Happy families

Keen to return to normal life, I have been feeling energetic enough to be out and about in Brugge for most of the past week. Tuesday for the all-important hair appointment; highlights and trim and yet another attempt to persuade Patrick, the master cutter, not to cut my hair too short. In what I thought was a master stroke, I took along a photograph taken at my first husband’s 80^th party, in 2012, of a large family group, including me with slightly longer hair. I showed him that that was what I really wanted instead of the cut which caused friends and acquaintances to cry last month, ‘Gosh, you have gone short. New hairstyle?’ No, just an over-enthusiastic clipper/kapper. Patrick glanced at the photo and said, ‘With great respect, that hairstyle is old-fashioned.’ No I protested, same hairsyle, my hair is just a little longer. He shrugged, resignedly, and proceeded. I THINK my hair is a little longer than after previous scalpings but not sure. Surely for 108 euros I should get my own way, she sighs pathetically.

 My terrace two days before the harbinger of Spring arrived
 

The weather has been much improved and one afternoon I ventured on to the sunlit terrace to chop down or uproot dead stuff, sweep the leaves and dead twigs, and generally begin what felt like a real move towards Spring. En route home today I bought some lovely twigs with nascent blossom buds on, from the marvellous flower shop on Wapenmakerstraat nearby. The round bursting buds are pregnant with promise and bring the message that Spring cometh. One only needs the combination of pale sunshine and buds-about-to-burst to initiate a kind of Spring fever.

 Three days after the snow, taken during a sunny wander
around the canals.

 

Twice this week, en route home, I have been spontaneously invited in for a coffee. That's in addition to two other arranged meetings in coffee houses and a tea party at a friend's house. Definitely, all this convivial lubrication signifies the approach of Spring!

Thursday, passing a marvellous shop crammed with an Aladdin’s cave of discarded saints, Jesus statues, putti, old books, etc which I love, its owner, whom I now know, popped out and we chatted. He showed me a photograph of his estranged father, now displayed in the window in honour of his demise a few days before. Almost immediately he began to recount an amazing and long story of his fractured family, mostly re-told in its length, over a coffee nearby. It reminded me of the opening of Anna Karenina: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Unhappy families may be individually woebegone but the unhappiness is always grounded in human relationships and the betrayals and malign behaviour which emerge from dysfunctionality. I thought of a young man, a talented immigrant working in the hair salon where I go, who had formerly spoken warmly of the need to be close to family, this week waxing quite angrily about his family not appreciating him, or supporting him, only wanting him to send money home. ‘I’m going to live for myself,’ he fumed. And the girl who comes to fix my feet every so often rhapsodising about her second husband and their new young son, and her two other much-loved children. Family first in all sorts of ways, a universal unit, universally important to the healthy development of children and the continuing well-being of adult members. I moved away from my family in old age, confidently assuming that their love and support would still be there, wherever I chose to wander.

Saturday evening to the gorgeous Opera House in Gent, a centre for music lovers and aesthetes alike in its slightly-faded, extravagant, multi-tiered auditorium and the opulent glass and chandeliers in the bar and sitting areas. It is a space confident in its place and with assured pretensions to be a serious focus for musical art. It is a pleasure to go there, none more so than to see and hear the Symfonisch Orkest Opera Vlanderen. I know little about Gustav Mahler and have never heard any of his liederen performed; last evening they were from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the long first half of the concert consisted of all his songs from that work performed by soprano, Barbara Senator, and bass baritone, Josef Wagner. I was enchanted with the richness and variety of the music and the art of the soloists. The second half was a tumultuous Symfonie No. 2 in D, opus 73 by Brahms, both challenging and passionate. A great evening.

 Opera House, Gent