Stuck in a pickle jar .. and it’s kinda cramped in here!
About
Not What it Used to be
Sitting at a Starbucks in center-city Philadelphia and remembering why I usually avoid Starbucks: this is not a coffee shop! No, this is .. uhm .. a washed-out version of a 1990′s corporate branding exercise. It almost looks like a coffe shop, but it’s just a worn out plastic version. At least the newer stores in the suburbs still have that shiny fake patina. But these older stores just look tired.
Maybe this is how true substance and character reveal themselves: they stand the test of time. So while real coffee shops usually get better and gain more character as they get older, Starbucks stores simply don’t .. they just wear out.
Of course, rather than bitching about this, I could just go somewhere else. And yes, of all the problems in the world, this barely registers on the “do-I-even-care” list. But seen from a different angle, the Starbucks-problem shows how we’ve let mega corporations roll over everything everywhere. Sure, they brought $4-lattes to every corner in every town with at least one intersection. But I’m not sure it was worth it.
One could argue that Starbucks basically only brought fastfood-thinking and the uniformity of McDonald’s to the coffee shop world. And it’s telling that today, when every hole-in-the-wall even in Armpit, USA, claims it serves “lattes”, it’s still difficult to not only get a good cup of coffee, but to be able to enjoy it in peace at a table in a place where they don’t play music so loud that one can’t hear ones own thoughts. Oh, and coffee wasn’t meant to be served in half-gallon paper cups.
Of course, there is a silver lining: just like McDonald’s and the other burger chains didn’t kill “the burger”, Starbucks hasn’t killed coffee (yet) — there are still some great coffee shops around. And as with so many other things, “the good ones” will (hopefully) always survive.
OK, enough with this fake outrage. I’m off to find a “real” coffee shop .. there’s got to be one around here somewhere.
- another post from the side of the road.
Hello World! Part II
This “starting over” is taking longer than expected .. much longer! This is, at least in part, due to an absolutely crazy work schedule and serious writer’s block.
There are so many topics in my head, but none of them seem to get me to the keyboard. In stead of working on new posts, I find myself tweaking theme settings or transferring posts from my old website. It’s really strange. After all, this is a hobby and not work — I should be pouring over new ideas, word-smith for the fun of it, post short musings from my iPhone at every coffee break just because I can.
Nope .. nada .. zilch .. nothing .. not a word, let alone sentence.
Sure, I tweet .. sometimes quite a bit. But tweets are really just appetizers. One can rant across several tweets, but it’s not very coherent. And while the 140 character limit poses some interesting challenges, tweeting is really more akin to shouting to crowd very everybody is already shouting.
The original idea for this site was to write a travel blog of sorts. I have traveled quite throughout the years — both for work and pleasure — and I thought that I would write about my experiences. Of course, a few things happened on the way to travel blog nirvana: first, I realized that I that my travels, while frequent, really weren’t that exciting. Let’s face it, a road warrior’s life racing from city to city to attend meetings in nondescript office parks in anywhere USA is usually not very exciting.
Another thing that happened was life: I got a new job that is almost a polar opposite what I’ve done before. For one, I hardly travel at all and it actually feels great. I still travel a bit, but it’s negligible — at least when compared to previous lives. I also work mostly from home so I don’t even have commuter stories to tell.
Now, writing — for me — is DIY-therapy and in a sense this blog is still about travel: maybe less about traveling from point A to point B and more about my journey through life. The name “Many Miles” refers to both geography and time, and I try to write about what I see on the road and experience in life.
This switch to a new website has had me think quite a bit about what I really want to write about. A new website is almost like a clean slate. Many of my posts on my old website were quite personal. But just as my tweets have changed to take on more political topics, I’m sure, so will my posts.
So, that’s it for now.
PS. I recently read Chris Hedges book “Empire of Illusion” and am now reading his “Death of the Liberal Class.” Both books are great and they definitely have helped me connect a few dots.
Hello world!
Starting over .. again! .. with the blog that is. I’ve decided that I no longer want to self-host my blog. The main reason is that I focus more on writing and spend less time futzing with the site infrastructure. After all, building and maintaining websites is my “day job” and I don’t really feel the need to spend even more hours coding.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I still love digging into some serious code. My “old” site was based on Drupal v6, and, with v7 finally available, it’s due for an upgrade. My alter ego is running a few more Drupal sites, and while those will be upgraded, “many-miles.com” will be migrated.
I looked at several platforms (including Tumblr, Blogger, and Posterous), but decided that a hosted WordPress site would be a better fit for this blog. The comparison wasn’t very scientific, but the main criteria were:
- advanced feature set, without getting in the way of writing
- easily customizable and extensible
- support for comments, something that Tumblr, for example, doesn’t support
- support for iPhone blogging tools, something that most platforms have today
- support for custom URLs, which WordPress offers as a premium service
Again, this is not meant to be a detailed technical side-by-side. Rather it’s a list of criteria that are important to me.
Now, there is one more change to “many-miles.com” .. my posts will focus more on social issues and will be tied more closely (at least in theme) to my tweets. There is a lot going on in our world and I often feel the need to vent/rant.
That’s it for now!
Recipes from my Father
Recipes. A half dozen of them. I can’t believe it. My father actually sat down to write a few recipes for me! Hm .. goulash .. potato dumplings .. meatballs. Simple. Hearty. Good. It feels a bit strange to look at these hand-written pages. His handwriting. His words. Swedish and German. Sometimes mixing languages within a single sentence.
These are the notes from a professional chef. There are hardly any measurements. Only suggestions to add a little of this or that. I remember watching him cook a few times almost 30 years ago. He never followed any recipes — everything was in his head. Sitting here in my apartment, thousands of miles away from him, I’m trying to picture him writing these recipes, perhaps sitting at his kitchen table in his apartment in Stockholm. I wonder what he was thinking? He must have thought that this was a rather strange request.
A while back I had asked my sister to ask my father to write down a few recipes for me. I’m not really sure why I asked. After all, I don’t have any direct contact with him and the last time I saw and spoke with him was in the late 90′s. My sister keeps me up-to-date as to his general well-being. He has been sober for a few months now, which is quite an achievement for a lifetime alcoholic. And while I’m angry that he drank his life away, I have to admit: I’m a little proud that he’s been able give it up. Hopefully this is it.
I will try to make all of these dishes and I will post the results here. I’m not quite sure what the outcome will be .. whether from a culinary or emotional perspective. Will it broaden my cooking skills? Most certainly. Will it bring us closer? Not so sure. But either way, it’ll be a fun little project. And who knows, I may ask him to write a few more recipes for me.
That’s it for now!
UPDATE
- copied from my old website
- minor language/grammar tweaks
Other Lives
Other Lives - click on image to view additional images on Flickr
You could smell the stench as soon as you entered the house. Then, immediately, you saw the filth and chaos. People had lived here until recently, and some of the residents had had pets. A dog had even been left behind for several days until a neighbor was able to let him out.
We had been looking at properties in North Philadelphia when we came across this former boarding house. It was an ordinary 3-story brownstone in a fairly intact city block in a part of town where many buildings are boarded up, burnt out, or torn down often leaving weed strewn empty lots. I had seen a few boarding houses before, but they were all empty. For whatever reason, this house, however, still held some of the belongings of its former residents, and, while walking though the house, I got a glimpse of how life can be when you have little or nothing.
Renting a room in one of these houses means you have a roof over your head, but very little else. You usually share a small bathroom with several other tenants, and only one or two rooms may have a stove and possibly a sink with running water. Other tenants make due with hot plates, jugs with water, and plastic buckets. These houses, usually converted from simple single-family homes, are rented out short-term, room by room, for cash.
In this particular house, each room had a number on the door and makeshift locks — the original locks were long gone. Many windows were broken and taped, some were simply boarded up. Walls and ceilings were full of holes, some patched with newspaper, or left as-is exposing pipes and bricks. There were signs of leaks and water damage, rotten floorboards, and debris everywhere. The makeshift electrical wirings showed the genius of improvisation rather than skill. This house was from another world — a world so far from the one where I live in terms of circumstance, yet so close in terms of geography.
Walking through the house felt a bit like peering into other peoples lives and seeing things they probably wouldn’t want you to see. Some rooms were completely trashed. Some rooms had the belongings in piles. One room had a hot plate and a plastic basket with some pots and pans and cooking utensils. Another room had and old small TV, a VCR, and a stack of old VHS tapes. And in third room there was a Monopoly board game — it seemed so out of place.
All rooms were full of junk, partially broken (but somewhat still functioning) furniture, mattresses, and tattered clothes. All rooms except one: the top floor front bedroom. It was almost empty. There was a small tray with cat litter in one corner, a carpet, a built-in closet, a dresser, and an old chaise-lounge for a bed. On one wall was a small picture of Jesus and a Rosary, and on the dresser was a pamphlet from some church. Everything was old and well-worn, but strangely neat — someone had tried to not live in chaos.
I have traveled to countries like India, and I have seen poverty. But when you see it up close in your own city here in America, then it’s somehow different. How can this even exist here? This is certainly not a new problem in our society, but rather one that doggedly refuses to go away. And while there appear to be a near infinite number of reasons as to why and how we got here, we do not seem able — or maybe not willing — to resolve the problem of poverty.
Sure, the issues around poverty are multifaceted and complex, and I don’t want to trivialize this in any way. But it does seem clear that in our society, poverty is seldom front-page news and therefore also not a high-priority issue. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas we have the annual “homeless stories” on TV with some appropriately sad footage from homeless shelters and soup kitchens. This is little more than “poverty porn.” Wedged between commercials for insane 5-am-can’t-miss-Black-Friday-super-sales and pre-Christmas-last-chance-super-deals, these dramatic (but superficial) poverty-stories are designed to let the media — and us consumers — have a bit of tempered guilt in the busy shopping season. The idea is not to actually have us abandon the malls, but rather to let us feel a level of kindness when we tell ourselves that “yes, we care.”
Yes, I admit it, I don’t have any ready answers either. But I think that changing our priorities would go a long way. For example, we are always ready to spend vast sums on protection against foreign security threats. And yes, it makes perfect sense .. up to a point. I would argue that poverty, be it urban or rural, is much more of a security risk than most imagined (or real) threats from abroad. Poverty and related woes like unemployment, poor education, and insufficient health care are a cancers that are eating away at the framework of our society from the inside.
I often hear how the “poor are just lazy” or “on drugs” and countless other often completely baseless “assertions” as to why the poor are poor, the unemployed are unemployed, and the uninsured are uninsured. These nonsensical statements are then usually followed by something along the lines of “we cannot afford a cradle-to-grave welfare system anyway” or “I’ve worked hard my whole life and have never gotten anything for free,” and so on. We have so many ready excuses for why “nothing can be done” and we seem blind to the fact that no matter how hard we think our lives are or have been, life in poverty is exponentially more difficult.
UPDATES:
- copied from my old website
- minor language/grammar tweaks
Brothers
Two brothers on a nice summer day. Kids. Their whole lives still in front of them — two completely different lives. Only a few years here and there will they even spend in the same country.
This picture is some 40 years old, and while I can’t remember it being taken, I know where it was taken and therefore also roughly when. My brother and I are about 15 months apart, and this picture was taken when we lived with friends in Austria — a whole lifetime ago.
Over the years, I’ve been the one moving from city to city, and country to country, while he has lived pretty much his whole life in Sweden. I’ve lived maybe a total of 14 or so years in Sweden, and almost as many years in boarding school and with relatives in Austria. But even when we both lived in Sweden, most of the time we actually lived in different parts of town, or even in different cities. Then, 20 years ago, I moved to the States and we grew apart even more, both figuratively and literally.
I’m am very proud of my brother. He has been successfully moving forward and upward over the years in a more or less straight line, while my life has been quite a roller coaster. He has a beautiful family and a great career, and, like me, has accomplished most of it with little or no help. And I have to admit: sometimes I’m a bit envious of the rather stable and seemingly uncomplicated life that my brother lives. At the same time, I also know that I would never want to trade places: I could never live his life, and I’m sure he wouldn’t want to live mine. We truly are as different as our lives.
We get along well, but unfortunately we don’t see each other much. In fact, I think we may only have seen each other a half-dozen times or so in 20 years. Even phone conversations have been somewhat sparse during various periods in our lives, and while we talk more often nowadays, we still have a lot of catching up to do.
The reality is that we hardly know each other. We both know our respective friends better than we know each other. I know were he works, but I only have a very vague idea of what he does. I know that he is crazy about hand-built Italian bicycles (don’t ask), but I have no idea what car he drives, or even what his house looks like. I know some of his friends from when we were kids, but I really don’t know if he actually spends time with them. Like me, he has a lifetime of new friends and memories.
We do have some things in common, though, and we never miss an opportunity to poke the other in the eye (figuratively speaking, of course). For example, he still thinks that his taste in music is superior, while I know that he is obviously wrong. He also still blames me for a few childhood “incidents” where I allegedly took advantage of the fact that I am the older sibling, and allegedly locked him out on the balcony until I finished reading all his comic books. Yes, it may have been winter, but all I can say is this: he should have shared them with me .. oh, and by the way, he used to hide all those LEGOs under his pillow .. I needed them for my train! 
Hopefully we’ll be able to spend more time with each other going forward. We usually have a lot of fun together. For example, I’ll never forget our back-packing trip across the Greek Islands during a summer in the early 80′s — sleeping on beaches, playing backgammon in cafes, drinking Ouzo and smoking those cheap, but horrible, cigarettes that smelled and tasted like burnt hair. Sunburn and sand in places where you don’t want it. What a summer!
-martin.
UPDATE:
- copied from my old website
- minor language/grammar tweaks
A Food-Shopping Tour in Philadelphia
The Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia - Click to view more images
Philadelphia is a great city for foodies. Not only is there food everywhere, but there is also all kinds of food from pretty much every region and culture on this planet. More importantly, a lot of it is actually very good. There are top rated restaurants like Le Bec Fin and Parc, and (my personal favorites) Alma de Cuba and Buddakan, which are always safe (although rather expensive) choices. And at the other end of the price spectrum you’ll find the ubiquitous food trucks. It’s obviously a bit more hit-and-miss here, but many of them will surprise you with fast, simple, and really good food.
The spectrum of restaurants, bars, dives, coffee shops, hole-in-the-walls, and food trucks is wide, and includes everything from the real to the wannabes and outright fakes. There is the Italian Market to contrast the tourist-safe watered-down faux-Italian Olive Garden, a whole Chinatown to counter the Americanized Chinese restaurants, and there are real diners and non-touristy Philly Cheesesteak places to save you from the worst of the fast-food corporations. There is no need to visit a Red Lobster, an Applebee’s, or even Starbucks, when it’s so easy find good (and authentic) places to eat and drink in Philadelphia.
OK, but what about finding good places to buy groceries? Now this is a bit more challenging and depends entirely on what you’re looking for and, more importantly, in what part of the city. Quite frankly, on this front, Philly has very little to brag about. Sure, there are humongous supermarkets in the wealthy suburbs, but the city itself has surprisingly little to offer. This is especially true in the poor neighborhoods of North, South, and West Philadelphia, where there are hardly any supermarkets at all. As a side note, it’s interesting to note that these areas are often referred to as “less affluent” .. what a convenient and incredibly misleading euphemism for areas with so much abject poverty. Topics for future blog posts for sure.
But let’s jump back to the topic at hand: shopping for food in the City of Brotherly Love. I like to cook and I cook a lot so, naturally, I spend a fair amount of time shopping for food. And being a city dweller, I prefer walking and using public transportation over driving a car. Here in the Old City section of Philadelphia there are over 100 restaurants, all within just a few city blocks. However, there is no supermarket and there are only a handful of small grocery stores. Of course, that’s not a real problem since there are alternatives within walking distance (one of the benefits of living smack in the middle of the city).
Most of my food shopping is obviously done in or near Old City, but I also spend quite a bit of time in North Philly and shop for food there as well. What’s interesting about buying food in different neighborhoods is that the differences can be so stark — not just in terms of selection, quality, or price, but also in terms of service provided and expected. In many places, Philly changes character from one city block to another and the stores reflect that as well.
I find it most rewarding to shop in Chinatown and at the Reading Terminal Market. In Chinatown there are tons of stores, but I usually go to the two larger ones: one on Arch Street (a two-story store with large glass doors) and another on Race Street (located in the basement with only a small staircase leading down). Both are very different, but both have huge selections. Here you can find pretty much anything that you can imagine, and many things that you cannot.
There are the obligatory fish and lobster tanks, but here you can also find eels, turtles and frogs. There are an incredible number of sauces, vinegars, and pickled anything. And noodles — so many noodles! They come in every taste, shape, and form imaginable. The quality of the food here is great and so are the prices. But note, most signs are in Chinese, so it can be quite an interesting shopping experience. Then again, this is how you find out about things like sweet potato noodles and Green Tea-flavored pumpkin seeds.
The Reading Terminal Market is maybe a block or so from Chinatown, and the food there is fantastic. You can get almost anything any foodie could ever want, and naturally it’s usually packed with customers (and, of course tourists). You can also eat here, and, really .. you could live here. The meats, the fish, the cheeses, the vegetables, the fowl, the bread, the cookies, cakes and chocolates, the coffees and teas, the spices, sauces and marinades — a foodie version of nirvana?!
The nearest supermarket for me is Super Fresh in Society Hill. What a disappointment! It’s expensive, and neither “super” nor “fresh.” The selection of the store attempts to mirror the affluence of the neighborhood it is located in. That means you’ll find a strange mix of high-end products and brand-names, while some of the basic staples and brands appear to be missing. In other words, rather than having a solid base with some high-end products added on top, this store is trying to be something it is not (perhaps a wannabe-Whole-Foods?).
Quite frankly, this store is a rip-off. The quality of the produce is often a joke (especially at these prices), and the their “specials” are often silly. For example, you may have to buy very large Costco-sized containers of something that cannot easily be frozen or stored and therefore most definitely will spoil before you can eat it, or the discount is only a hair below normal price, and so on. The only reason people shop here is because there is nothing else nearby.
Contrast that to Save-A-Lot in North Philly. The selection here is much more narrow, and the ambiance is — shall we say — “plain” (definitely no lobster tanks!). Here you will not find a great selection of Blue Cheese (actually, they have none), nor any fresh seafood (it’s all frozen). No, their selection is much more basic. However, what they do have is in general pretty good. In fact, the produce here is usually much better than at Super Fresh in Society Hill (its socio-economic polar-opposite). And while you pay for the bags and also bag your own groceries, the prices are in return very reasonable.
Save-A-Lot is the only supermarket in this huge neighborhood, and the only alternatives are the so-called corner stores where pretty much everything is behind Plexiglas. This is really a topic for another post, but the lack of options in the poor neighborhoods of Philadelphia — even when it comes to something as basic as food — is mind-boggling .. no, it’s upsetting. This particular Save-A-Lot is fairly new to the neighborhood, and I’m sure that it already has had a huge and very positive impact.
I also shop at Trader Joe’s on Market Street near 21st Street. This is a great store, and well worth a bus-ride. The prices are more reasonable than Super Fresh, and the selection is better. It’s hard to judge whether they have more items, but their selection definitely makes more sense. And, of course, it’s Trader Joe’s, so the staff is great too.
On Pennsylvania Ave near 21st Street there is a Whole Foods store. It does have a great selection, but it’s expensive and way to uppity — not so much the staff, but the customers. It’s located in a yuppie community and many of the customers have the I-am-entitled-and-can-afford-to-shop-here attitude that just rubs me the wrong way. The quality of the food is fairly good, but also very much over-priced.
The small grocery stores and delis in Old City are not much to write home about. Selection is narrow and prices are high, but they may save you in a pinch. Two of the better ones are Sassafras Market on 3rd & Arch Street and the deli on 2nd & Market Street. I wouldn’t recommend doing your weekly food shopping here (unless it is limited to some milk and eggs). But these stores are great for satisfying a late night craving for ice-cream, soda, or when realize you’ve run out of eggs for that late Sunday brunch.
So yes, there is food here in the city, and it’s very good food (if you know where to look). And yes, shopping here is different and often less convenient than shopping at the super-mega-food-emporiums in the suburbs. But, honestly, places like the Reading Terminal Market and Chinatown make it well worth it.
UPDATE:
- copied from my old website
- minor language/grammar tweaks
Cruising Altitude
We’ve reached our cruising altitude. It’s late evening on a Friday before Christmas and I’m finally on my way home from a quick business trip to Jacksonville, FL. The weather forecast is calling for a winter storm in the North East, but the flight is on-time and we have a good tailwind. Who knows? We may even land early in Philadelphia. That would be such a perfect ending to what (with a little luck) will have been the last trip of this year. But .. let’s not jinx it!
From my window seat I can barely make out a few lights on the ground through breaks in the cloud cover. The night sky is pitch black outside. The overhead lights in the cabin have been dimmed. I’m tired and can barely keep my eyes open. Actually, “worn out” is probably more accurate. This has been a very long week closing out a series of long weeks. Come to think of it: it has been a crazy year! So much work. So much travel. So many changes in my life. So much of everything — enough to fill several years.
The year started on a serious down-note: the first holidays without my girls, followed by the final court dates in a long divorce process, a lingering cold and fever that just wouldn’t go away, tons of work, more travel, and more stress. I was completely tapped out financially. All reserves were long gone, and I had no idea how even the near future would shape up. Everyday was full of surprises, but none of them were ever good. I could feel my anxiety levels jump significantly every day when I checked my mail and email, and I had long since stopped answering calls from phone numbers that I didn’t recognize.
With the end of February came the final divorce agreement, but no relief. I felt as if my life had been chopped up into small pieces and thrown away bit by bit. Nothing turned out the way I thought it would be when the divorce process had started an eternity earlier. I now lived in an apartment in Danbury, CT. How I hated this town. How I hated my life in that apartment in that town! My lease would end mid-April and I had decided to move away from Danbury, and away from Connecticut. I chose Philadelphia. The city would be perfect for me. I knew it fairly well as I had lived there before in a previous life, and I had visited the city many times over the years.
March and April were busy months (and admittedly a bit of a blur). I found an apartment smack in the middle of Old City, and with a little help from friends and U-Haul I was able to start a new life in Philadelphia. It felt as if I had hit bottom and things were now finally going to turn around. Of course, there was still lots of work and travel, and I now had to drive 3 hours to Connecticut to see my girls. The visits were not easy, and logistics were just one part of the problem. Then there was the issue with the house in Connecticut: we still had to sell it, and that meant working with an ex who refused to cooperate on even the most trivial tasks.
Spring in the city was great. So much to see. So much to do. I was hell-bent on meeting lots of new people, and after nearly 15 years in suburbia, I was ready for a “life in the city.” I walked everywhere — day and night — all-over Philadelphia. I was full of energy .. actually, I couldn’t really sleep. For years I had worked until the early morning hours, because that was the time when everything was quiet. I had become so conditioned to staying up well after midnight, often past 3am, and the tumultuous time during the divorce had made things even worse. However, that chapter of my life was now behind me. Little by little things had started to settle down, but I still found it difficult to sleep. I have to confess that there were quite a few nights when I ended up drinking a bit. Usually it was just enough to be comfortably numb, but sometimes it was a little more.
May came and went. My finances were (and still are) a complete mess. Events that I had counted on (and even planned for) did not happen, while other things that weren’t supposed to happen, of course, did. On the other hand, the rest of my personal life was slowly coming around. I started to work out several days per week at a nearby gym, ate healthier foods, and walked everywhere. I met (and continue to meet) new friends, both online and (more importantly) in real life. But I still found sleep to quite often be rather elusive.
Visiting my girls in Connecticut became much more difficult. Our house was still unsold, and my ex went out of her way to be difficult and uncompromising whenever she could.
In June I met Denise. We hit it off right away on every level, and, virtually over night, my life changed completely. Our life experiences, points of view, interests, even taste in music was so similar that it felt as if we had known each other forever. Denise showed me a whole new side of Philadelphia — a Philadelphia that’s run-down, poor, and dangerous, but also full of opportunity, hope, and community spirit. Denise is one of the few people I know that can comfortably live in many different worlds: whether it is Zurich, London, New York, or North Philadelphia does not matter. Not only is she true a cosmopolitan, but also a chameleon, effortlessly moving between different worlds and blending in or standing out at will.
We spent the summer visiting art museums and galleries, rummaging through vintage stores, grilling in the backyard of her house in the ‘hood, walking around Old City on warm summer evenings, with her dog in Fairmount Park, and around the neighborhoods in North Philadelphia. It was a great summer, and I could feel that this was the beginning of a new life.
In a parallel universe, however, I still had to deal with my “previous life.” There was a house in Connecticut that needed to be sold, a car that I had to get rid of, an ex that was hell-bent on being as difficult as possible, abysmal finances, and much more. It was frustrating and infuriating.
In early July my ex moved to North Carolina with my girls, and I visited them there for the first time a few weeks later. It was a strange, awkward, and difficult weekend visit. I thought I had come prepared, but this was the first time that I visited them in a place where I had never been before, and I felt like a fish out of the water. Greensboro was a disappointment on so many levels. It’s a small city with very little to do, and the place is essentially closed on weekends.
I’m now visiting my girls every few weeks, and little by little each visit is getting easier and less stressful. There is still not much to do on weekends in Greensboro, but we — my girls and I — are slowly settling into a comfortable routine. We also speak on the phone several times per week between visits, and I send or bring “care packages” and gifts for birthdays and holidays. In short, I’m trying to stay as close to them and involved in their lives as circumstances allow.
Labor Day marked beginning of an incredibly busy travel schedule. I was on the road almost every week, criss-crossing the States and jumping across the big pond to Germany. Meetings after meetings, hotel rooms, conference rooms, airports, delayed flights and missed connections, late nights and early mornings. The fall is basically a blur of events, and it didn’t end until today. Today I’m going home, and there won’t be any travel for several weeks.
I’m sitting here in seat 2A, staring out into the night as we’re zooming towards Philadelphia. It’s close to the end of an incredibly year — and incredible decade! During this decade I won it all, and lost it all, literally! And while there are still a few unresolved issues from my previous life, I’m now well on my way to build a new and better life from scratch. I think I’ve reached cruising altitude.
UPDATE:
- copied from my old website
- minor edits
My Father
I remember the first time I met my father. We met at some small third-rate restaurant in a suburb south of Stockholm where he worked as a cook. It felt strange to finally meet him, especially after all the effort that had gone into finding him. But there he was, right across the table. Up until then I had only seen one or two photographs of him, both taken sometime in the early 1960s, and I remember that I thought he looked old.
We were now trying to catch up with each other, both trying to play our designated roles: he the “father”, and I the “son.” It was very awkward. Fortunately there were a few other guests in the restaurant, so, from time to time, he had to get up and take care of them. We managed to mangle through a bit of smalltalk, and after a short while he went into the kitchen to cook for me — I remember that it was a something called “plankstek.” We were both trying to reconnect. We both wanted to. But how do you reconnect with someone who you don’t know and who you haven’t seen since you were a little kid?
My father’s name is Walter. I call him by his first name since he’s really not much more than an acquaintance to me. He left us when I was about 4 years old, and I never heard from him until I looked him up. Actually, I do have a vague memory of him showing up once when I was 5 or 6 years old. He gave me a small toy tractor (red front loader, if I remember correctly). But, other than that, I have no memories of ever seeing him or talking with him, and neither has my brother.
Today, a whole lifetime later, I’m not entirely sure why I tried to find him in the first place. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe I was trying to find myself. Maybe both. Maybe neither. It doesn’t really matter. I did it, and I’m glad I did. Not so much because of him, but because I also found my other sister. Walter had re-married, and with his new wife he had a daughter who was about 8 years younger than me. My mother had also re-married, and I had another sister on that side as well.
It wasn’t easy to find Walter. He had once been a very successful chef, and had apparently worked all over Europe. However, when I found him, he was a mere shadow of his former self. He was an alcoholic, and he had been drinking a lot for many years. Although, back then he claimed not to drink so much during the week. I found him by asking chefs all over Stockholm. Many knew of him, but nobody seemed to know his latest whereabouts. The pattern was that he’d get a job, but then he’d eventually get fired for drinking too much. But everybody agreed that he was an outstanding chef when he was sober.
When he was sober he was one of those chefs who could make fantastic meals with whatever was available at the moment, even if it was just an onion and a potato. I visited him a few times in his apartment, so I got to see his genius at work in the kitchen. And I remember being impressed even as a teenager — this man could cook! But he would then ruin everything by getting drunk. When I stayed over on weekends, he’d basically start drinking on Friday evening after work, then drink all day Saturday and all day Sunday. He’d wake up in the morning and start the day with whatever liquor was left over from the night before. And when he was drunk, he’d get incredibly emotional and would start to cry.
He would tell me how much he had missed me and my brother over the years, and I remember thinking: “right, that’s why you never called!” I couldn’t help but get angry at him. I was the one that had found him. I was the one who came to him. I was the one trying to rebuild the connection. The least he could do was to not get so damn drunk that he’d pass out.
My brother only saw Walter once or twice all those years ago. But he hasn’t seen Walter since, and it’s very unlikely that he’ll ever see Walter again. Frankly, I don’t blame him. Finding Walter was actually a tremendous disappointment. I really wanted to find my “father”, probably because at that time I didn’t get along at all with my mother and stepfather. Why? Let’s just say that my teenage years were somewhat tumultuous (there’s a whole slew of potential blog posts just on that topic alone). I can blame myself for many things, but not everything was my fault, and I’m pretty sure I paid for it all (and in some ways am probably still paying). Maybe I thought that finding Walter was going to fix things. Maybe I was hoping find strength, courage, whatever .. I really don’t know. All I remember now is feeling disappointed.
I only visited Walter a few times that year. Every weekend was the same — he was drunk, and so was his wife — so I simply stopped going there. The years went on and we had no contact at all, although I did have sporadic contact with my sister. Eventually I moved to the States and started my own family. When my oldest daughter was about two years old, I went to Sweden with her, and I decided to meet Walter again. I wanted him to meet my daughter, and I guess to some extent I also wanted him to see what had become of me.
We met again in some third-rate restaurant where he worked occasionally. The idea was to meet in a public place so that we could leave quickly and easily, should I decide to do so. Obviously, my expectations were very low, and Walter didn’t fail to disappoint. He looked so old and tired, and I actually felt a little sorry for him. Walter was so happy when he met his granddaughter, but I decided then that I would never see him again while he was still drinking.
The years went on. My life changed a lot, as did Walter’s. His wife died of liver failure, and my sister told me that this absolutely broke his heart and spirit. He kept drinking, and as I understand it, the drinking got even worse. In the meantime, my life had turned into real roller coaster. My (now) ex and I had another daughter, but our marriage had become very difficult. Constant fights and constant threats of divorce, and it kept getting progressively worse. Sure, as with any roller coaster, there were highs and lows, but in our case the “highs” got lower and lower, while each “low” felt like a bottomless pit.
With each low, I got one step closer to walking away. But I couldn’t. I absolutely did not want to become my “father.” I was not going to walk out on my children. So I stuck it out, fight after fight, year after year. In hindsight, this was probably not a good decision. I thought that if I stayed, that we — my ex and I — could somehow fake it and maintain the family spirit for our daughters. I was wrong. The girls became witness to more and more of our fights, and each time the tension between my ex and myself lingered for weeks. The situation became impossible, and in the end I had to leave.
I’m not sure what I would say to Walter if I saw him today. Through my sister I’ve heard that he has been sober for many weeks now. I don’t know what got him to stop, or whether it will last. But apparently his last check-up showed that he was very sick. Maybe he realized his mortality this time. Who knows? I don’t even know what I feel. On the one hand I don’t care what he does or doesn’t do, on the other hand I’m so damn angry. But how can I be angry if I don’t care? And I also feel a little bit sorry for him, even though I know that in his case everything is self-inflicted.
I know one thing, though, I will never abandon my daughters the way Walter abandoned us. Never! Sure, staying in contact with them isn’t easy, especially since they live 450 miles away. But I visit as often as my finances allow, I send them surprise packages with small gifts from time to time, and most importantly, I make it a point to call them a few times every week. I want them to know that I will always be there for them, and that I love them. I left my ex, not my children.
Walter, all you really had to do, was to call every once in a while. I didn’t learn much from you, but I think I’m a better father because I worked so hard not to be like you.
-martin.
UPDATE:
- copied from my old website
- minor language/grammar tweaks
