I’ll be honest there’s not much I recall of my time in the Netherlands. I was very young! So that can be expected. Most of what I remember is generally based on what my Dad told me.
There was an incident I do remember and it’s left a large mark on me. We used to live on a housing estate in Rotterdam – think a suburb, it was a rather large complex of townhouses – that backed onto a series of canals. I know how Dutch right? Who would have thought that a suburb in the Netherlands had canals. Being the Netherlands – it gets cold and snows… snows… although I will admit this is a bit of a funny incident and it still makes me giggle – I was stirring my brother up while he was outside so he stuck his tongue out when he was too close to the window – Mum couldn’t stop laughing while she had her hairdryer out trying to get him off the window – anyway just a slight amusing segue. As you would expect when it snows – water freezes. The canals would then become an aquatic playground – think like a Norman Rockwell painting – well not really – all the families would go ice skating. Dad was taking us ice skating one day when I had just moved onto two separate blades (so off my training skates) and I noticed a fish trapped in the ice. I asked Dad whether it was alive or dead. I can’t remember what he answered. I think he told me it would come back to life when the water thawed out. I remember honestly being fixated by how it looked like there was a rainbow stuck in the ice where the fish was.
This is based on something Mum told me – I was apparently about 3 or 4 at the time – I was following Dad somewhere and again those canals and winter… I fell through ice and I was in the water for a minute or so before Dad realised I wasn’t there. So he went back to find me and he found me face down in the water – I was apparently a rather fetching shade of blue – he used to hate me making jokes about that! Thankfully Dad new CPR from his time doing National Service so by the time he got me home – I was breathing, very bloody cold though! Mum climbed into bed with me so that she could use her body heat to help get mine back to where mine was. Mum told me that around 3 or 4am I woke her up, told her I was ok and she could go back to her own bed.
One of the other things that I remember from being a kid – we went to the seaside. Now to normal people – this sounds like fun, sun, sand surf. In the Netherlands because you’re on the North Sea – the water is toxic and the waves literally roll in because of the amount of oil pollution. I remember that we had pickled herrings (I’m sorry northern Europe but it’s not a delicacy it’s just gross) and ice cream – tasty! I’m going slightly nauseous thinking about it. Anyway there’s a photo of the four of us against a statue. I threw up on the statue’s foot. It does seem that pickled herrings and ice cream really are not a good combination!
Someone that I really wish I got to know better was Oma (my Mum’s mother) – she was really sweet. As Mum was her youngest – my brother and I were her youngest grandchildren. There were times she would babysit us and we’d get away with murder. I remember one night where Mum and Dad had to go to London for Dad’s work so Oma had us for the weekend – she was watching Cleopatra, Edwin woke me up and we snuck out an watched the whole movie. There’s the scene where the workers get crushed that I could have done without seeing… the movie ended, Oma got up to go to bed, without looking where we hiding (behind the couch) “you boys had better hop back in bed!” Then there was stuff like the easter egg hunts she’d have for us in her apartment – I am still amazed at the places she managed to hide easter eggs. Like a lot of women that lived through the second world war – I have the feeling she had a lot of interesting stories to tell.
The main one that we were told was that Opa (who died about a year before my brother was born) was constantly persecuted by the Nazis as he looked like a jew. He used to carry a letter from his priest to confirm that he was in fact Dutch and in fact Catholic.
I think this is probably also telling how old school Oma could be – when Mum told her that she was marrying Dad, Oma asked Mum not marry Dad in a church. Dad being protestant – Oma just said it was wrong. Being older now and with my parents having been divorced I understand why – if a catholic gets married in a church – if she gets divorced, the marriage and divorce count as a sin. If not married in a church, oh look, get out of hell free card.
The rest of my memories from Holland are just of school, snowball fights (my brother would cheat and drop snowballs in water), being told (lied to) by Mum and Dad that my (our) dog Xander had gone to a farm in the Swiss Alps – I actually believed this for the longest time. He and I used to raise some hell – there was a cowskin up on one of the walls and he and I managed to pull it off the wall.
Probably one of my favourite memories as a kid was one Sinterklass Nacht – the neighbours climbed up onto the roof with half coconut shells at around midnight to make it sound like Sinterklass was on our roof. The amount of effort they went to for that along is pretty much staggering. This may have set a standard for me later in life – thankfully I never had to climb on any roofs.
This is a little bit of a memory… not necessarily a good one, it did leave a very a big mark on my life – probably more about the injustices that you face. So I was accused of doing something. I can’t remember what and I think at the end of the day it was probably irrelevant. Anyway I was sent to the bathroom and my brother got sent to his room. Mum drew a cross on my forehead (and it took me years to work this out) and told me that little boys who lie get black marks on their faces – she turned me around to the mirror and there was a black cross. This scarred me for so long!!! I will still swear blind to this day that I wasn’t lieing – I was the youngest though so my credibility was always an issue… one of the many joys of being European – son #2 is never as good as son #1…
Speaking of Sinterklass – my birthday falls on Sinterkalls Nacht and we had family that would try to get away with giving me a double present… Mum wouldn’t have a bar of it – she would nag most of them to ensure that I would get a present in the morning and a present from them at night… Yeah it worked but I got two small presents as opposed to one big present – I mean I was a kid, BIG is BETTER!!!! (that may also come into play later in my life for now we’ll keep everything innocent) – I don’t give my mother credit for a lot of things – I do appreciate that she tried to keep my birthday and Sinterklass separate. There are much larger issues here that I will address later – OHHHHH SUSPENSE!!!!! Not really no… it’s not that exciting!
One funny thing that it took me a very long time to work out. Mum always told me that my birth was two days late… I never quite clicked until I was about 15 that Mum and Dad had sex on my brother’s first birthday. I am going to guess there was the discussion about having a little playmate for him. How did that work out?!?!?
No comments:
Post a Comment