morning if you hadn't managed to lay in food for the weekend.

In his younger years he was, like his sister, a lay preacher in the Methodist church. In older years he served in other capacities, often as an usher. He was so proud when I got my lay preacher's license, I taped my sermons on my iPod and sent CDs over to him to listen on his CD player.

He was horribly right-wing, politics was not a topic we could discuss in civil tones, although time and again I would raise an issue and we would fight it out. I remember their first visit to Kiel where we were fighting about the issue of handicapped-accessible public transport. He felt that was a waste of money, I felt that handicapped have the right to be able to use public transport as well. I'll never forget the look on his face when he was faced with a train station in Berlin pushing a baby carriage. "How the hell am I supposed to get down here?" he hollered. "It's not handicapped-accessible, Daddy you put it under your arm and carry it down, or you ask for help!". You could see the wheels whirring in his mind. He finally understood. His next station, in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, was a skater's dream - not a step in the place, only ramps.

He would listen to that horrible Rush Limbaugh every day. On my last visit I would get so angry at the nonsense that Limbaugh would be spouting. But Daddy was adamant - although he now needed Medicare, he was 100% against "socialized medicine". So I talked a lot about the weather as I waded through the piles of bills.

After he had Mommy put in the Memory Care Unit, as they euphemistically call the Alzheimer's ward, he would visit her every day, even after he was confined to a wheelchair. That was something to do! Now he himself lies unmoving, unable to carry on a conversation, unaware of people around him, waiting to die.

WiseMan already lost both his parents - his father in 2006 (Blogposts:  1 - 2 - 3 - 4 ) his mother in 2009 (Blogposts: 1 - 2). Things change when they are gone. You are now the oldest generation. And there is now no one around who played a part in your childhood memories. I find it hard to work today, my mind is flooded with memories, pictures, voices, smells.

Daddy - I hope you find your peace with the world.

Carnage

We went to the local English-language cinema this evening to see Carnage while munching proper salted popcorn. The theater was pretty well filled, but we had good seats, i.e. the tall guy sat down just to the right of me.

Oh my, what a funny play. Ingmar Bergman would be proud of all the shifting alliances, the deep-seated emotions, the allusions to deeper problems. And Christoph Waltz plays the nasty lawyer perfectly. How does he manage to do all of these evil guys without cracking up? Jodie Foster is beautiful in wrinkles and Kate Winslet, well, Kate is just stupefyingly beautiful - and a beast when drunk. John C. Reilly was just like the dad of my best friend when I was little.

What happens? Well, one couple's kid knocks the other couple's kid with a stick and injures him. They are talking it out like civilized people. Not. 

The US-fake-niceness was so hard to bear at times, I facepalmed with my scarf. The barf scene - worthy of a Monty-Python-Award - was, I hope, the reason for all the 2D and 3D artists.

It was a different sort of movie, we laughed a lot - worth seeing!