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34 22 July 2010 I’m in De Krim! It’s just after eleven o’clock in the morning, and I’m sitting at CaféRaterink,wherethebushasdroppedme,havingacupoftea.Myhandtrembles slightly as I think about my mother. Our relationship in the last few years has been choppy, often strained. I feel I don’t do enough for her—am not enough for her—andnowthatIhaveachildofmyown,mythoughtsarenolessmurky. I understand, now, the intense love one has for a child, and the impatience at being stretched to the limit by cries and whines. And I admire how my mother managed to raise three children, virtually alone, while my father travelled incessantly . She did it with little moral support and fewer financial resources. Yet, she managed to buy us birthday and Christmas gifts and provide us with lessons when we begged—horseback riding for me, and other activities for my brother and sister. I wonder how she did it. I have one child and feel the stretch—emotional and otherwise. I let these thoughts wash over me as I sip my warm beverage and realize that no matter what silent tirades come between us, my mother and her history have shaped me. It is her past that I look to for an understanding of my roots—of who I am, and who I can become. Her years in this tiny village are a part of me, and I understand, as I sit here, that I have come “home.” I look across the street from this outdoor patio and see a bakery and a grocery store in the town square, where I will have a lunch of bread and cheese later. It’s not as small as Mom described. And the canal is beautiful, simple, peaceful. I think I saw her house as the bus drove by, but it didn’t seem quite the way I remembered it from the photographs—and it wasn’t number 107A, as Mom had said, but number 102. I’ll soon get my bearings, and walk down the street and see. z There’s a serenity here in De Krim. Certainly, the village has been modernized since Mom grew up here, but it still feels like time has stopped. The village spans a couple of kilometres along a dike, and its centre consists of a restaurant (the Café Raterink, which has a tavern, a snack bar, an ice-cream shop, and a patio) and a plaza with a grocery store, a pharmacy/hardware store rolled into one, a 35 bakery, and a flower shop. It’s sleepy here—there’s no rushing, nowhere that important to go. The stores close for lunch, reopen at one thirty. Even the bus service stops until two o’clock. Itseemsthatthestreetnumberinghaschanged.Number107isarelativelynew dwelling, and bears no resemblance to the house in Mom’s photos. Number 102— the one I saw from the bus—looks exactly like Mom’s old house, even up close. And numbers100and106don’texist,soclearlytherehavebeensomechanges. When I realize 107 doesn’t make sense, I make my way to 102. The garage door is wide open, a van parked in front with its back doors spread wide, hay piled high inside. A woman, sinewy and tanned, maybe forty-five, is a few steps away. I say hello and ask if she speaks English. She smiles at me and shakes her head, and says, “My husband,” and then, “he kommen,”* in her mix of Dutch and broken English. She is very kind and welcoming, and indicates that I should wait. I comment on the rabbits and chickens I see in the nearby coop, just past a patio area with chairs and low-slung tables. I ask what other animals they have and she tells me birds, many birds. Minutes later, I see a tall, balding man with cropped hair like my husband’s walk up the path with a young, extremely pretty blond girl, who is probably about twelve or thirteen. The man, Gordon van Wezel, appears to be in his early fifties, and is handsome for his age. He has strong features, a muscular build. I explain why I’m here—that I’m from Canada, visiting Holland for the first time, and that I believe this house was my mother’s childhood dwelling. Gordon speaks easily and congenially, laughing at the coincidence that he, too, was born in Canada. Edmonton was his hometown, and he lived there from 1959, the year of his birth, until 1967, when his family went briefly to the United...

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