Sylvia's Journal

I was rudely woken up by a coughing fit that jerked me out of a dream in which I was just sprinkling rice on top of a bride. As usual, the dreams were rich and hard to reel back in once fully awake; faint traces of hard work and things not being what they seem to be. I’ll try to remember that.

I have slept, what we call in my native language, a hole into the day. It is noon time on Sunday. For the first time in weeks I have not a care in the world; nothing to complete, nowhere to go. I have not checked my email in nearly 48 hours. It feels wonderfully free. Now, more than 24 hours after our arrival we still haven’t seen our host Piet. He is biking on this gorgeous spring day. We communicate by leaving notes to each other on the kitchen counter.

I am in a house where I have taken many of my MSH colleagues as we travel through Holland to faraway places. It’s a martha steward kind of house, beautifully decorated and everything matches, except when Sietske is away for awhile and Piet lives alone. Sietske would probably not tolerate the dirty coffee cups that are left here and there. But eventually everything is put away again; she has trained him well.

Outside the chickens make lots of noise. Later today I will go for a real egg hunt; fresh eggs for breakfast sounds very appealing. There are also two large pot belly pigs, rabbits, a cat, an a dog found on a highway in France, Trouve, but he is in his native land with Sietske, overseeing the remodeling of the vacation bungalow estate they own near St. Tropez.

I am looking out over a large body of water with lots of sailboats. To my left is a huge Japanese cherry tree, the branches bending under a heavy load of pink blossoms. In this time of year Holland is at its best, flowers are everywhere.

Our family reunion took place in a restored barn of an old Dutch farm that lies in the small town of Lage Vuursche in the province of Utrecht. We parked our car outside the tall gates of one of the Queen’s palaces. Later we saw a man on a bicycle carrying a bouquet of flowers. He had a long conversation with the guard, who never took the flowers. We imagined he was arguing that he wanted to deliver the flowers himself to the queen. But she was not home. This is the week of Koninginnedag, April 30, something akin to our national holiday. It is actually her mother’s birthday. The current queen’s birthday is in January which is not a good time, weatherwise, for a party. The queen’s agenda this week is full of appearances to her people in tiny villages is in the far corners of her kingdom; it reeks of something medieval.

Axel will get to witness Koninginnedag. Some of our friends say he should go to Amsterdam, because it is a riot to be there on this day; others say this is exactly the reason why he should stay away as far as he can. When I was a child this day was the most exciting day of the year. There was no school. There were fairs with midways, cotton candy etc. In the morning any organized group in our town got to parade in front of the local notables. You were lucky if you got to parade in front of or in back of one of the local marching bands with their majoretts who twirled batons. I always paraded with the brownies, dressed to the nines in our brown and yellow uniforms, walking in perfect step. We had practiced for months in the woods for this event, left, right, left, right. For awhile my mother had a seat on the town council and she got to stand right next to the major. We have home movies where you see me wave to her, a big happy smile from a kid without front teeth; a stolen wave (not really allowed if you took parading serious). Ah, the power of belonging, importance, and organized togetherness; powerful stuff in a child’ life.

At the reunion we had the five branches of families that came forth from my great-grandparents’ five children. Each branch was identified by a colored ribbon; our’s, the grandchildren and great-grand-children of Ankie, was blue. Each branch had prepared a large poster with pictures that helped us see who fit where and how the small cousins I knew from my childhood had grown to be their parents, now the oldest generation with kids who have kids. The initiative for the event came from one of the oldest members of this tribe who decided they did not want everyone to meet only at funerals.

My greatgrandmother was an accomplished watercolorist and one of her great-grandsons had prepared a slideshow of her work. Lefthanded, she painted with both as, at that time, left handedness was something not acceptable in society and so most were forced to become righthanded, which gave these people two good hands, and a stutter sometimes.

I discovered there were also recordings of my grandmother speaking at some event. Imagine that, oma’s voice on MP3. All who want can get an email with the sound attached. Amazing.

The reunion was completed with the choice between a walk or mini-golf (or midget-golf as it is called in Dutch). Axel and I opted for the walk which turned out a challenge with the uneven terrain and our muscles getting increasingly sore (and now, the next morning we walk like crash victims again). Tea time was also time for farewells, and promises to meet again; this will be, in all likelihood, at a funeral again.

We walked across the main street of the cute village and found another terrace where Ankie, Michiel, Axel and I had a beer before we parted, they to Brussels and we on our way to our friends Jan and Louise who had just one day before become grandparents. We admired the baby pictures, the lovely new house in Hilversum and had a wonderful meal together. Just before we left we got to see pictures of a Philipino wedding in Singapore of a mutual friend. It may explain the dream about brides and rice, as there was another bride that day, the daughter of our friends Liesbeth and Rene. We drove home around 11 PM and tumbled into a deep sleep as soon as we hit the bed, around midnight. Our host was already sleeping.