a long time ago

Here is a picture of my brother and my mother and me standing in front of a small outbuilding on the family farm in Smilde Holland. We were there for my grandparents 50th anniversary.

And here we are in 2002 at a family reunion standing in front of the same building. I wish we had tried to recreate the picture in regards to positioning ourselves but I am just happy we have it.

I was so happy that we had the chance to return to the homeland of my father.
What struck me as very odd was the feeling that I was going home when travelling there. That feeling doesn't come over me too often.
Being extremely non-adventerous I don't usually relish travelling. I suppose some of it is the non-familiar language and some of the customs that make me feel out of place. But there was something strangely familiar and comfortable about Holland.


I have only two memories from the first time that I was in Holland.

The first one was of drinking beer on a patio. Just a sip but I remember the adults paying attention to the look on my face.

The second memory proved to be faulty.
First I will tell you what my memory was and then I will tell you how it really happened. As I recall, I was playing with some cousins (whom I did not know very well) in a barn and my cousin Mark had got his head stuck in the bars that hold the cows still for milking. This created a panic in Mark and the rest of us. We called for the grown-ups who arrived on the scene. They deemed Mark to be in quite a pickle and steadfastly stuck and I assumed he would have to remain there for the rest of his life. The tragedy of it all. The grown-ups were at a loss of how to solve this problem when my dad came striding in. I recall that he grabbed both sides of the bars and with brute strength wrenched open the bars so Mark could pull his head out. There were cheers and sighs of relief. And what I knew was that my dad was the biggest and strongest dad in the world and there was no one better.
What really happened is that Mark got his head stuck in some bars and the grown-ups told him to twist his head the same way to pull out as he has twisted it when his head went in. It might not have even been my father who came up with this brilliant idea. And that is the way that it happened.

Funny thing about memories, eh?