Family
Two days before Christmas, I yelled "balls!" to isolation and headed to Danmark, my Moderland, the land my mother left at 17 for New York. Is it so scary to be all alone in a freezing English house on the sea for Christmas? Well, when you grow up looking forward all year to a traditional hyggelig (cozy) Danish Christmas with all its traditions and friendships, the answer is yes.
I still have an old aunt living north of Copenhagen, in a burb called Hillerod. Gitte is 74, an alcoholic, no kids, somewhat of the black sheep of the family. Paying the price now for being a funny but irascible snob throughout her life, she lives alone with her health problems in a senior residence. A stroke, a fall, and a schnapps- and wine-dissolved liver left her close to death at various points over the past few years, but Antabuse, a drug that makes you sick if you drink alcohol, may have saved her life. Attached to the notion of the old Danish royalty, she points to our family's coat of arms at nearby Fredensborg Palace.
After her divorce from the love of her life, Henning, she changed her last name, not to the name she grew up with but to Moth, her mother's maiden name. "Don't you know the name Moth goes back to the 13th century!" she says when I ask her why. For proof, she pulls out a 20-page geneology following the Moths through the centuries. I have visited her in Hillerod twice before, in 2004 and 2006, and each time I am amazed at how sharp and funny she is, given the stroke and the ravages of liquor.
I showed up at the Hillerod church around 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Through the window I could see the minister was in full swing, with his head on the platter of a frilly white collar. It was freezing outside, but I was afraid to interrupt the service. I looked through several windows for my Aunt Gitte, until I seemed to be causing more of a disturbance than if I'd just entered the church. I went in a took a seat next to a little girl near the back. The congregation was singing now. I wanted to be sitting next to my aunt, Gitte, to hear her sing these songs from her youth, to steal glances at her happiness. But this little girl singing and poking her brother in the pew in front of her would have to do.
I don't speak Danish, so there wasn't even a point in trying to mouth the words of the songs. What the hell was I doing wasting my Christmas in the back of the church? I blushed, I sweated, but I pulled my body up and dragged it down the aisle to the front pews and took a seat there, sure that Gitte would be nearby. But I saw her nowhere. The songs ended, the minister apparently said we could go, and finally I spotted my dear old aunt across the aisle a few pews back. She was standing with a cane in one hand and the other grasping the wooden edge of the pew. That was better than when I saw her in the summer of 2006, when she couldn't stand and I rolled her around in a wheelchair.
She was ecstatic to see me, her hand slapping at my shoulder as we hugged. Over the next hour I helped set up a neighboring room for Christmas dinner, while Gitte sat and watched. We slid tables together, draped purple tablecloths over them, poked pine sprigs into candleholders, and in the space of an hour transformed a sterile room into that miracle of coziness captured in the most important Danish word, hyggelig.
There were about 20 people around the table for dinner, mostly old folks with nowhere else to go. I sat between Gitte and the man who had organized the event as an act of goodwill. His wife did the cooking and serving. He described how they'd fallen for each other at age 14 but had to keep their feelings suppressed for three years. They signaled their love for each other by draping the sleeves of their jackets over each other in the coat room. At 17, they finally told their parents. Then he went away for military service and thought she might not be the one for him. Then, on leave in their home town, he saw her in the street and knew instantly she was in fact the one. I could feel Gitte beside me filling with jealousy, like her blood with red wine.
She had asked her doctor if she could drink for the three weeks of the holiday season, and he had said yes. She wasn't a sloppy drunk, though, nor a cranky one. We could still talk and laugh after she'd drunk most of a bottle. For dessert, there was the rice-almond pudding. There were two intact almonds hidden in the pudding, and whoever finds them in their mouths wins a box of chocolates each. Two old men at the far end of the table won. But they hid them until the dessert was finished, which really vexed Gitte. "I hate when people do that," she told me. "If they showed the almond right away, we could stop eating and there would be some pudding left over for tomorrow."
I told her one of the men looked like a professor. "Are you attracted to him?" I asked her.
"Well, I don't know him," she said. But I could see her checking him out after that. I knew she desperately wanted a man. "Not for hanky panky, just someone to talk to about the history book I'm reading, for example," she said.
Gitte sat while the rest of us performed the Danish ritual of walking in circles around a Christmas tree appointed with lit candles. We were supposed to hold hands but since we were in church we were holding hymnals and singing as the organizer played tunes on the piano. I saw the professor sitting quietly across from Gitte, so I went over to introduce them. They spoke two words and it was over. "He has no teeth," she explained later.
We sat on sofas and drank coffee and ate little marzipan cakes. On my left was a 40-year-old Persian man who had lived in Hillerod for 20 years. He told me he was a prophet who had predicted Hurricane Katrina. In fact he had gone to the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen to offer a warning six months before the event. He said next time I visited Gitte I was welcome to stay at his place. (I did a few days later, and he showed me his website, on which he in fact does relate a vision prior to Katrina, except that the prediction was that a tsunami would strike New York.)
My right arm was around Gitte's shoulders. Sometimes she would laugh and curl into me, and I would clutch her like a girlfriend. She slapped her hand down on my thigh and said, "I am so happy you have come to visit your old aunt."
"I am so happy I've come, Gitte," I said. I thought of England and marveled at how such feelings of coldness and warmth were possible in the span of a week.
I still have an old aunt living north of Copenhagen, in a burb called Hillerod. Gitte is 74, an alcoholic, no kids, somewhat of the black sheep of the family. Paying the price now for being a funny but irascible snob throughout her life, she lives alone with her health problems in a senior residence. A stroke, a fall, and a schnapps- and wine-dissolved liver left her close to death at various points over the past few years, but Antabuse, a drug that makes you sick if you drink alcohol, may have saved her life. Attached to the notion of the old Danish royalty, she points to our family's coat of arms at nearby Fredensborg Palace.
After her divorce from the love of her life, Henning, she changed her last name, not to the name she grew up with but to Moth, her mother's maiden name. "Don't you know the name Moth goes back to the 13th century!" she says when I ask her why. For proof, she pulls out a 20-page geneology following the Moths through the centuries. I have visited her in Hillerod twice before, in 2004 and 2006, and each time I am amazed at how sharp and funny she is, given the stroke and the ravages of liquor.
I showed up at the Hillerod church around 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Through the window I could see the minister was in full swing, with his head on the platter of a frilly white collar. It was freezing outside, but I was afraid to interrupt the service. I looked through several windows for my Aunt Gitte, until I seemed to be causing more of a disturbance than if I'd just entered the church. I went in a took a seat next to a little girl near the back. The congregation was singing now. I wanted to be sitting next to my aunt, Gitte, to hear her sing these songs from her youth, to steal glances at her happiness. But this little girl singing and poking her brother in the pew in front of her would have to do.
I don't speak Danish, so there wasn't even a point in trying to mouth the words of the songs. What the hell was I doing wasting my Christmas in the back of the church? I blushed, I sweated, but I pulled my body up and dragged it down the aisle to the front pews and took a seat there, sure that Gitte would be nearby. But I saw her nowhere. The songs ended, the minister apparently said we could go, and finally I spotted my dear old aunt across the aisle a few pews back. She was standing with a cane in one hand and the other grasping the wooden edge of the pew. That was better than when I saw her in the summer of 2006, when she couldn't stand and I rolled her around in a wheelchair.
She was ecstatic to see me, her hand slapping at my shoulder as we hugged. Over the next hour I helped set up a neighboring room for Christmas dinner, while Gitte sat and watched. We slid tables together, draped purple tablecloths over them, poked pine sprigs into candleholders, and in the space of an hour transformed a sterile room into that miracle of coziness captured in the most important Danish word, hyggelig.
There were about 20 people around the table for dinner, mostly old folks with nowhere else to go. I sat between Gitte and the man who had organized the event as an act of goodwill. His wife did the cooking and serving. He described how they'd fallen for each other at age 14 but had to keep their feelings suppressed for three years. They signaled their love for each other by draping the sleeves of their jackets over each other in the coat room. At 17, they finally told their parents. Then he went away for military service and thought she might not be the one for him. Then, on leave in their home town, he saw her in the street and knew instantly she was in fact the one. I could feel Gitte beside me filling with jealousy, like her blood with red wine.
She had asked her doctor if she could drink for the three weeks of the holiday season, and he had said yes. She wasn't a sloppy drunk, though, nor a cranky one. We could still talk and laugh after she'd drunk most of a bottle. For dessert, there was the rice-almond pudding. There were two intact almonds hidden in the pudding, and whoever finds them in their mouths wins a box of chocolates each. Two old men at the far end of the table won. But they hid them until the dessert was finished, which really vexed Gitte. "I hate when people do that," she told me. "If they showed the almond right away, we could stop eating and there would be some pudding left over for tomorrow."
I told her one of the men looked like a professor. "Are you attracted to him?" I asked her.
"Well, I don't know him," she said. But I could see her checking him out after that. I knew she desperately wanted a man. "Not for hanky panky, just someone to talk to about the history book I'm reading, for example," she said.
Gitte sat while the rest of us performed the Danish ritual of walking in circles around a Christmas tree appointed with lit candles. We were supposed to hold hands but since we were in church we were holding hymnals and singing as the organizer played tunes on the piano. I saw the professor sitting quietly across from Gitte, so I went over to introduce them. They spoke two words and it was over. "He has no teeth," she explained later.
We sat on sofas and drank coffee and ate little marzipan cakes. On my left was a 40-year-old Persian man who had lived in Hillerod for 20 years. He told me he was a prophet who had predicted Hurricane Katrina. In fact he had gone to the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen to offer a warning six months before the event. He said next time I visited Gitte I was welcome to stay at his place. (I did a few days later, and he showed me his website, on which he in fact does relate a vision prior to Katrina, except that the prediction was that a tsunami would strike New York.)
My right arm was around Gitte's shoulders. Sometimes she would laugh and curl into me, and I would clutch her like a girlfriend. She slapped her hand down on my thigh and said, "I am so happy you have come to visit your old aunt."
"I am so happy I've come, Gitte," I said. I thought of England and marveled at how such feelings of coldness and warmth were possible in the span of a week.
posted by Thon at 4:29 PM
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