Kind strangers

This morning, at 6am, I left Zoe with a virtual stranger in a strange house because I had to catch a flight down to Copenhagen to make one of my many job introductory meetings. She hugged me and told me she loves me and then went tiredly into the extra bed for another hour of rest, until the other children in the house would wake up and play and have breakfast with her. All before the stranger would take her and the other children to school at the normal school hour. After the door closed behind me I rushed teary eyed down the dark staircase to catch the express train to the airport. There I had breakfast in the lounge and boarded as one of the last passengers at gate 9, on SK410 to Copenhagen, making my meeting with a couple of minutes to spare.

Exactly two weeks in, we are still getting used to our new lifestyle, Zoe and I, and although I knew there would be hiccups in my meticulously planned schedule, this week was worse than I had imagined, colliding with my most important yearly article deadline today. Because I am still starting my new job, there are a lot of meetings that I need to show my face at, not necessarily to receive essential information, but to show that I'm a team player and that I'm part of this new department. It doesn't help that my head of department has promptly informed me that unless I get this "Zoe situation" solved before Christmas I have to go on part-time. That's right. Unless I stop spending one day a week working from Stockholm, I have to switch to part-time. Where all other academics at all other universities have the opportunity (and often the right) to work from home (or the beach) 1-2 days per week, as long as their duties are being done, I somehow don't. "We have defined working hours here, they are in your contract", she argued and I realized that I had indeed signed such contract but because it is so normal for academics to work flexible hours (most of us work way more than 40 hours, both nights and on weekends, particularly in relation to teaching preparation and deadlines),  I never thought I would be held to it.

So when Zoe's dad texted me Sunday evening that Zoe was sick and could I please pick her up at 1pm Monday instead of from school, I panicked* because I had meetings all day and had arranged to have a babysitter pick her up so I could just fly in around 8pm. When I asked the babysitter if she could pick up Zoe earlier she said she didn't want to get sick and then actually couldn't pick up Zoe at all. I did the only obvious thing, I called in sick to my meetings, got on the first plane possible Monday morning, picked Zoe up and we went home and had movie night with popcorn and hot tea with honey. By the next morning she was actually well enough to go to school on the Tuesday, but I picked her up early.

So why did I drop her off at a stranger's place this morning? Well, sometimes people just pop up in your life, who has empathy and understanding, and know that you would do the exact same thing for them. Since the babysitter was now out of the picture (I had asked her to come over to our place at 6am to take Zoe to school, long time ago, so I could catch my plane), I voiced my panic to another set of single moms in my social network. One of them invited Zoe and me over for dinner Tuesday night; Zoe and her two girls got along brilliantly (they all speak English) and she offered to take Zoe to school Wednesday. So of course she is not a stranger, it turned out that we had our basic degree in common, had both lived in Britain, and we bonded immediately over our lives combining careers and motherhood. Zoe was completely at ease being left there and as the pictures that kept tricking in on my phone showed, they had a great morning playing their hearts out with legos. Oh, and of course I got myself a new babysitter who is not afraid of looking after a child with a cold.

*The first thing I did was obviously to ask how sick she was and if I could talk to her, wishing I was there to comfort her. It turned out it was just a light cold, but she was coughing enough to not be school-ready

Exchanged

Yesterday I realized that I need to keep a spare mascara in my office. And that, if I push the chair in a certain angle, people can't see me through the glass panel. As long as I sit on the floor.

I don't post many things about my very personal life because when divorced, one's love life turn from fairly public (marriage is a public institution) to messy and sensitive. You don't want to hurt anybody, I certainly don't. So of course I have tried my way through to someone new (and old) but so far failed miserably, partly because I'm in no way over my marriage. Partly because I tend to fall for guys who don't fall for me or think that life with me 'is too messy'. 

But this is not only about love. It's about work. I used to do a lot of research with Zoe's dad and although we didn't actually work well together (he is very dominating) I enjoyed most of our academic conversations (alongside of course all the other conversations). He is one of the smartest people I know and we could talk about our research area without end. We co-published quite a bit but always with one of us (mostly me, he had several other projects with different people) driving the process. When we split, these conversations were one of the things I missed the most and I still do. I have great intellectual conversations with other people but I don't have one person to turn to on a daily basis (btw, this is not uncommon, over the years I have observed my parents: My dad is a professor and he always discusses problems at work and research projects with my mom, and she provides a lot of support). I'm sure he misses me this way too.

But yesterday I realized that he has someone new. Someone has taken my place. In a large research meeting he chose to present a paper that he had just written with his new girlfriend. I'm not good at suppressing feelings so the sight of her name on a slide made me physically sick. I walked out of the room, threw up in the bathroom and sat crying on the floor of my office for an hour. My sweet colleague and friend came to see if I was okay and I managed to pull myself together for teaching in the afternoon. But today I'm bringing an extra mascara to keep in my office drawer. 

Scandinavian, is that a language?

I was running late for a meeting with other senior colleagues from different universities and art schools because the administrator had simply emailed an address for the meeting place and I, in my naivety and foreignness, had just entered the seemingly central address (based on the post code) into my phone 45 minutes before the meeting started. It turned out that the place was on one of those little islands that Stockholm consist of, which was connected through a 20 min walk or a bus leaving every half hour. Obviously everyone knew where this was but not me and I arrived after almost falling on the uncleared paths 10 min after the supposed start. Now Sweden consist of painfully punctual people, punctual to the degree that makes anyone else nauseous because we realize only too late that they all make sure to be in the meeting room 15 minutes before just to have time to take off coats and take out laptops. I therefore entered a circle of people waiting for me (since I was one of the senior people) to start the meeting. My two close colleagues immediately switched to English as I made my way to the remaining chair. "But isn't Louise Danish?" one blond middle aged woman said in Swedish, in a hostile tone and I knew I had lost. My colleague tried to save me by explaining the weird situation but the blond just turned to me and said loudly in Danish "I also speak Danish!". We ended up arguing, me consistently continuing in English, her insisting on speaking Swedish. "I don't speak Danish anymore", I said, trying to make them understand my attitude. "I don't have an academic vocabulary in Danish". I finally gave in and said that of course they could conduct the meeting in Swedish and I would ask if there was something I didn't understand, but I would contribute in English. As it often is with academic settings, it turned out that there were two other non-native Swedish speakers which would complicate the "Scandinavian" meeting; non-natives do not understand other Scandinavian languages than the one they have learned. The languages are simply too far from one another.

The meeting dragged on with no decisions made as all Swedish meetings, with me contributing about 50% of what I would have done in a meeting conducted in English. I hope the others made up for that lack by being comfortable in Swedish. We agreed on another meeting (as is most often the outcome of Swedish meetings) and went for lunch. When I finally left with my colleague and friend, whom I have no communication problems with whatsoever, I turned my eyes together with her in annoyance over what had happened. "I wish I could just lie", I said, "like I do when I'm out. Just saying I'm American".

I hate living in Stockholm. I hate having to explain myself all the time, having to either lie or giving my life story, which most people don't understand anyway. Because most people will always be more comfortable in their *native* language (whatever that actually means). Well, guess what. I'm not. I'm most comfortable in English and I think that since my research world is in English, it is not far-fetched that we speak English, unless every single person in the group has a solid native language in common that they feel more comfortable with. As much as I agree that we should all be able to speak Scandinavian to one another, it does not work in a meeting where you are trying to find common ground and are talking about issues that are *always* talked about in English (i.e. we write academic articles in English). And that whole Scandinavian thing is bullshit anyway, I tried so many times to speak Danish out in shops and Swedes get this look of desperation and switch quickly to English. If I speak accented Swedish, they are very short with me because I'm a nasty foreigner but if I speak English they treat my like if we are all actually in New York. Because all Swedes have traveled to New York and know how friendly Americans are so they want to pay that back. If you are American.

I left that very afternoon for Copenhagen to spend the weekend there. Already as I landed I felt included into society again. I was able to joke with ticket counter people and shop people. Not as well as in New York but at least not as awkward as in Stockholm. No, Scandinavian is not a language.