Generally, word associations seem difficult to replace. However, there may be some exceptional events that might create new ones that eclipse old associations. For example, most Cricket enthusiasts may have associated the term "twenty-twenty" with the game's shortest format. And then the year 2020 happened!
Last night, the Netherlands embarked on its second total lockdown which will last 5-weeks. Whilst I was sanguine about reduced carbon emissions during the lockdown in spring, I find the prospects of Gaia staying home through this winter closure exsanguinating. Five days from winter solstice, scarce sunlight and the plummeting mercury afford few opportunities to play outside with other children. How are the two of us to stimulate her incredibly curious sponge of a mind for such a long time? After all, 5 weeks for her is the equivalent of just over 21 months for a 40-year old!
After putting Gaia to bed last night, I left for my evening walk. It was an utterly unusual night, at least for the Netherlands. It is generally cloudy and often windy (no wonder the Dutch were early adopters of windmills) here. Last night, however, there wasn't a trace of cloud, nor so much as a breeze. Preoccupied with the consequences of lockdown for Gaia, however, my head was down as I walked in search for inspiration, not noticing anything out of the ordinary. It was only when I started walking next to a canal in the pitch dark did I notice the twinkling lights reflecting off it. No sooner than I looked up did the stars take my breath away.
It was new moon night, and yet it seemed that the celestial bodies had pronounced: "Let there be light"! In that instant I forgot about my anguish about lockdown, and ideas that had earlier seemed difficult started seeming more feasible!
Only a couple of days ago, Joline was mentioning about Jupiter and Saturn being closest to each other from Earth's vantage point in December 2020. Whilst Mars was easy to spot lording over the southwest of the Leiden sky (despite a bit more light pollution in that direction), I was unable to spot the other Jupiter and Saturn.
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I remember clearly the emotions I experienced when Joline and I discovered that we were going to be parents. The need to protect what was yet the abstract idea of our child against certain experiences to ensure that she has a better life than mine was visceral.
School in Bombay was perhaps the worst time of my life. A single, ill-trained teacher managing as many as 85 students in one classroom; in a culture subscribing to humiliation and unfettered corporal punishment as a mode of disciplining recalcitrant boys like me could not have yielded happy memories. Those memories fuelled the thought that we ought to homeschool our child.
I had already begun fantasizing about using the Socratic method to help her - who was but an embryo - find answers to questions herself. I was daydreaming about travelling with her to the Bastille and Jallianwala Bagh whilst studying the French Revolution and the Indian freedom struggle respectively; or to the Savanna or Tundra whilst studying geography. In my mind, this couldn't be achieved by sending her to "normal" school, but in truth I was just afraid of my memories of school.
Joline and I have managed to realise some of those daydreams about helping Gaia find her own answers. But none of those ideas excludes her from going to school in the Netherlands, which is nothing like the one I went to in India of the 1980s and 1990s.
One of my daydreamed ideas that has materialised, but only partially, is that Gaia loves asking questions about, and discovering, the natural world. She loves asking questions about wildlife. Not only can she say the words, but she has also digested concepts such as metamorphosis and hibernation. She also loves heavenly bodies, and knows vaguely some elements of the Solar system. I had always dreamed of having an amateur telescope at her disposal to discover nebulae, planets and their rings. And that we do not have.
Failing to spot Saturn and Jupiter last night, I rushed back home to check what Joline was talking about. According to National Geographic, those two, brightest planets of the solar system will engage in a celestial dance on winter solstice for the first time in 397 years!
I am trying to find out if we can rent a cottage in Schiermonnikoog, the smallest of the inhabited Wadden islands of the Netherlands for winter solstice to witness the event. Schiermonnikoog has the darkest skies of the country from where one can spot 3000 stars with the naked eye, provided there is no cloud cover, of course! Perhaps it is not possible to acquire the right telescope before 21 December 2020, but I shall try nonetheless. Hopefully the celestial powers will say "let there be light" again; so we shall go to a dark place to see it!
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Today was day 1 of lockdown, and it went swimmingly. Gaia ate all her meals well, and had a lot of fun solving puzzles and reading about african wildlife in her new TeePee tent. Luckily, it was a sunny afternoon, and she was able to play with some other children in the neighbourhood park - wearing her brand new pair of sneakers for the first time. But we have 34 more days to go!
Homeschooling may have been an irrational idea back when Gaia was conceived, but it is the only way out now. Serendipitously, I am unemployed at the moment, and can devote the time. One does wonder how working parents are going to cope though!
