Swedish Fish (2016)

Last year we bucked tradition and sent you a Thanksgiving card to break out of the holiday clutter. Exit polls, however, reveal unintended consequences. Some came to view us as uninvited chaos incarnate unleashed on an otherwise familiar and comforting tradition. In others we conjured savvy, manipulative members of the liberal media seeking to sow feelings of inadequacy among others. In unrelated news, we can buy a smaller mailbox.

It’s Coop at the wheel this time, with a new strategy: (a) raise the number of cards sent to 400 to trigger the card reciprocity reflex, and (b) schedule their arrival for the actual holiday season. Mom, a fan of both efficiency and child labor bought into the timing strategy and,“hired” Téa Sloane to stuff, stamp and address the cards. Friends too. Playdate ⇒ Workdate. With panache, Téa decided to seal them too, without this letter. This is why lucky analog recipients found our envelope sealed, unsealed, stuffed, re-sealed, and taped shut (shades of Groundhog Day/Sweetwater). Fun x 400!

We continued what dad calls our Family Disruption Tour by moving to Stockholm for 2 months (Okay, 5 weeks. Close enough. Back off). You might be thinking, “Huh! All 5 of you are blonde, at least aspirationally. And you chose Sweden. So brave!” To which I say: thank you. Diversifying our cultural experience was a goal, but so too was learning a new language and making new friends. Unfortunately, (a) Swedes speak better English than we do. They also speak Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, and German. All of them¹. Also, (b) our arrival on July 1st is coincidentally the same week that all Swedes go to the archipelago for the summer.  All of them. In hindsight, we should have seen this coming. New Yorkers have the Hamptons, Norwegians have the Fjords and Swedes have the archipelago. So no people and thus no speaking Swedish, but on the upside, no lines at the palace.

Before we began our bold cross-cultural experiment in Sverige, we dropped in on Norway where mom’s totally plausible goal was to spend the 4 days arranging marriages for all of us. So we met her friends, Gry and Carl Christian Christiansen (real names) who had been pre-warned that we were visiting them in no small part because my parents thought a series of unions might be possible between the two sets of three kids. It’s not likely to work out, however, because their kids are (a) multi-lingual, (b) beautiful to behold and (c) able to skipper all kinds of boats and thus out of our league. Also, I am only fourteen.

On the heels of mom’s failed marriage alignment summit (which was plenty of fun for normal-person vacation reasons) we “moved to²” Stockholm where mom had booked us for the month at an Airbnb in Södermalm right above a techno club from a guy named Dimitri. After 8 hours on a train crossing the country, we arrived at the apartment (a 17th century 6th floor walk-up) at 10PM. The 3 working bare bulb lights combined with Renaissance-era ceiling height and floor-levelness sensibilities established a cool haunted house vibe. Above my bed was a framed picture of Hitler which, sensing the impending emotional crescendo already en-route, Dad quickly declared to actually be Charlie Chaplin. Despite Dad’s dictator/comedian repositioning, after taking it all in, my sister and brother (note: not me) began to weep.

I think there is a real lesson to be learned here: stay home. I mean, don’t let my mom pick Airbnbs.  I mean, don’t rent from people named Dimitri. We attempted sleep to the lullaby of the club’s thumping bass mixed with drunk Scandinavians yelling “Skita i det blå skåpet” and “Gå och dra något gammalt över dig” at each other. Meanwhile, sensing that we were in a nose-dive from an already low altitude, mom like some iPhone-toting McGuyver, activated two fixers back in the US who “Kerry Washingtoned” us out of there. Two days later, we rolled into a beautiful apartment in a quiet neighborhood. The owner who was a stranger then is now our among our best friends.

I spent the majority of the summer on the court with Leo, a 26-ish unfathomably deep and gifted former pro tennis player who spoke solely in Yoda-worthy sentences. Téa Sloane, happy in any situation, biked the city and practiced yoga with our six beloved au pairs (all actually blond, not just aspirationally). Devon walked the streets of Stockholm sporting a tasteful “I ❤ Swedish Girls” shirt that he picked up in a tourist shop. He completed the package with his signature raised eyebrow capped off with attempted direct eye contact with any girl that checked out his shirt, usually quizzically.

I have to admit, the t-shirt + eyebrow combo is impressive. While no girl actually spoke with him, some confused smiles were exchanged and I think it helped to cement the American reputation of keeping it klassy. Meanwhile, dad spoke with entrepreneurs and VCs (often by phone because the VCs were at the archipelago with their families) and took us on character-building walks through the ghost city while my mom searched for opportunities to meet her quota of “sticky memories.” You’ll find one such episode below. It involves nature and kayaks.

We returned home and the rest, as you say in the US, is history. We have resumed our day-to-day activities: Devon has returned his focus to strategic listening + ninja-like insertion of deadpan conversational quips.  He believes these yield higher rates of retention and responsiveness from his audience, and he will spend the rest of his year integrating the lessons he learned in Sweden (re: the power of marketing through t-shirts) to convince girls to date him. Téa Sloane, who can do one tricky bridge backbend pose, plans to continue scootering down the path of enlightenment. Namaste. As for me, I plan to spend this next year brainstorming more ways to consume a mega-giga-flop’s worth of amount of streaming golf and tennis videos, interspersed with chiropractic how-to videos, which I believe are destined to reshape our technical and fiscal landscape forever. Meanwhile, our parents will plan the next family disruption tour.

We are grateful for the abundance we enjoy, for our Swedish angels, au pairs and friends, for all of you, and for all the love and light in the world.

With love, Cooper.³

NOTES

¹ We encourage you to try the app Duo Lingo. We didn’t, but our dad did. He found that these were the prioritized sentences to learn: (1) That moose is looking at me; (2) I do not love you; I love her; (3) We should visit her before she dies. Swedes don’t beat about the bush.

² If you ‘visit’ a foreign location you’re a tourist, but if you ‘move to’ the same location, you are a modern renaissance cultural sophisticate.

³ Many people think this is actually Cooper writing.  It is not.  It is Jennifer and Andy. None of our kids write like this.

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Kayaking with Team Aaker Smith, An Appendix. (this is optional reading and should not count against us)

As many of you know, our family is known neither for a deep love or even for a complete acceptance of nature. Yet, because of our openness to new ideas and a documented willingness to change, we perked up when Clara (one of our beloved au pair alums) suggested we go kayaking shortly after we arrived. Tentatively excited, we changed into inappropriate clothing (poor clothing choice is a genetic predisposition), grabbed our flip-flops (what we like to call “athletic shoes”) and our iPhones (sensing that this will likely be a great photo opportunity and knowing that pictures of an event > actual event) – and called two UBERS.

Blazing past lots of cyclists and joggers enjoying nature, we arrived at the nature-destination where two guys (dressed appropriately and not wearing flip flops) invited us to listen to a few tips on how to use/drive/steer kayaks.  We joined a small crowd of people (all also dressed inappropriately) and pretended to listen.  (We think) the Kayak experts said: “The chance of any of you falling in is remote, but just to be on the safe side – we’ll give you a few tips.  If you capsize, just bring your kayak to the side of the water, take the kayak out, dump out the water and get back into the kayak.  Now, find a partner and off you go!” Not many in our family know the meaning of the word “capsize,” but we all understand the concept to “pick a partner.” Clara and Téa Sloane lock eyes and begin to walk towards a girl kayak. Cooper grabs Devon and race to a boy kayak. (There is no such thing as a gendered kayak; kayaks are neither boy nor girl. However, you weren’t there, so you will have to trust us that gendered kayaks might be a real thing).

Fueled by the knowledge that life is a race, the boys in their boy kayak zoom away faster than the girls in their girl kayak or us in our bi-gendered kayak (Andy got last pick and was lucky enough to be partnered with me). As a result, Andy and I didn’t have any ability to coach/parent the boys or reinforce the expert’s actual useful tips before they were already gone. (Coaching kayaking is similar to when I explain to anyone how to cook something, anything.  But that won’t stop me from suggesting ideas or reminding people of tips already expressed). Andy and I, conscious that water is wet, carefully step into our kayak as I photograph the entire thing (you never know if this will happen again ever). Andy proceeds to paddle the kayak slowly (knowing that life is not a race and also that we don’t really want to get too close to the boy kayak).

We spot the boy kayak 200 feet off in the distance. But what’s new is that we can only see the underside of their boat. The boys learned the cord “capsize.” The boys are nearby treading water and shout/laughing at each other as they grasp the top (of the bottom) of the boat. I perform emotional system check, and I find they are mixed. I’m proud that they are not actually drowning, confused by how this might have happened, and horrified that people might figure out they are Americans and/or our kids. Note: If you are having a hard time imagining this scene, it is simply because I am having a hard time describing it b/c it involves nature and boats. But let me tell you, their inappropriate clothing and flip-flops were not in good shape.

Téa Sloane (paddling with Clara) whizzes by them in what appears to be an aerodynamic girl kayak, yelling, “See you later, suckers!” Andy and I slow down to help them because we are their parents and love them, and also because Andy stopped paddling. We began to coach them (finally!) to get to the side of the water-area, where Cooper somehow figures out a way to get onto a dock and then gracefully leaps back into the kayak full of water – while Devon arduously lifts himself, his jeans, sweatshirt, topsiders and Stanford hat back into the kayak – but somehow overshoots and off he goes into the other side of the water-filled kayak. We don’t really know how it happened, but the image of his two feet up in the air as he nose dives into the water on the other side of the kayak is now seared into my mind.   Continuing to feel the moment, Téa Sloane paddles back the opposite way and yells, “Again. See you later, suckers!” The boys finally get back into the boy kayak, paddle 300 feet, wobble and again capsize. But this time they are used to it, so it’s not nearly as shocking. Also, they are getting good at knowing what to do.  Resilience! But the big challenge is to figure out how to bring the kayak to the side because there is only a big ship and daunting cement wall on the shore. They have to think. Tricky!  They decide to swim to the big ship pulling their upside-down kayak along behind them.

Cyclists and joggers on the side of the road stop to stare at us. Andy again stops paddling, and I’m beginning to notice that he is purposefully keeping his distance. We are ok with them going down, but we are now increasingly worried about our reputations, just not enough to get cold and wet ourselves. This time, the boys are so good at getting back into their kayak that it only takes about 15 minutes, half as long as before. They paddle about 300 feet and capsize again.   At this point, (a) Téa Sloane and Clara have doubled back multiple times and Téa has bored of taunting them, and (b) Devon is learning and updating his strategy (change!).  He decides to stay in the water because he observes the kayak goes faster when he swims vs. paddles. This makes perfect sense because we raised our boys to be strong swimmers.  We have a hot tub at home.

Andy finally cajoles them to swim/paddle toward the pier to co-dump water out of their kayak. This is a game-changer and suddenly their boy kayak is nearly as aerodynamic as the girl kayak. We return the way we came (because we have only traveled 800 feet), and beat the girls back to the dock by three minutes. I mean, the girls kayaked about 10 times further than us, but I think the boys felt pretty darn sweet. So anyway, go girl kayaks.

Love, Jennifer Ps. I hate nature.