CAPTAIN COPENHAGEN

Captain Copenhagen tells the story of Helen and her daughter Leonie. After Leonie is diagnosed with depression at 14 years old, Helen decides that they need to move to the country that has been attributed as one of the happiest countries in the world, Denmark. Her hope is that she can use the country, culture and everything Danish to “cure” her daughter and make her happy again. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

This blog is a work of fiction. It includes comedic episodes from Helen’s perspective as she tries to navigate Danish life, and more subdued episodes from Leonie’s perspective as she tries to navigate her mother.

All episodes can be found at www.captaincopenhagen.co.uk.

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Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy!

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TRIGGER WARNING: Captain Copenhagen explores the topic of mental health.

The Flight

Helen, Mother

I love planes, I find them so exciting. Flying thousands of feet in the air and defying everything we have come to believe about how we, as ground dwellers, should live, accompanied by the ironically named grounding thought that we could crash at any moment. Goodbye cruel world, hello squishy flattened death. Well, we are hopeful that we won’t crash, but just the fact that we are being kept alive by years of groundbreaking work in physics and engineering is mind-blowingly fantastic. And you get lots of free nuts. That’s great too.

We’re flying with a British Ways-of-the-Air type company that won’t be mentioned for fear of the dreaded copyright infringement… but the air, the actual physical air that we’re flying on is a purifying Scandinavian airstream that will take us forward.

We’re moving to Denmark.

Copenhagen specifically.

The land where happiness and dreams are made.

Unfortunately, the teenager seated next to me isn’t as excited. She’s staring down at her lap, her mind elsewhere, swallowing herself from within. I wish she would feel the excitement that I’m feeling, even if just the smallest grain of it. But that will come with time. Everything is going to be ok from here on out.

I’ve given her the window seat. That’s what you do when you’re a parent, you give them the window seat because that’s the fun seat. Even though it was hard for me to do. I love the window seat but I love her more, so there you go. The mum ratio always wins.

The flight to Denmark is a weird one because it’s so close to England that you just go straight up and then down again. There isn’t much time in the actual air. So although there won’t be that much of a view, I want her to have it. To experience that first glorious sight of Danish land as it crowns at us through the clouds. Like a newborn baby, but with less goop. 

‘Do you want anything to eat?’ I ask her. Mostly because I am a loving caring parent that wants to make sure her daughter is well and truly fed and “nutritioned”, but also to wake her up and get her to actually look out of the window. I don’t want her to miss seeing this moment that could really lift her spirits.

Teenagers are difficult. She’s 14. The very start of her teenage journey and it’s already showing signs of being a rough one. But I’m going to fix things.

I look down at my phone to check the little plane on the ‘map on the app’, the one that tracks us like an aerial stalker. My phone that is, of course, safely in airplane mode. As I said, I love flying, but the threat of impending-crashing-doom never leaves my mind, and nor should it.

‘Leonie, Leonie, look!’ I grab her forearm and she opens her eyes with more of a start than I get the impression she’d have liked. I hold my phone, my safe phone with the tiny plane, directly in front of her face. The kind of distance that will most certainly damage her eyesight and be filed away in my dodgy parenting decisions folder when judgment day comes. ‘Wait for it… wait for it…’ I say, squeezing her arm a little tighter. ‘There! There! We are now exactly three quarters of the way from Sheffield to Copenhagen! Not long now!’

She shrugs and continues to look down at her lap not giving me, the tiny moving screen-plane, nor the window the time of day. Looking at nothing, her hair covering half her face.

I gently brush some behind her ear. She doesn’t move.

‘She’s started showing signs of depression’, is what the doctor had said. As I look at her in that moment, she looks doll-like. Her skin pale, eyes empty. Even a little numb. It’s hard to get an expression out of them these days in those small moments when they’re open.

My child is depressed. My child is sad.

I refuse to let that be the case. I am a superhero mum and I will swoop in and save the day.

We’re moving to the happiest country in the world.

Done.

I am going to learn the secrets of this land and make my little girl feel better.

Simple.

‘It’s not so bad’, I try saying. She just groans in return and continues to looks down at nothing. ‘I know that things seem tough at the moment but they will pick up.’ She continues to stare. I can see the pain in her face, that she’s trying to hold it all in. If I could just get her to let some of it out. I wrap my arms around her and begin the process of subtly moving her gaze towards the window and the view that would most definitely help.

I had wanted to give her a gentle push, that’s all. But she had become so heavy and lifeless lately that these days I had to give her a little bit of welly. Gentle loving welly. However, during said welly, there wasn’t the resistance that I was used to. My little bit of loving welly had lunged her forward with more force than I had planned pushing her abruptly against the window.

But, the results speak for themselves: she’s now looking directly down at the coastline as our new home comes into view. It was a little rough but this was a moment I didn’t want her to miss, I knew this would make her feel something.

She tenses up in my arms, I could still feel her holding something back.

‘It’s ok, my darling’, I hold her tight, ‘just let it out’. She turns to look at me with a strange expression.

Now, I’m sure that it could have been the sudden motion of being thrust to the window. It could have been looking down from an intense height, a bit of air sickness perhaps. It could even have been the three bags of M & Ms that she inexplicably decided would be her breakfast. I know that most likely it was probably a combination of the three. Deep down I knew this to be the case. This definitely was the most likely case.

And yet…

As I shall always recall it, the situation proceeded thusly.

Upon the first glimpse of our new homeland, my beloved daughter was not filled with the joy that I had hoped, but was instead violently sick.

I looked down at my feet and my favourite shoes. My comfy mum shoes that I didn’t think would survive one more spin in the machine. They had been so good to me.

I wished them goodbye and thanked them for their service. I pulled my daughter’s head to my shoulder, stroked her hair, wiped her mouth with a tissue and pushed the button for the steward.

This was not a bad omen. I would not let it be a bad omen.

Everything was going to be better. I was going to make Leonie better.

I will be the superhero of Danish happiness.

Just call me Captain Copenhagen.