I’m thousands of miles from home. Why is my picture in their scrapbook?

In 1972, my parents returned to Holland for the first time since emigrating in the late 40’s. My brother Bob had completed his mission and my parents took this opportunity to return with their five children still at home, meet my brother and then embark on three weeks of travel through Holland, Germany, Switzerland and France. What an undertaking! Lifelong memories were forged during that trip.

One of those memories was visiting with my father’s uncle, Oom Dan, his wife Tante Pietje and my dad’s cousins Henk, Woutje, Geert and Tiny. Oom Dan’s first wife Maria, the mother of his children and the sister of my grandmother, Jannigje, passed away during WWII. She suffered a perforated ulcer and because no penicillin was available during the war, she died as a result of the infection.

I thought it would be fun to take the kids to visit some relatives, and I was able to make e-mail contact with Tiny to let her know that we would be travelling to Holland and would like to visit with them. We made our way to Vinkeveen, a beautiful town in between Amsterdam and Utrecht. They had built a new home since our last visit and when Tiny answered the door, her first response was to say that I was truly my father, and yes, I do take after my father.

There was a bit of a language barrier but we were able to bridge it somewhat with my limited Dutch and Tiny’s English. We were surprised when Tiny pulled out a scrapbook which contained several pictures of my family, my cousins and aunts and uncles. Wow! There was the family picture from my wedding in 1986, and a picture of Dave and Wendy on their wedding day—Jack and Peter were quite amused by the amount of hair on their father’s head.

After some yummy strawberry pie, looking at the scrapbook and pictures that I had on my computer, we toured the new shop where Geert showed us his latest restoration—a beautiful canal boat.

We said our goodbyes, but no hand shaking and no three kisses on the cheek. Apparently the three kiss greeting is a custom in the south of Holland and came through the influence of the Turks.