Cleaving

In addition to undigging from the trip, the kids are slowly returning to school. Just as they came home on different days, they’re returning on different days, so I need to go through the departure twice. Two times of having my stomach in knots for days. Two times of feeling so empty, blinking as they disappear around the bend.

When we were in Amsterdam, we went to the Rijksmuseum. They’ve gathered their greatest hits in a single gallery. It’s a long hall with open pods on either side of the walkway, and you crisscross the room, going from one pod to another, until you end at Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.

We were heading for The Night Watch, but I noticed a different painting in the third pod as I crossed from one side of the room to the other. It was an enormous bird at the edge of a pod in the middle of the room. I tried to go back to concentrating on the art in front of me, but I finally gave up and headed to what I wanted to see because the ChickieNob always reminds us that you should spend time with the art that moves you vs. the art that you’re told you should like.

So I went to spend time with The Threatened Swan by Jan Asselijn.

It’s over five feet across and over four feet high, painted around 1650. It’s hard to see, but there is a dog in the lower left corner, and the swan is protecting her eggs in the nest. The dog looks playful — maybe a Portuguese Water Dog? — but the swan is clearly in mid-scream, sensing danger even if everyone else would look at the situation and say, “What is the problem? The dog is curious. He’s in the water. Not doing anything wrong. Why are you freaking out?”

I felt so seen. So incredibly seen.

I couldn’t leave the painting, and I doubled back when I was done with The Night Watch, returned in the middle of another room, and returned a third time when we had to leave the museum. We bought a postcard of it and a magnet, though neither invoked the sensation I felt standing in front of the canvas.

The next day, we had a little time before our tickets at the Stedelijk Museum, and Josh suggested we swing by the swan as a consolation prize for skipping the tulip museum. But when we got to the door, even though we could book tickets online, they wouldn’t let us in because our iAmsterdam card only worked once per museum.

I think the woman at the door sensed how crushed I was when I said I wanted to see one painting, and she whispered, “Just go. Be quick. See your painting.” As I walked past her, thanking her repeatedly, I told her the painting was the swan, and she beamed with approval. “Go up; it’s in the gallery of honour. Enjoy it.”

Being in front of it feels like the release I get when the twins return home, and we cleave together once more as a family. Cleaving is such a funny word, meaning both to separate and come together. It’s what we’ve done all year, what we’ll have to do for the rest of our lives.

I was worried about traveling again. Would it be different now that they’ve been away? Would we continue to mesh well? It was the same but better. None of my fears came true, but we could divide and conquer in ways that we wouldn’t have tried when they were little. I had two uninterrupted weeks of looking at art, eating waffles, and hyperventilating my way to the top of towers.

My heart hurts knowing we’re home and so far away from the picture of the swan. Even with an enormous poster that Josh got me on that second visit, it’s not the same as being in front of the real thing. Knowing it’s in another country makes my heart hurt in the same way of knowing how good I had it for eighteen years when the twins were with me every day but they now live far away. I am happy knowing they’re in the world, and we’ll be together again in the future. But it hurts to cleave apart at the end of each break.

It makes my swan heart scream at playful, seemingly undangerous time. I know its true nature.