who only by moving can balance

1. having German speakers in my life and emotionally close to me: people I can talk with when exhausted, or communicate with more easily, because I don't have to remember the English for Biomuell and I don't have to stick to English sentence structures in order to be comprehensible
   
2. a supervisor who talks to me and gives me praise in words I understand: "we should write this up as a paper" is something even I can't misinterpret
   
3. a director of studies who knows what I'm like and checks in on me and my brainstate and tells me that I should come and talk to her and even if I just want a cup of tea I should go sit in her office and drink tea it's fine just DO it for goodness' sake
   
4. my lovely housemate got back this evening after the vac <3
   
5. benefits etc mean that I've got enough money to feel safe and secure in Just Buying things that will make my life easier and more pleasant - so: THANK YOU, UK taxpayers <3
   
6. wonderful, wonderful friends - who cook with me and feed me and eat the food I make them; who share music and poetry with me; who pull faces of gently appalled kab-did-you-actually-just-say-that in the most loving way possible
   
7. vaginapagina, for teaching me how to encourage safer space, and to communicate extremely diplomatically, and to be a powerful advocate for myself and others in medical settings
   
8. the education and support, more generally, that have given me the tools to understand my diagnoses and prognoses and equipped me to self-medicate competently, and to track my symptoms: that have encouraged me to trust myself
   
9. living next door to botanic gardens to which I have free entry: limestone pavement and snowdrops and silver fern brambles and dogwoods and willow and viburnum and scented gardens and hothouses and fountains all right there, for me to sit in and be quiet
   
10. I am loved, so much, in so many ways, by so many people.

I've seen a lot of people choose a word as their theme for the year. Me? I think I'm going to go with reclamation.

This post is a translation of an article originally published on emma.de. It's an idiomatic rather than a strict translation.

Nils Pickert has started wearing skirts - because it's something his son likes to do. After all, the little one needs is an example! And anyway - long skirts with elasticated waistbands suit him. Read on for a story about two mould-breakers in a South German province...


Today is skirt day! Father and son taking a stroll in the pedestrian zone of a small town in South Germany

My five-year-old son likes wearing dresses. In Berlin Kreuzberg, that's quite enough to get drawn into conversation with other parents. Is it reasonable or ridiculous? I always want to shout back, "Neither!" Unfortunately, they can't hear me any more - because I now live in a small town in the south of Germany. Barely 100,000 inhabitants; very traditional; very religious. You might even call it the Motherland. Here, my son's preferences aren't just a topic for parents - they're the talk of the town. But I did my part in making that happen!

Yep, I'm one of those fathers who try to bring up their children equally. I'm not one of those "academic daddies" - the ones who drivel on about equality of the sexes during their studies and then, the moment a child shows up, settle back into the welcoming embrace of cliched gender roles: him busy with his career, her taking care of the rest.

It's become clear to me that I'm part of a minority - one of those people who occasionally make fools of themselves. Out of conviction.

In my case that's because I didn't want to have to talk my son out of wearing dresses and skirts. His choices didn't make him any friends in Berlin - which, after careful consideration, left me with only one option: to square my shoulders for my lad and put on a skirt myself. After all, I can't expect a kid too young to go to school to have the same self-assertiveness as I'd look for in an adult, especially not when he's got no examples! So: now I'm the role model.

And that's how we ended up wearing skirts and dresses on milder days back in Kreuzberg. Hey, I think long skirts with elasticated waists look pretty good on me. Dresses? They're a bit more difficult. And as for the Berliners, well, they reacted positively or not at all. In my little town in South Germany, it's a rather different story.

In the middle of moving stress, I totally forgot to tell the teachers at the kindergarden that they should make care my boy wasn't laughed at for his clothing choices. Only a little while later, his self-confidence was gone: he couldn't face going back to playschool wearing a dress or a skirt. And then he looked at me with pleading eyes and asked: "Daddy, when are you going to wear a skirt again?"

To this day I'm grateful to the woman who was so caught up in staring at us that she walked straight into a lamp-post. My son was bawling with laughter - and the next day he fetched a dress back out of the wardrobe. At first, he only wore it at weekends - but it wasn't long before he was dressing how he liked at kindergarten again.

And what's the lad started doing in the meantime? Painting his nails. He reckons nail varnish looks pretty on me, too. When other boys (it's almost always boys!) try to make fun of him, he just grins at them and says, "You're just not brave enough to wear skirts and dresses, because your dads aren't either." He's made broader shoulders and a steel-reinforced spine for himself - and all thanks to daddy in a skirt.

Nils Pickert, EMMAonline 20.8.12