Away we go

So tomorrow we are taking Mom to Belgium for what will surely be her last trip abroad, her last visit to the land of her birth, and most likely her last trip in an airplane. We are doing this just in time. (That is what I am hoping. We could also be doing it too late, in which case I can anticipate a meltdown at the junction of Rue de Chêne and Rue de L’Étuve, when Mom does not recognize Manneken Pis.) Her short-term memory is shrinking like wool in the dryer; sometimes her retention can be measured in seconds.
In preparation for this trip she has read a book about Belgian castles (lots of pictures, written in 4 languages, at least two she knows well), and has told me that she is surprised to learn that Belgium is full of old castles (22 times.) She praises my cousin Pascale for having given me this book (19 times.) She tells CSB that he will enjoy the flat countryside (11 times). She informs us (countless times) that although she was born in Belgium, she never lived there, as they moved immediately to Egypt after her birth. She has related (4 times) an apocryphal story of her maternal grandmother urinating in soup she was forced to serve to billeted German officers. (Mom has the wrong war.) Also in preparation Mom has had a massage, will have a facial later today, and tomorrow will get a wash and blow dry. I will take more Sudafed. So we are ready to go.

I am looking forward to finally seeing Geel. For years I have read about this unusual town outside of Antwerp, where for hundreds of years the inhabitants have taken in the mentally ill, and cared for them in their homes. The tradition goes back to the (possibly apocryphal) martyrdom of Saint Dymphna in the 7th century. She was the Christian daughter of a pagan Irish king. Her beautiful mother died when Dymphna was young, and her father the king vowed he would never marry again unless he found someone as beautiful as his beloved dead wife. When Dymphna grew to be her mother’s spitting image, her father conceived an “unlawful passion” for his daughter, and she had to flee from her homeland. She went with her confessor, Gerebernus and they ended up in a forest outside Antwerp. That should have been far enough and remote enough, but it wasn’t, and her father discovered refugees in their sanctuary. Again she refused his incestuous overtures, and the king ordered his soldiers to kill both Dymphna and Gerebernus. But the soldiers refused to decapitate the lovely young girl, in the end her father did the deed himself. (Sounds like mental illness to me.) Their martyred bodies were buried by angels, and over the years the place and the relics were imbued with miraculous healing powers. Pilgrims came from all over, and brought along lunatics, epileptics and sleepwalkers to be cured. The tradition continues, and Dymphna is the patron saint of lunatics, sleepwalkers, epileptics, incest victims, those with neurological disorders, princesses, runaways and therapists. We would be remiss not to make the pilgrimage.

The beheading of St Dymphna by Godfried Maes (1649-1700), a member of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke; he was particularly good at ceiling designs.

Meanwhile, I am reading about new tests one can take to learn if one has the ApoE4 gene that indicates a high likelihood of getting Alzheimer’s. Should I get this test? Having an exit strategy is not a bad idea.

Bulgarian holidays & rhino-insertions

My sister just called and, in that faux-innocent tone that any sister recognizes as the sure sign of the younger sister’s looming instance of superior knowledge, she asked me if I knew about St Haralambos the patron saint of beekeepers. I thought about this, hard, because I normally have confidence in my mastery of that particular niche of hagiology. Was she referring to a radical misspelling of Saint Ambrose of Milan, the most commonly cited patron saint of beekeepers? No, she was not. Nor was she referring to Bernard of Clairvaux, Modomnoc, Valentine, Godnait or even Bridget.
So I gave up. I ceded superior knowledge and cried uncle.
With undisguised glee, my sister read aloud the entire article as it appeared in the Portland-Press Herald, datelined from Blagoevgrad. It relates how on this day Orthodox Christian Bulgarians gather to celebrate the feast of St Haralambos, who is the patron of bees and honey, and also known as the “lord of illnesses”, a dubious distinction. The Bulgarian faithful place jars of honey and candles on the floor of their church in the shape of a cross. It is unclear what happens next, but I imagine it is weird and sticky. Why the only American paper to report on this Bulgarian festivity is in Portland Maine is a mystery for another day.
Distraught at being so humiliated in this hagiographic matter, I did some research. And for starters, I would like to point out that only in Bulgaria is he called Haralambos. Nor can I find any documentation of his patronage of bees. He was born in 89 CE in Magnesia, Greece, of which milk he drank. He was martyred 113 years later. In the rest of the world, or the parts of the world where they practice Eastern orthodox Christianity -

This program is interrupted because my daughter has just walked in, agitated.
“Mom, do you have a snot-sucker. Iggy just got a pea up his nose.”
“Not any more. I gave you the snot sucker*.”
“That was NoseFrida the Snotsucker. Don’t you have a plain old snot sucker with a bulb from when we were kids?"
“No. Those rubber bulbs get old and dried out.” All the dried up and old snot sucking bulbs have been thrown out in one of the recent purges. All the current residents of the house can pick their noses and remove their snot without any external suction.
Shrieks drift in from the other room.
“Never mind, he ejected it by himself. I have such a brilliant child.”

-so we can safely return to hagiography: The name is Charalampus. But my sister, who feels proprietary about this particular saint having brought him to attention, thinks Charalampus sounds silly, as contrasted with Haralambos. There is no adequate response to such an assertion.

*It is perhaps worth pointing out that the very same sister who knows so much about Haralambos gave me the marvelous NoseFrida device, which I then gave to my daughter. For obvious reasons.

On running

Sunday morning (blessed extra hour of sleep) my cousin and I swilled quarts of caffeinated beverages and drove from Boston to Hastings, hopped on a metro north train, walked north to Central Park and watched her daughter run (4:31:52, but I'm not bragging) the 40th NYC marathon, along with 40,000 others, including at least 2 men in kilts, several men in drag and women in ballgowns; runners tattoo'd, painted, bedecked and bedazzled and bonneted, lithe Frenchman in matching outfits and berets running side by side; several couples holding hands; women in bikinis and a man in full camouflage carrying a knapsack; Italians, Scandinavians, Africans and South Americans, barefoot runners, and runners in wheelchairs, runners with their causes or beloved’s name emblazoned upon their bodies…. They were one and all fleet of foot, or fleet in some way.
And afterward, having crossed the finish line in glory and then stopped short to say hello to their sore bodies and feel the chill in the air, all over Central Park the runners draped themselves in tin foil space blankets advertising every possible sponsor (Dr. Frog’s Liniments; Atalanta’s Ache-Prevention; Susie’s Steroids and Flubber Emporium…)
Since running is not my strong suit what else could I do but look for a patron saint of running?
And I am dismayed and disheartened to report there is not one. Running water has a patron: St John Nepomucene (Why? Because there are lots of statues of him on bridges?) And runaways have several patron saints: Dymphna, Eulalia of Merida & Alodia.
Petronilla is the patron of travelers in the mountains; she was running away from the man her father wanted her to marry: Flaccus. She heard the name and headed for the hills?
It is hard to believe the sport of running has not appropriated a saint.(There are so many.) On TV we watched Derartu Tulu burst through the finish line; the first thing she did was to cross herself. Since I feel confident she was not enacting my father’s old mantra for leaving the house prepared for all eventualities: Spectacles (forehead), testicles (obvious), wallet (Left shoulder), watch (Right shoulder). So to whom exactly was she praying?

Some mornings start better than others.
This one could have been improved on. I should have been sweetly dreaming of the review in this
Sunday’s Times of Absent a Miracle. Am I really a “talented humorist”? I hope so. But I must quibble: I do indeed have literary pretensions. Boatloads.
Instead, I answered the telephone.
“Put my husband on the phone you pornographic piece of trash.”
This was of course the unfortunate x-wife of CSB. A few things need to be pointed out:
The Caller ID on our phone system is not working, and the above is a powerful example of why Caller ID is a good idea.
CSB has not been her husband for over a decade.
And now I will spend the day wondering why she has added “pornographic” to her nasty epithets for me? Could she have read the book? Even my most carefully crafted sex scenes could hardly be called pornographic (my father is now reading the book for the second time, having forgotten the first, and he is not bothered). But reality is not a big factor here. If she did read the book, I certainly hope she paid for it. Royalties are royalties.

Meanwhile CSB – who was already out in the garden at 6 AM when the call came – returns with some good news. He caught a raccoon in the Havaheart™ trap. A large raccoon. A raccoon that was in our garden eating our precious corn and broccoli - but not the cucumbers - vegetables we did not grow for the benefit of the scavenging raccoon population (or the woodchucks). That’s the good news.
Then the hard part: what to do with a pissed-off raccoon?
You don’t want to know.

But many thanks to our dear friend Ned who borrowed said Havaheart™ and returned it last night, having caught himself a couple of raccoons, presumably relatives, and effected a couple of very clever adjustments that facilitate trapping and dispatching.

There needs to be a patron saint of Caller ID.

My sister, a tenderhearted creature as regards the natural world, wants to know if there is a patron saint of frogs. She has a thing for frogs. One rarely has a conversation with her that does not include a rapturous description of the lusty bullfrogs on their pond. My sister’s rendition of the dulcet tones of mating frogs is almost as good as her loon call.
I am sad to report that neither frogs nor toads have a patron saint to call their own. (There is of course Saint Ulphia who silenced the frogs. See January 31.) My sister is distressed over the fate of the ‘disgusting and destructive” cane toads in Queensland, Australia. These venomous toads were imported from South America in a misguided effort to kill off the beetles harming the sugar cane. But it seems the toads, ugly as they are, cannot jump high enough to kill the beetles. Meanwhile they are killing everything else, including small reptiles, mammals and birds. So this Sunday will be TOAD DAY OUT. (In Australia. Unless you are already there you are unlikely to arrive in time to gather many cane toads.) Contestants are encouraged to bring in as many live toads as possible. Then they will be humanely killed. (Don’t ask.) The organizers recommend wearing gloves when you pick up the toads because they have a tendency to urinate.