I have a soft spot for the number 2. A graceful swan with a curved neck. Half a heart. When I look at my phone and it happens to be 10:22 PM, I internally cheer. I used to want to be second than first in ski competitions and I once terrified a primary school classmate I met after twenty years with the exclamation: ‘I remember you! Your birthday is November 22!’
In short: when I realized years ago that there was a good chance that I would experience the date 22-02-2022, it made me happy. A palindrome day, which can be read from left to right and from right to left and of which there are only 29 in this century – in the spelling dd-mm-yy. At the time (I was twelve) I immediately started dreaming about great deeds I could perform on that date: getting married, having twins, petting a giraffe, bringing peace to the world.
On 22-02-2022 I got out of bed and bumped the big toe of my left foot. A hard knock, against the bedroom door, was enough to make me stumble into the kitchen, where I discovered I had run out of cereal. Outside: grey.
Putin puts Ukraine crisis on alert, the newspaper headlined. Inside I read an obituary of a 222-year-old fallen red beech tree in Haarlem. I knew the beech, had walked past it regularly. According to the municipal website, the monumental tree was part of a ‘protection-worthy timber stand’. A word that never let go of me.
Wood stand. In my imagination I saw before me an army of trees, a procession of supreme Tolkien-worthy grafts heading towards Ukraine to bring about world peace after all. A tree root that would secretly trip Putin. But in the meantime, the opposite is happening. Tanks flattening bushes in Donbas, trees scarred from years of armed conflict.
To cheer me up, I left for Westerveld cemetery, on the inner dune edge, to visit my grandmother – born in 1922. When she was still alive, we often walked there together. She liked to come here, especially in early spring, when it was all over with snowdrops and winter aconites. Even now the ground had turned into a carpet of flowers. There was a buzz of life between the graves.
On the way back I passed a florist. The window read ‘Happy Twosday!’ – presumably an attempt to sell unsold valentine roses. Later I saw an advertisement for the palindrome hamburger, which can be ordered for 2.22 euros. My dream date turned out to be a commercial nightmare. Suddenly, eiliphilia—a penchant for palindromes—felt more illogical than its fearful counterpart, ebophobia.
I resolved to be in bed before 10:22 p.m. and considered myself lucky that the next palindrome date wouldn’t be for eight years.
Gemma Venhuizen is a biology editor at NRC and writes a column here every Wednesday.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 23, 2022