Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience

Prologue

1 Prologue 10 January 2011 The letter shakes between my fingers. I set it down on the counter and drop a tea bag into the cup as the kettle begins its impatient whistle. A brief flavouring of sugar and I pour the steaming water. The pages continue to beckon. It’s from my mother, and hopefully it explores another chapter of her childhood during the war. For months now, I’ve been asking her questions about her early years in Nazi-occupied Holland, mostly in letters containing long lists of queries, posted with impatience. And even when it’s too soon to expect a response, I still check the mailbox daily. It’s been an exercise that has drawn us much closer—my interest in her past has revalued those experiences for her. Indeed , I heard many versions of her stories as a child, but I didn’t understand their importance as my legacy. I never really grasped their claim on me, or mine on them. Only now can I appreciate their significance and allow myself to be held by their power—yes, only now do I have the life experience I need to transform them into stories. After creating a warmish tea with far too much milk, I take the letter in one hand, the cup in the other, and move towards the living-room sofa. Her 2 letter is short, only two pages, but I hope to find something here—more magic, more evidence of who this woman was before she became my mother. Before she became just my mother, is the thought in my head, but I stop myself from thinking it. Indeed, suddenly she was rising from the pages as much more—as a whole being with hopes and dreams that had nothing to do with me or my siblings. How often do we think of our parents this way? I’ve only ever taken her for granted—as I suppose most children do. I’ve thought that she lives just for me, to take care of me—that those youthful desires were supplanted by my very existence. Who was she then? Now that I’m a mother too, I understand that thinking of her in this way is wrong—my own hopes and dreams have not died with the birth of my son. They are just prioritized differently . But it’s only now that I’m really contemplating what she may have wanted and imagined. Once I’ve settled in my spot on the sofa, I pick up the letter and begin to read. Her first sentence is devastating, not just because of what it actually says but because of what it implies—what it makes me realize. “Nice of you to write, too bad there are always a bunch of questions that come with it. It’s really ok, it is just that I can’t make you understand.” I feel a thud somewhere inside, like something has gone horribly wrong. And I hadn’t had the intuitive power to understand it. I had thought that she was enjoying this exchange—this opportunity to share her long-buried inner world with me. I had viewed it as an opportunity, a rich one, but her words make me see that I’m wrong. And I can’t decide whether she’s angry with me or just exasperated. Does she mean that I’m too thick to get it, or is she questioning her own ability to express her thoughts and explain that part of her life to me? And, beyond my own insecurities, her words raise another issue: Am I asking too much of her? Does she not want to do this? And if she doesn’t, why doesn’t she just tell me? But her words give me pause about the larger issue of memory. Conversations with other Dutch war children have made me see what I won’t allow my mother—that these are terrifying memories and compassion is necessary . I need to realize that she has blocked it out, and that it has taken quite a focused effort to do so. She grew up with the sounds of war in her ears and worked hard to forget them, to overwrite them with new, better sounds. I find the unearthing of her memories fascinating—arresting. But for her, it is like the sting of pulling off a well-stuck Band-Aid. I’m undoing her, and now I wonder if it’s unfair...