Today, I am more than sure that the single greatest gift I gave all my children was a foreign father and therefore a second passport. Their freedom to live, study, work and love all over Europe, as I have done, continues into tomorrow morning, while that light goes out for their friends, their cousins, their family, even their mother. I escaped in time to get an EU residence permit but the middle years of my 50s will no longer be a time for slowing down, relaxing and enjoying my growing family, they will now be filled with anxiety as I continually look behind me until the day comes in 2025 when I can again apply to be an EU citizen. And I am utterly distraught to think of my daughter's uni friends who are studying French and Spanish with no right to go there after uni and my younger kids' ex-classmates who are currently working their way through the education system with a much-curtailed future ahead of them.
I cannot imagine being on UK soil today... even here I can barely breathe. I can't actually imagine setting foot there again, though of course I love my family dearly. I want to teleport my old uni friends Linda and Gillian here today and spend the evening hugging them and crying together because I know what this means to them - we lived together all over Europe and those were the best of times. Gillian's kids will not have the opportunities mine still have, and yet they have done nothing different to mine. And for what? So the little Englanders can wave their union Jacks and taunt our nearest and dearest with their childish rhetoric. I am so embarrassed for them.
I even find myself casting my mind back to my dear friend Sheina, who died many years ago now, because I know she too would have been inconsolable tonight. Remember the Freiburg Bierfest, Sheina? I'm sure you do... Tonight, I will lift a glass and toast you too, wherever you are now.
I want to sit and drink with my 'breast friends' too. I know how awful this all is for my dear friend Karen too - as an academic, this is doing nothing for her university's future or for the research people like her want to be involved in. Nor is it great for her daughter who is just back from a year in France.
Today I sat in my adult education class with every nationality under the sun - there are nearly 25 in the class and almost no duplicate nationalities. And do you know what? It is fascinating and they are all lovely and there isn't one person in that room I wouldn't do anything I could to help. Some are young enough to be my kids, some grew up behind the iron curtain, some fled the bombings in Syria. We are all different and fascinated by our differences. By discussing them, we can become friends. The world is not a frightening place when you open your arms to others, it only becomes that way, when you close your door, and tonight I become homeless, as my country's door closes. Tonight and for the next five years, I will be a citizen of nowhere, until one day I become a citizen of Denmark, but in truth, my country has always been and will always be Europe. And that is why I could not have stayed behind for the shitshow.
Tonight I also want to bus over Marcel and Charlotte and hold them tight. They only exist because I was allowed to fall in love with a fellow EU citizen. None of my kids would be here without freedom of movement, so the future generations of kids like mine will simply cease to exist. I want to kiss and hug them because I know now how precarious their existence actually is. The Marcels, the Charlottes, the Léons, the Annas and the Amaias of the next generation will never be born. And that makes the UK a smaller and darker place.
So if you'll excuse me, I'll now go and hide under my duvet till some time after my birthday, by which time I expect I may need to come back out and eat, but please, just don't talk to me today.
In the meantime - here's a wee song I learnt when I was in France - that's what Europe means to me. I'd rather listen to that than today's news.
Here are the lyrics:
Bien sûr, ce n'est pas la Seine
Ce n'est pas le bois de Vincennes
Mais c'est bien joli tout de même
A Göttingen, à Göttingen
Pas de quais et pas de rengaines
Qui se lamentent et qui se traînent
Mais l'amour y fleurit quand même
A Göttingen, à Göttingen
Ils savent mieux que nous, je pense
L'histoire de nos rois de France
Hermann, Peter, Helga et Hans
A Göttingen
Et que personne ne s'offense
Mais les contes de notre enfance
"Il était une fois" commence
A Göttingen
Bien sûr nous, nous avons la Seine
Et puis notre bois de Vincennes
Mais Dieu que les roses sont belles
A Göttingen, à Göttingen
Nous, nous avons nos matins blêmes
Et l'âme grise de Verlaine
Eux c'est la mélancolie même
A Göttingen, à Göttingen
Quand ils ne savent rien nous dire
Ils restent là à nous sourire
Mais nous les comprenons quand même
Les enfants blonds de Göttingen
Et tant pis pour ceux qui s'étonnent
Et que les autres me pardonnent
Mais les enfants ce sont les mêmes
A Paris ou à Göttingen
O faites que jamais ne revienne
Le temps du sang et de la haine
Car il y a des gens que j'aime
A Göttingen, à Göttingen
Et lorsque sonnerait l'alarme
S'il fallait reprendre les armes
Mon cœur verserait une larme
Pour Göttingen, pour Göttingen
Mais c'est bien joli tout de même
A Göttingen, à Göttingen
Et lorsque sonnerait l'alarme
S'il fallait reprendre les armes
Mon cœur verserait une larme
Pour Göttingen, pour Göttingen
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