Over the last few days mountains of a brown Christmas trees have been rising next to the wonderful public recycling bins located every few blocks here in Amsterdam. And the festive lights strung up on houseboats have started to come down too. The holiday season is over.
In non-covid years, this would mean the long slog towards spring can begin. As it happens, we are told cafe’s will open soon, a chief downer of our most recent lock up soon to be undone. Hurrah. And Merry, Merry.
Of course nothing about the sun cares what we pandemic-ers do on the ground. The earth will spin. That first shiny day will arrive. Maybe in March. More likely April. Or, as happens sometimes with cosmic injustice, as late as May.
On that day, normally, everyone in Amsterdam explodes into the streets to drink and celebrate and sing their version of “finally.” The grey is over. Interminable night no more.
Roust everyone from inside. Fill the canals with party boats. Line the streets and stuff the parks with those who love beer and revel in snacks. No signal is given, but everyone hears this call. It is a great orange orgasm of a day.
No one here can ever wait. Me neither.
Surely, though, it will be different this year. And for years to come. We may not notice in April. We may drink extra then. But surely celebrations of freedom and light cannot be free of what we now know about loneliness and longing, nor of world-wide failure to acknowledge: “we are in this together.”
How odd that milestone of time now mark themselves by what they will not be again, like the needles of those once green trees, ready to fall off and dulled from purpose.