Original sin?

I wouldn’t have noticed the garland of pink roses beside the redwood coffin that held mother Anne’s corpse, had my Swedish sister-in-law not mentioned it as we were leaving the cemetery. She told me that her own mother had extended her condolences to "our family" by ordering a wreath with the epithet “Goodbye Anne, queen of the family” inscribed on its satin sash.
Later that same day, a couple of friends who had attended the funeral were leafing through the little album of photos that I had prepared for the gathering in my brother's home in San Francisco. The front cover of the album held a photo of mother Anne placing the first roses (which our father had once planted) of the year on his grave, which she knew would one day be her grave too. The back cover showed mother Anne, from a distance, crossing a stone bridge to a tiny islet in the Swedish archipelago. Most of the filler photos depicted mother Anne holding one of her grandchildren. In one photo she and two of her favorite grandsons are viewed from behind, sitting in the sand, gazing over a vast Pacific, into an expanse they all seem to realize is so much bigger than they. At the funeral gathering, my sister-in-law laid several boxes of photos of her own mother - vacationing on Eden Roc - alongside my little album. I looked at a couple of her photos and then politely put them to the side. Who and what had we gathered to remember? I was actually somehow relieved by the blatancy of my sister-in-law's revelation.
Last week, I met my sister-in-law’s mother in Stockholm, where we both live, for the first time in decades. When we spoke of mother Anne, she said “I’ll never forget the deeply haunting, penetrating look your mother gave me when I saw her the last time a month or so before her death. She seemed tired and didn’t want to talk to me.” Was it that four eyes had finally met in the abyss of female rivalry?
“…the women I interviewed spoke readily of competing with mothers, daughters, sisters, coworkers, and friends, many of them also seemed to buy into the myth of female solidarity, lamenting their own isolation from what they saw as a world of camaraderie and support,” writes Shapiro Barash, in her book Tripping the Prom Queen, adding “We can't understand female rivalry without understanding the pressure to conceal it.”

Back to work. Spent the weekend in my communal garden in Stockholm, laying a new stone path to the compost, preparing beds for the spring, cutting back roses, digging up weeds and ivy roots, and cutting grass. The sun was warm, the air balmy, and the sparkling waters of Lake Mälaren dazzling. Thanks M for all your good gardening tips, solid stance, and strong arms.

The root of the rose?

When I brought a bouquet to my old friend Gösta the other day, he asked: "Where is the root of the rose?" Typical Gösta, I thought to myself. We see the patterns of the blossom, the leaves, but the root? At age 98, Gösta remains full of questions. That's why I like to visit him at the assisted living facility in a suburb of Stockholm.
Since he's been reading Bhagavad Gita and Granth Sahib of late, he's particularly curious about Vox Pacis, and the cantata, "A challenge to humanity", which I've been rehearsing intensively these past few weeks. He talks about the challenges of ecumenism and his concern about the Church, for which he is personally so grateful as his own life draws to a close, for its inability to alter its approach to dialogue in the face of globalism. He emhasizes the challenges of "ethics versus loyalty".

Only the week before, I had taken the afternoon off from my regular job to rehearse together with solists and ensembles representing the major religions of the world. With no time for lunch, I grabbed an ice cream cone on the go, and was just finishing it when I caught site of one of the priests in my parish.
I noted that he was examining with delight the front end of a German tourist bus parked in front of the Swedish National Museum. Since his behavior reminded me of that of my brothers, I stepped off to the side to allow myself to be fascinated by his all too familiar boyish fascination. It was a German vehicle, and everything from the license plate, to the grid, tire, and the half-hidden front suspension, appeared of interest. In the process of observing him, I had evidently become an unwanted witness, because when he lifted his sight from the chassis and I could attract his attention long enough to say hello, the otherwise friendly priest became suddenly abrupt, in a hurry, and unable to refrain from a caustic comment about the luxury of my indulgence. I got the hint and moved on.
Ethics versus loyalty?
A couple of days later, one of his colleagues, another priest asked: "Är du fast här nu." ("Are you fixed/solid/attached/stationary here [in the Catholic Church] now?). I couldn't help disclose my dumbfoundedness: "Fixed, solid, attached?", whereupon the priest responded: "Well I haven't seen you here for such a long time and was wondering." It seems that some men become troubled when they're not sure when and where a female is going to turn up. "Such a long time" happened to have been just two weeks, but that seemed like superfluous information.
Loyalty vs. ethics?