Faces

I cycle to the local shopping center in the rain. My elderly next-door neighbor is there, entering the grocery store at the same time. I wave and greet him with a smile. He looks confused, then scared, then embarrassed, and says, “Are you my neighbor? I don’t recognize faces anymore.” “Yes, it’s me,” I say, giving him a handbasket. “It doesn’t matter. I recognize you.” We both laugh a little. When I pass him again in the aisles, I wave exuberantly each time and say, “It’s ME!” We chuckle. I buy vegetables to cook into a soup and berries to lure our kitchen mouse into a trap that calls itself humane.

In the main hall of the shopping center, there’s a brass band and a large crowd of people. Sinterklaas has come to town, and the Black Petes are announcing his arrival by playing rousing music and throwing pepernoten cookies to the kids. My working-class neighborhood stubbornly held on to using blackface through the last several years of the Dutch culture wars, but today all the Petes are Chimney Petes. Their faces are delicately powdered with soot, adapting their appearance to align with the myth of the Black Petes achieving their color by jumping through the chimneys rather than from being Moorish slaves. That seems like progress, I think, squeezing past strollers and parents.

Outside, I see a black teenager approach a Chimney Pete. “Do you think I can join next time?” he asks, “because now I wonder if my skin is too dark.” “No way!” says the Pete, carrying a trombone, “Of course, you can join in.” They both laugh. That’s also progress, I think.

The rain continues to pelt me on the way home, streaking my face, blurring my vision and visage. Since the pandemic, I’ve been more of a recluse. I feel less of a person these days, more of a driving force. I work, I mother, I make soup, I lure mice. I sometimes don’t recognize myself. My legs churn, propelling my bike forward. I glide, like a heat-seeking missile, to the light and warmth I know, because it is still home, for as long as I make it my own. ⚜️