The word that I breath is the word that I need
And the song that I sing don't mean anything
Don't you wonder why it's always been this way
[Wonder] by [Jack Savoretti]
I am a recrudescent vision following Sylvia's visit to Copenhagen; a long weekend of enduring laughter that knocked me conscious. I sent her home with my signature on pages and gifts for my loves back home in Portland – more than enough to keep her busy in business and customs for a while. Seeing this country through the eyes of another, watching the span of emotional understanding on Sylvia's face, has turned my angst-tainted mission to uncover my truth into a misty-eyed retrospective. I hope this feeling lingers. I'm in a courtship with wonderful things again – about Denmark, about Daniel. But the heaviness undercurrent continues, like the last time I was here to meet Daniel. Back then, it was a melancholy-colored realization that after two weeks I would have to leave him there, and come home to resume my responsibilities as a struggling single-mother, to take my place in my cubicle again, next to Lily. My sadness today is in my moving on from this place, and giving up. No longer holding onto my love story. Onto Daniel.
Now, alone again in my castle, I settle down to read through the emails sent and received during my first trip to Denmark. Emails from me to everyone, with a CC: to Daniel; from me to Becca, Becca to me; from me to Jake and back. I described how the biggest little city of Århus explodes from the port at Basin 1 of the [Århus Bugt] into a wide-spread expansion, like the sunburst rising beneath the waves into the horizon. That it's a University-aged town, and the youngest and most educated live there. I wrote about Danish cuisine and Danish architecture. I wrote that I hoped to ride a free bike (which I never wound up doing). I wrote these emails to keep my loved-ones updated, but now as I read them I see so much of what I did not say caked in the spaces between the letters.
There is no mention of my sense of a frozen intimacy between everyone – between Daniel and me – in my letters. Not even to Becca, my greatest supporter and confidant. I didn't tell her then that my Viking boyfriend behave dually, both downplaying and celebrating my importance to him. Instead the words I sent are about the sweetness of our love. It wasn't a love that was blind. Rather, it was love made possible by my willingness to be open to altruism. It was a bliss-inducing love, a love [built to fail], but not an innocent love, one in which I was unaware of the knowledge of who I was and who my lover was. It was a leap of faith, of course. A challenge that I accepted then, assuming it was forever.
I had to wait for these precious moments of colored bliss, with their undertone of sadness, which existed throughout my stay with Daniel, seeped into everything we did. Expressions of love came in unexpected busts from my Danish lover. These were moments when I would catch him lost in me, his moonshine eyes the color of eternal space, burning into me. [We're on fire] for that moment, but the flame is snuffed almost as soon as I catch his smoke. Or, suddenly he would be next to me, close enough that I felt his breath on my skin, touching the contours of my cheekbone with his bent index finger, using the lightest pressure. Almost not touching me at all. He left my cells breathless, and the moment would be over the second I smiled.
When night came, I would hold him in my arms, bathe in his skin for hours. I would comfort his regrets, sooth his trembles, be the kindness a man like Daniel needed. We lay like spoons, and I would kiss the base of his neck and mouth the words "I love you" against his skin until we fell asleep. If I wanted to fuck, I would hold him and rake my fingers slowly, repeatedly across his belly, above his cock, until I got what I wanted. We always touched as we slept.
Daniel. Such a handsome devil. With an understated, cool breeze swagger, I could see how women would fall like [dominos] for him. I can see him now in the main room of our apartment, flooded with the cold brightness of an overcast Danish sky dotted with swooping starlings.
Daniel worked every day, but was home by 3pm. On Fridays he would be climbing the stairs towards me by noon. But when he was gone, what did I do? Alone in his apartment, on the third floor of a long narrow strip of housing near [the intersection of Randersvej, Funch Thomsen Gade, Brendstrupvej, and Langelandsgade], I remember contemplating the white walls hung with fragmentary hints of the whole of my lover. There were his things in the shelves, and more of his things on tables. All of this held clues to his past. Who was he? An art lover, a game player, a reader of the sensationalists [Stephen King] and [Dan Brown] and the philosopher Kierkegaard. A man who liked old things of quality, nice new things with fancy names. He also enjoyed the most superficial, sensationalize pop culture being forced on the public at the moment, and to that I secretly groaned and felt superior to him.
Our apartment was cozy with candlelight most nights and low, soft lamps. The main room's wool carpets were covered in wool rugs. The sectional couch was gray and large and good for fucking on. The [kitchen] was minuscule and lacked a working stove, complicating and ultimately foiling my plans to bake something special for Daniel. The noisy bathroom lacked a shower curtain. I believe there was a hall closet, but I had no interest in going in there. And there was a hallway mirror, where I would put on makeup. Daniel liked to watch me put on my black mascara and paint my lips pink or red.
I spent most of my alone-time in Denmark walking and thinking. With a map and the Internet as guide, I also rode the hell out of the transit system. This suited me fine. To get to town I would usually walk between the buildings of Århus University, pass by the hospital, and by a [stretch of park]. This area has a trail that would wind me through a short hiatus into sculpted nature. I loved to stroll through, in pace with whatever my mp3 player was playing. The device was filled with songs which Daniel and I had sent to each other, reminding me that the man I lived with for love had multiple depths. I kept the synergy of our online courtship with my flesh-and-blood courtship with each play of a song exchanged between us as I walked in Daniel's hometown, each tune carrying a message too profound to say aloud.
My strongest memories of the city are the ones with Daniel by my side. We went all over the city together, on buses, on trains, and on foot. I remember his long stride, and I remember my ankles arched in my high-heeled boots, and our feet touching thousands of places throughout the city of Århus. How I loved the stares of strangers then, my arm in his or his hand in mine. I found such pleasure standing together as lovers, moving into my role as Daniel's partner, with [someone like me]. Just like I always dreamed.
We adopted domesticity quickly, however I recall I admonished Daniel for not wanting me to do the dishes all the time. "While I am in Denmark," I said, "this is my home. We live together here. You work, I do not. So, I will do the dishes and you will stop talking about it." He replied, "I see your point." And moved onto arguing that I should not have to do the laundry. We did our food shopping at a handful of small neighborhood grocery stores, or at [Storcenter Nord], a place that felt like an indoor American mall. At Storcenter Nord, one could buy a laptop, a new outfit, and pay your cable bill. This is the place Daniel would go to pick up packages I sent him. It was there that he retrieved the fresh rosemary I once sent him that I grew in my garden.
After dark, my love and I went on dates out on the town. Once we went to a gaming cafe, where Daniel crushed me in a WWII sniper game, and I was a poor loser. Once we enjoyed the ambiance at a fancy Italian restaurant, located just around the corner from a sex club. I had wild boar, and asked Daniel, more than once, how I could be sure the boar was actually wild? Once he took me to an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet – we loved buffets – and Daniel and I tried at first to out-eat each other, but gave up quickly and held hands on the table, talking for hours.
Lunchtime was a special time for me. For lunch, or frokost, we usually had a smørrebroød, which offered multiple possibilities in open sandwich combination and experimentation. Slices of square rugbrød is smeared with butter or remoulade, and topped with roast beef, tiny shrimps, pickled herring, roast pork, slices of cheese, picked red beets, and many other garnishes. With it we always drank beer or cold [akvavit] or schnapps. We'd put the ingredients to make sandwiches in a pile on a large cutting board, which we'd place on the coffee table in front of us on the couch. Sitting close, sipping alcohol from dainty little glasses and coyly smiling over their gold rims, we'd build and eat small sandwiches. Each time I built another one I attempted a new variation. The base was always the same: little squares of rye bread. From there, my imagination took hold. I wanted to try all the different flavors, stacked in all possible ways. My building-efforts amused Daniel, and when I brought cream cheese to our smørrebroød one day, he was bemused. He tried unsuccessfully to swallow the grin bending the metal of his [robot] facade. I found this hilarious, and so puzzling that he had to be dour in the first place. As he watched me dress my rugbrød, working the white spread over the dark brown surface, coating it painstakingly complete, it was happiness, pure and simple.
At night, if we weren't out in the very cold wind walking the strøget or on a date, we were enjoying dinner, or aftensma, at home. This was usually chicken stir fry, pasta, or pizza. With it we had beer or a bottle of wine, perhaps [Médoc]. We prepared our meals together, with me as food prep-per and Daniel as chef. During the day I would shop for what I wanted Daniel to make for me that night. Daniel cooked for me often, and he taught me how to make a proper stir fry with coconut milk and a decent pot of coffee. I loved that he wanted to teach me things.
At home we watched television or surf the Internet together. We watched a lot of Top Gear, which I enjoyed, a political debate – in Danish – that fascinated me, and several B- movies. One of these movies started a ridiculous thread of arguments, which today I can't remember the details of, only that it had to do with [The Two Coreys]. I remember that in the end I won the argument, and that Daniel pretended not to know what I was talking about when I proved I was right to him, in order to deny me the honor of gloating.
Daniel and I settled into a routine of couplehood just in time for me to meet his kids, who were staying two nights. And, Daniel warned me, he would not have sex with me with the kids in the apartment. Yes, we would sleep together, but no fucking. I laughed at him, and the look he gave me told me he was serious. Normally the kids would sleep in his bed when they stayed over, and he would take the couch. This time, the kids would take the couch. Without fighting. I remember the instant message conversation about this arrangement, when we were still separated.
"I'm testing something at the moment," he wrote. "This is a very small apartment. I've explained to the kids that they'll have to sleep on the couch when you're here because you'll be sleeping with me."
"Oh? And how was that received?" I asked.
"Ana raised her eyebrows up and down and said, 'Ooooh! Kissy-kissy!"
"Oh, god. They think I'm nuts," I whined, "an intrusion. Bloody Bob Saget!"
"Ana will be fascinated by you. And Clive, he will be polite and secretly impressed, but try very hard not to show it."
Daniel and I headed out Friday afternoon to the [Vestergårdsskolen] to pick up his son Clive and daughter Ana. On the way we went to[Langenæs Bageriet], Daniel's favorite bakery. It was close to where he used to live with his last girlfriend, and close to where his children lived with his ex-wife. Daniel bought sweetbreads made from-scratch and baked in a stone oven. On the sidewalk outside of the bakery is where I see my first baby carriage. It is parked outside the shop door, with a sleeping baby inside it. There was no adult nearby, nobody watching out for the child in the basket. I was worried about that baby, that someone would come and wheel the carriage away. Daniel chuckled at me. "Dane's don't do that kind of thing," he said. "We're a lawful country. There's not a lot of crime in this country, although that is changing as new cultures move in. They bring a different mindset, one which carries an acceptance of everyday violence."
Seeing that social innocence, so different than the part of the world I came from, shifted my notions of Denmark. It brought to a head that I was here to see all the things that were like and unlike what I knew in life. So many things were both similar and foreign, including my Daniel. While the buildings sometimes looked familiar, and I found my features in the faces of these strangers, there was a common, understated Danish attitude altitude which was far different from the openly friendly (to a point) personalities in Portland. While buses and stores and cars drove on the right side of the streets in both America and Denmark, the language was unfamiliar in print and voice, and babies were left alone on the public street, where in trust they sleep.
We hurried to the school and climbed to the clanging echos of slammed lockers, up the massive, gritty steps inside to the second floor. At the top, just to the left, was Daniel's seven-year-old girl with hair so blond it was nearly white. She was standing in a circle of little girls talking to each other. Her back was to us, but her friends noticed her father and I standing there. Especially me. They stared at me, then hid behind their hands whispering. Ana turned and saw me, and saw her father. Her sweet face exploded into a smiling run.
"This is Shelley, Ana. Say hello," said Daniel.
"ello, Shelley," said the girl shyly, exactly as she had in the video Daniel had sent me weeks before. In the movie, which I had brought with me on my mp3 player, she and Clive looked giddy and hammed it up for me, each taking turns saying the phrase as Daniel panned the camera from one face to the other. I watched the video again today; it's still precious.
"It's very nice to meet you, Ana!" I said. She put her hand in Daniel's and looked up at me. Her friends stood packed together at the lockers. I thought briefly that I might mention the gifts I brought for her and her brother, but then remembered that she wouldn't understand. Danish children learn English early in school, but this was her first year. Ana's English was limited to nursery rhymes and the slang she picked up from friends and television. She'd already gotten in trouble for using the word "fuck". And she knew my name.
We all went back down to the school courtyard, where Daniel pointed out a small figure getting larger as it traveled towards us across the adjunct sports field in the color of photosynthesis green. It was Clive, age eleven, a young man wearing a hoodie and a cap holding down sandalwood-colored hair. We said our hellos, too – Clive with a more mature English accent than his sister, but not exactly fluent either. Two very attractive children, who I felt as if I knew already. I did know them. Just like I knew their father – knew Daniel. My definition of the word was changing, however. What I thought of as knowing someone was only part of the picture, part of the story. It was time to get to know them in a way that I couldn't experience fully online. Now, together, we were a family.
At home, after Ana sang me English nursery songs on the way home, after danishes and sweetbreads and red juice from concentrate, I gave the children their gifts from afar. Clive got his crush-able Pendleton cap, in dark gray wool, and Ana got her pink glass bead bracelet from a jewelery maker in [Hood River, Oregon]. The smallest, prettiest bracelet in the store was a little too big for Ana, so she wore it as an anklet.
Daniel disappeared into the kitchen as soon as the gifts were properly, politely acknowledged – Clive with a sweetly fumbled "Thank you, Shelley" and Ana yelping a Danish "Tak!" – and I was left to make use of this opportunity to spend time with the babies of my true love. I lost Clive when he gave me a wave and scooted to the computer to play a game. But Ana wanted to look at me and talk to me. I spoke almost no Danish, but we could speak the Universal Language: animal noises. Ana and I got loudest with our pig snorts, and I got Daniel's exasperated look. And I laughed at him. The night was a success.
As I'm remembering this first encounter with Daniel's children, I stumble across an email which Lily sent from Portland to Denmark around that same time. The email was about my own son, Ryan. In it, Lily tells me that Rod (who was tasked with looking after Ryan and my home in my absence) hasn't been getting Ryan up in the morning in time for school. She's irritated with her friend, a man who moved into my home a month previous to my departure to Scandinavia because he needed a place to stay and I was feeling grateful to Lily for introducing me to Daniel. I had tried on her altruistic lifestyle, had opened my heart to giving and taking chances, and this had brought me to Denmark. I payed back to the fates that connected us by giving a home to Rod, a man who seemed trustworthy enough and – like Daniel – had Lily's blessing.
And I find another record from that time – a transcript of an instant message exchange between myself and Ryan, in which Ryan complains about Rod keeping his cell phone. I remember confirming that Rod was racking up the minutes, that he was calling folks in him home state of Colorado, and confronted him. Rod apologized, and gave Ryan back his phone that night, and in his laid-back way asked if he could sleep in my bed while I was away. Rod was sleeping on the couch – a hide-a-way – but wouldn't sleep on the bed part. He wanted to sleep between my sheets instead.
"Rod," I said. "I don't want you in my bed. The couch has a bed. Use it, please."
"You have to get Ryan up and ready by the time Lily she comes to get him in the morning," I said. "You're making her late for work every day. You can go back to bed after!"
"Look, I understand if you need to make phone calls," I said, "but the cell phone needs to stay with Ryan at all times."
In another email Lily's assures me everything at home is under control. Becca confirms this, saying that everything appears to be fine. "Keep your head in Denmark," they said to my [worrisome heart]. "Follow your bliss!"
So, I let go. I released my troubles into the hands of those I left in charge back home, and sunk into my Daniel's charm.
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The Miracle in July is the work of author Michelle Anderson.
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