There Is No Spoon

By Barbara Bos

June 27, 2024

I’m not sure if I’m ready for this.

I’ve just sat down in my window seat, glancing outside at the plane’s wing. Beyond that, Santiago de Compostela’s airport is covered in fog.

I should have chosen a better seat. Wings should give you a better perspective, but sometimes they just block your view. The irony of this doesn’t escape me.

I yearn to see the clouds from above. I’ll have a partial view. I’ll take that.

I fumble with my belt and click – it sounds decisive. It makes me feel decisive, I’ve strapped myself in for this ride back to my home country.

Just when the thought has entered my brain that it would be nice if I’d have someone to chat to, my wish is magically granted: an obviously Dutch woman sits down next to me. We smile at each other.

It’s weird, when you’ve lived abroad for so long, how you get tuned into faces, how you instantly recognise those who are from your country of birth, clan-like.

“Jij bent Nederlands,” I say—you’re Dutch—brazenly, not caring how my comment might be met. I remember well how my fellow Dutch abroad used to be—or at least, how I used to be—avoiding other Dutch like the plague.

She smiles at me though. “Ja, dat klopt”—yes, that’s right.

I am not sure how to identify myself anymore. Citizen of the world being too pretentious. Dutch? Well, I left Holland to go live in England in 1997, and I’m firmly stuck in the mindset of that time,- frozen. I ended up living in the UK for ten years which rubbed off on me, although I can’t tell exactly how. After that,  two and a half years in Portugal, and since then, Galicia, Spain.

“You’ve been on holiday?” I say, trying out my mother tongue, live. I do speak Dutch on the phone to my family, but live is a different thing altogether, I haven’t done so for 5 years, the last time I set foot in Holland.

“Yes,” she says, “I’ve just done the Camino de Santiago.”

Her face is beaming, friendly. I can read the adventures she’s had in her eyes.

“You?”

“I live here,” I say, “I’m off to Holland for a weekend to visit my family.”

I think of my own pilgrim’s route, the long one, the one which I’ve been on for 18 years, as that’s how long I’ve lived in Galicia, with all its trials and tribulations. There were signposts along the way though, like the big yellow arrows on the Camino but maybe I’m merely deluded.

I talk too much. I hope she isn’t bored, but I can’t quite stop myself, it’s as if I’m justifying that this journey I’ve been on so far has been the right one, just before I step foot on Dutch soil.

The country I yearned to escape for as long as I can remember.

*

My father is in a special home for people with dementia. We speak on the phone regularly, but I know seeing him in the flesh will be an entirely different experience.

The home is set up like a tiny village, the little houses look enchanting, the architecture lovely, there are flowers everywhere, and it’s impossible to tell who is inmate, visitor, or carer. What is possible, I think to myself, is that I’ve stepped right into a Black Mirror episode. Because it feels just like that. Reality blended and bended to some unseen force.

My dad is doing Zumba, the carers tell us, my sister and I make our way to the area, through paths and past other people. I hear music, and when I tentatively look around the corner, I see him sitting in his wheelchair, his arms in the air, waving along to music.

I stare at him.

He still looks pretty much the same. I ignore the scene he’s in and walk up to him, breaking the circle of people. I don’t care about the audience.

“I haven’t seen him for 5 years,” I explain to the Zumba leader standing next to my dad – a woman whose face I forget immediately. I look at my dad again and I crouch down next to him. I no longer hear the loud music.

“Hey,” I say to him. He recognises me, although there is a clear look of astonishment in his eyes.

“You know who I am?”

“You’re Barbara,” he says, and a grin spreads over his face.

We go outside to have coffee, to the unknown bystander, you’d think this is just another one of those lovely outdoor spaces where you can have a drink which seemed to have sprung up everywhere, like a big courtyard, flowers on the side.

The conversations we have aren’t real conversations; they’re snippets, a bit like his brain is working now probably. He told me this on the phone a while back, how he was trying to listen to someone, and the difficulties he had understanding words, as if he had to weigh each word in his brain. I find it fascinating.

“Moving on, moving on,” he suddenly says; “They always say that, but maybe I just want things to be still.”

He asks me how my work is going. I tell him it’s going ok.

He purses his lips and looks at me tentatively, scrutinising me.

“Are you still writing?” he asks, making a scribbling movement with his right hand, as if holding a pen. There are a few seconds of silence on my part,  I am not sure how to answer, and I wonder if he’s already forgotten his question.

“Well. No. Not really,” I answer, honestly.

His mouth turns into a thin strip, as if hearing something slightly ridiculous, squinting his eyes.

“I know. It’s just..” I hesitate. I could come up with a million excuses.

The rest of the answer is left hanging in the air, because, the fact is, I’ve not written for so long, I’m not even sure where to start anymore.

“Shall I write about you?” I joke. His eyes light up.

*

We’re drinking cappuccino, my sister and I, sitting on rickety chairs on a tiny bridge overlooking one of the old canals of Leiden, where pretty much everything has stayed the same, although the amount of cafes has augmented. I’m thoroughly enjoying myself.

Last night I walked the streets by myself, smiling, as I recognised all the places I used to hang out when I was a student. A few seconds we held hands, the me now, and the previous me, as if I could reach back into the past, but I quickly let go, I didn’t want to scare her off.

I’ve never understood the whole “what would you tell your younger self” stuff. I’ve nothing to say to her, she needs to find out for herself.

My sister goes inside the cafe to pay. I look at the spoon on the saucer of my empty cup.

I think of Aimen, a book character from a manuscript I started 18 years ago.

There is no spoon.

Aimen, a reluctant influencer, had watched the matrix and was inspired by the scene where Keano Reeves is confronted by a little Buddhist boy who is bending spoons with his mind, and when he asks him how he does it, the boy says “there is no spoon,”  The scene basically a metaphor for questioning reality.

Aimen one day started pocketing spoons for fun when he was frequenting cafes, so that he could say “there is no spoon,” to the waiter, (waiters were still waiters and not baristas when I wrote that).  He posted about it online, his many followers ran with the idea and cafes suffered a spoon shortage after that. II think my dad would like that idea, the absurdity of it all.

I pick up the spoon, quickly look around to see if anyone notices it and put it in my bag.

There is no spoon.

**

I visit my dad again that afternoon, before I return to Galicia.

I remind him that I live in Spain. He’d forgotten. “Really? You live in Spain?” he seems delighted upon hearing that.

“Yeah,” I say, smiling.

“What is it like?” he asks.

“It’s gorgeous.”

My dad is an artist. He was baffled when I chose rural life and never understood why.

“Don’t you miss culture, museums?” He asked me many years ago. I could only think of the colors of nature, the shapes, the leaves, the smells. I shook my head.

I ask him if he likes to play the piano, he says yes. There’s a piano in the area where he did Zumba the day before. My sister had sent me a video a while back of him playing the piano.

I push his wheelchair to where the piano is, and open its lid, I manoeuvre the wheelchair closer so he can reach and his fingers find the keys and he starts, tentatively at first, until muscle memory seems to kick in and he plays a rickety style boogie woogie. It’s wonderful hearing him play. My sister takes a picture. I wonder if that will be the last picture of my dad and I.

After quite a while he stops and reaches to close the lid, I do so for him. He says something out loud, which is tricky to translate to English, I guess it would come down to there is no need for me to do this anymore, without expressing regret about the fact that he no longer truly can play the piano.

I understand what he is saying, and admire the beauty and poignancy of this statement.

There is beauty in letting go, rather than trying to desperately cling on to something.

Life is just made up of moments, fragments, I think when I’m on the plane back to my country.

Galicia is my country now.

There is no spoon

**

July 2024

We’re at the Cabo de Udra, a strip of coast near Vigo. We came to fish, my husband and I, but it’s quite hazardous to climb down to the rocks, so instead, we walk.

The view stretches out over the sea towards islands in the distance, the sky the bluest of blues. The magnificent body of water is just too immense to take in.

“It’s like Fisterra here,” I comment, delighted, to my husband while we are walking, “but without tourists.”

I glance to my left, there are massive boulders dispersed over the landscape, having a blue hue, in between the green of the ferns. It is breathtaking, I feel my eyes well up.

We sit down on some rocks admiring the view, while time has stopped.

I don’t miss museums.

**

I’m in the hills behind our village, the ones I’ve claimed as my own 18 years ago. I have music playing on my earpods, Faithless, God is a DJ.

This is my church, my temple, my playground. I use the paths as my catwalk, dance floor, my stage.

God isn’t a DJ, God is the grass, the purple of the heather growing, the view of the mountain in the distance behind which is a monastery where Graham Greene used to hang out.

**

Good Friday, 2025

I ring the carehome.

The way my dad is having to live now, is inhumane, I’ve been told.

I’m wondering what humane means. What inhumane means. I’m wondering about suffering and life and thoughts and feelings and what it means to be human.

“I’ll put you on speaker phone and put him in his room so you can talk in private.” the carer says.

I’m grateful. Last time there was a lot of background noise and he couldn’t keep the phone to his ear.

It takes a while to get started, it’s a bit like communicating through walkie talkie.

And then we connect. I tell him about rescuing tadpoles from a puddle in the hills. That I’m keeping them in a tank, and how fun it is seeing them grow. I’m trying to think of the Dutch word for Tadpoles. My dad can’t come up with it either. I have my laptop in front of me so I type it in.

“Kikkervisjes!”  I say.

“Oh yes!” my dad laughs, “Of course!”

“Stupid English. Frog Fishlets are so much cuter than Tadpoles,”  I say, and we both laugh.

Silence.

I’m asking him what he can see on his desk in his room. He tells me he’s reading, and he reels out the days.

“A Calendar,” I say.

“Yes.”

“Do you have a favorite day?”

Sillence.

He says he has to think about it.

I tell him my favorite day used to be Wednesday because that day my sister and I were allowed to eat sausages and chips and watch Tom and Jerry while he went to his workshop in the evening.  That now I don’t have a favorite day as such. because I organize my work around the weather. He says that is fantastic.

I guess I’m still trying to score points in the parental approval dimension.

I ask him what else he can see in the room.

“A human, a grey one.”

I know the one he’s referring to, it’s a work of art he made and has in his room, a character sitting down with his head in his hands. At the time he had explained it had something to do with Alice in wonderland looking in the mirror.

“What does being human mean?” I prompt him.

Silence.

“I have to think about that,” he says.

“When I was little you told me this story about this Chinese philosopher, who wondered maybe we were butterflies and we’re merely dreaming we’re human.”

“Oh.”

“Wait, I look it up.”

I read out the abbreviated version in English, from Chuang Tzu’s dream.

“Can you translate it in Dutch?”

I do so and read it out.

“Yes,” he says when I’ve finished.

“You used to tell me that when I was little. It’s beautiful.”

“And who is to blame for that?” he asks.

I laugh, because it’s such an accurate expression, which could be interpreted in so many ways.

“I do wonder what being human means.” I say.

Silence.

“I think it’s about being kind. Wondering about all sorts. Admiring.” I offer.

“That’s a wonderful way of describing it.” he replies.

“Well, you taught me that.”

This is taking liberty with the truth.  I think it’s something I discovered on my own path. But him telling about the butterfly dream, that is true.

We say goodbye and we hang up.

I go outside and look inside my tank of tadpoles. They’re motionless, scattered musical notes. I gently tap the side of the tank. They instantly respond, swimming.

And I’m in awe.

There is no spoon.  — Barbara Bos, the managing editor and owner of Women Writers, Women’s Books. Barbara was born in Holland. After finishing University she left for the UK. Since then she has uprooted herself twice more, currently living with her family in a small village in Galicia, North-West Spain. Follow her on X https://x.com/chicaderock https://chicaderock.wordpress.com/  

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing