Somehow I feel like a Joni Mitchell song

... and the seasons they go round and round ...

Yesterday was Christopher’s 17th birthday. Yes, this guy:



... and the painted ponies go up and down ...


Somehow, 17 is beginning to sound alarmingly grown up.

When he was little, he used to need me to organize birthday parties for him in the garden, provide entertainment for the mini-machos from kindergarten that I could dangle by their ankles if they got too rambunctious.

... we’re captive on the carousel of time ..

But he doesn’t need me now. His friends helped him organize a party in a cafe in town, and his parents weren’t even actually invited. Peter and I weren’t sure whether we should drop by or not, since we didn’t want to appear to be checking up on him, so we went to a different cafe for a drink around midnight. The lovely waitress there (who was also invited to Christopher’s party after work) told us that although parents aren’t generally welcome in situations like, this rule doesn’t apply to “cool parents” – and she assured us that we definitely qualify as “cool parents”. When I mentioned it to Christopher this afternoon, he beamed at me and agreed and said he was glad we came by. While it is naturally quite gratifying to be considered “cool parents”, Peter and I are still a bit mystified about what that means or how we qualify.

In any case, I was glad we stopped by yesterday evening. It was good to walk into a room with such a positive atmosphere and find our son surrounded by such good people. If he doesn’t need me now, I’m glad he has good friends.

... we can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came ...

But I look forward to having a drink with Christopher some time later this week and hearing all about the party from him. He is still one of my favorite people to talk to.

This Week

I need to get rid of this stupid bug that seems to have taken up residence in my sinuses now, because there are a number of exciting things coming up this week that I want to enjoy.

First of all, it appears that we may have to see about renting a bus or something to transport a substantial number of people to Salzburg Friday evening. Of all the films entered in the competition Instant36 by about 70 film teams from Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, 25 have been selected to be screened on Friday in Salzburg, where a jury and the audience will select a winning film. One of these 25 films is by the – according to rumor – youngest entrant: Patrick J. Derieg. There were some 20 people involved in making this film, and a number of other friends and supporters would like to be there too, but we can only fit five in our car. Even if Paddy’s film doesn’t win a prize, to make it into the final round like this is an impressive achievement – this is something to celebrate!

On Sunday we will start celebrating Christopher’s 17th birthday a day early at the Sunday film brunch. Will he pass French, if we keep watching French films? Since Monday is a public holiday and Tuesday is still a school holiday, Christopher plans to celebrate with his friends at a cafe Monday evening. He said there won’t be too many people there – only about 30.

In June Paddy leaves for Bangkok for three weeks, during one of which Peter will be in Boston for the Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition, leaving just Christopher and me at home. I think one of us may have to learn how to cook.

Last Week

Just a day and a week ago at about this time, Peter and I were eating sandwiches in Central Park in New York on a lovely spring day. It was a short visit to New York, but it felt like a luxurious holiday. We had a comfortable hotel room, enjoyed nice meals with nice people, wandered around, saw “A Chorus Line” on Broadway, spent lots of money and wandered around a bit more. For the flight home, our seats were upgraded to business class – I had no idea that seats on an airplane could actually even be that comfortable.

The boys apparently got along fine without us while we were gone. The place looked quite respectable when we got back, although Paddy complained that it took forever to get the laundry washed one load at a time. I did question the number of empty beer bottles that had collected, but Christopher named all the friends who had come by and it seemed a reasonable distribution.

I hadn’t been able to finish all my work on time before we left, so I was anticipating getting straight back to it and sending off several translations as quickly as possible and catching up with impending deadlines. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite work out that way. Somehow I must have picked up some kind of an unpleasant bug along the way and ended up in bed with a fever and feeling absolutely miserable by Wednesday evening. Since Thursday was a holiday and few people were working on Friday, at least I didn’t have the feeling that I was missing a lot – at least there wasn’t more work still coming in. I just can’t afford to take a whole week off work, though, so by the weekend I thought I was feeling well enough to cope again. Of course it was too soon, of course I’m still not feeling well, but life goes on, and my three men have been very, very good to me.

Budding filmmakers

When I got up this morning, I was a bit surprised to find Paddy and Sascha wide awake and obviously ready for action. Somehow they ended up signing up to take part in a competition that involves making a short film within 36 hours on a certain theme, and they were just waiting to be given their theme. That was a few hours ago. In the meantime an impressive crowd of actors has arrived at our house.

To be precise, there are teenagers EVERYWHERE. Some of them have been equipped with the black clothes that Director Paddy has decreed everyone should wear, others have taken over the kitchen to make tea and coffee and whatever else they can find, others have occupied the balcony and are busy filling up the ashtrays outside. Others are in front of various computers and examining cameras and recording equipment.

As Peter pointed out, for someone who until recently only had exactly one friend (and Vedad, loyal and patient as ever, was one of the first to show up), collecting a crowd of friends this size this quickly is an impressive achievement.

As far as I understand it, this film is somehow to involve having all these people walking along somewhere and eventually sending Sascha into the Danube. I am very curious to see how this is going to work and what kind of a film they may be able to come up with.

In the meantime I will just sit here quietly in a corner trying to stay out of the way until they start filming and everything is quiet again – at least briefly.