It's been a while since I last wrote. The charitable explanation is that I have been sparing all of you from my long-ish travelogues. It is certainly not for lack of affection or of attention. I will refrain from any excuse other than that I have had much to say and not enough inspiration to put pen to paper, or electrons to pixels, and simply say it. There there is the simple truth that after a lot of ups and downs, my life has been on a relatively even keel over the past two years, and so there has been little that has been exciting, or difficult, enough to merit a mass missive.
Even, but not uneventful. Eliana, my little niece, is a daily wonder and a constant source of entertainment, joy and hope. She will be two next week, though I am at a loss what to get her – she is a consummate little lady and does like the dresses her uncle buys … but, at her age, the dresses have a life of about two weeks – if that, and assuming she likes them.
I guess like most two-year olds, Eliana already has a mind of her own. Nowhere was this more evident, and more symbolic, than at her Christening. In the light of her half-Greek heritage, the ceremonies were held at a Greek Orthodox Church in Toronto. She was remarkably well-behaved, taking the long ceremony in her stride. I was not quite sure how she would react to the “I spit at Satan – now spit three times” business just outside the Nave – she is at the age to imitate everything – but I guess she must have thought that all the fuss and spitting and incense and candles and men dressed in funny attire and walking around tables and so on demonstrated a distinct lack of seriousness on the part of her parents and Godparents, and decided to let it all wash over her. She took being slathered in oil without much complaint, and seemed vaguely amused when she was lowered into the basin. But – and here is the critical, symbolic moment – when the priest pressed lightly on her shoulders to get her to sit in the basin, she resisted and then started crying. No man – not even a priest in a House of God on her Christening – was gonna get her to do something she did not want to do.
Aside from domestic affairs, work and life have been steady, exciting and enriching in equal measure.
On the personal side, since I last wrote to all of you, I have been to Philadelphia (visiting the Barnes Collection), Turkey (Istanbul and Bodrum), Rome (for work), Switzerland, Austria and German (over the holidays), the Canadian Rockies, and DC (just came back; for the Cherry Blossoms). I will, eventually, record and relate impressions of each in due course. (Just when you thought you had had enough of these ….)
Work is going well. There is something quite exciting about working in a Finance Ministry – a G7 and a G20 Finance Ministry – in the middle of a global crisis. At a minimum, one learns a great deal. More on that later.