JANUARY 25, 2022 – Yesterday my good doctor announced that treatments of my disease are having the desired effect. This was good news against the other reality he revealed: last week’s CT scan showed that many of my of bones are like “Swiss Cheese” but will repair themselves over the next few months.
The “Swiss Cheese” effect helps explain the pain getting in and out of bed or in and out of a chair. I much prefer latching onto the image of a piece of “Emmental” cheese than to a chunk of thick, orange, triangular head cheese that some juiced-up Green Bay Packer fan uses to communicate with his “tribe.”
I’ve been to Switzerland and have vivid memories of its cheese . . . and beautiful scenery—Interlacken, Lauterbrunnen, Wegner, Kleine Scheidegg, the Aletsch Glacier, the Jungfrau, the Eiger, Zermatt, the Matterhorn, Lake Geneva, skiing, and hiking till I dropped. I borrowed heavily from these scenes and “installed them securely in my make-believe playground, a nearby regional park called “Como” near home.
In 40 years, I’ve returned to Switzerland but once for a few days of cross-border skiing, then a drive along the Rhone until we reached the Italian border—my wife, son Byron, and daughter-in-law, Mylène.
As I left the clinic yesterday, I recalled the 1979 trip to Switzerland with my dear sister Jenny—our first time in Europe Among many other wonderful places, we discovered the town of Interlacken, a name that resonated with us, since we’d been students back at Interlochen Arts Academy in the U.S.
On that day in Switzerland that had started out with sketchy weather, I’d ventured out on my own to hike as high as I could. I reached the Shilthorn in a blaze of sun. Early that evening, happily exhausted by the day’s exploits, I met Jenny back at our pensione. Famished, we ambled along the street to find a suitable restaurant for a sumptuous meal. I’d left my camera back at the pensione.
As we devoured our food, the full, pink, moon crawled up the side of the Jungfrau. We expressed our wonder at this sight, and a Swiss diner at the next table then told us that we were lucky—to witness the center of the Bernese Oberland in such memorable conditions; to lay eyes on the Jungfrau at sunset and moonrise; the Jungfrau at the heart of the Bernese Oberland—at the heart of Switzerland.
My initial reaction was to rush back to the pensione to grab my camera and seize the fleeting moment. But Jenny laid her hand on my wrist. “No, Eric,” she said. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re going to sit right here and soak in what’s to be seen; we’re going to fold it directly into our memories without the aid of a camera.”
I stayed at the table. Jenny was right. Some things are not for capture but for unaided memory—laid more permanently in the heart than any photo could preserve.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
