Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience

Afterword: The Complexity of Belonging

119 Afterword The Complexity of Belonging In her groundbreaking book of essays about belonging, Losing North, Canadian -born novelist Nancy Huston defines the French phrase perdre le nord (“to lose the north”) as “to lose your head, to lose track,” and even “to lose your marbles.” The phrase takes some of its meaning from the geographical notion of finding “true north”—a point of reference that can help you find your way. And while society puts pressure on us to not lose our marbles, our way, our true north, Huston points out that it can happen when we simply leave our country of birth. She also says that leaving, much like abandonment , is akin to betrayal. Not surprisingly, then, Huston feels that she has betrayed Canada by leaving it, by marrying a French citizen, by choosing Paris as her home, by having and raising children there, and—most important— by choosing to write her many books in French. A number of years ago, a close friend gave me Huston’s book because she thought I would be able to relate to it—and she couldn’t have been more right. I moved to Quebec from Ontario when most people were doing the reverse. Quebec’s long history of nationalism and separatist views led to a mass exodus of Anglophones, particularly in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. That 120 exodus culminated with the 1995 referendum on separatism, which failed. Many questioned my move—particularly members of my extended family who had not spent much time in Quebec and were not intimately acquainted with its considerable charms. Given the often-heated political debate about Quebec’s long-term desire for separation, it was difficult to explain to some what I quickly grew to love about my new home: warm, often politically passionate, cultured French- and English-speaking Quebecers with attitudes I respect, and, of course, a language I love and now get to speak every day. I like living in this in-between land of being neither Frenchspeaking pure laine nor English-speaking Quebecer, but English-speakerfrom -somewhere-else. It forces me to think about my own point of view in all this. Have I lost north? Am I without direction? No. In fact, the absence of direction, of north, has forced me to find what works for me. It’s not north I’m seeking, but my north. { I’ve been thinking a great deal about my mother’s north. Sometimes, I think she has no north. I think this is what happens after sixty years in your adopted country, of trying to assimilate but not really reflecting on it. What I mean is, she doesn’t really think about why, as a Dutch immigrant, she might still be different, even after sixty years. The point is, she’s here, and that’s that. When she went back to the Netherlands in the early and mid-’90s, however, it forced her to reflect and to reconcile. It made the chasm all too obvious and impossible to deny. Going back made her lose her north all over again. Yes, she found it again when she visited her aging relatives and got to speak their Dutch and feel bonded by a shared past. But she lost it— and lost it hard—when she met all their children and members of their extended families, whom she’d never known, and when she saw that their ideas and their Dutch were completely different from what she had known during her youth. On top of all this, she found an evolved and hyper-liberal country , one in which prostitution and marijuana were legal and the passing of the assisted-suicide bill was seriously on the table. So, she had thought she would find her north, but she found something else. Can you find partial north? Half north? What is that, anyway? Northeast by ten degrees? Northwest by less or more? 121 { My questions about my mother’s notion of north are compounded by something I didn’t expect: the fact that when I went to the Netherlands myself in 2010 to visit her childhood residence, I felt more at home there than I have anywhere at any point in my life. I found my north even though I don’t speak the language and have no close familial connections there. Just as I picked up and moved to Montreal, I could easily imagine moving...