Oooooohhhhhh Holland, how I love you!
Every day here is so precious and wonderful. Each second however, is dragging me closer and closer to when I have to leave... and I am starting to get scared! I'm SO not ready to be done with this yet... I really love this country, I love the places, I love the people, I love the life that I live here. I love the way I think and feel and experience while I am here. I don't want to leave all that behind. But, such is life. I suppose I will just have to figure out how to carry all that with me, rather than feel as though I am turning my back and stepping away from it all.
Anyway, quite a lot has happened since I last wrote, I have been a busy girl! Let's begin the recount!
So, on Sunday, Hadewig (my Oma's sister's daughter), and her partner Dedmer picked me up from Marc and Astrid's in Hilversum. It was a packed schedule that day, as we drove to Den Haag and I speedily acquainted myself with my beautiful (and SPACIOUS) new home for the next couple of days, before we jumped back into the car and with the help of the oh-so-homely Australian accent of the Tom Tom made our way to the coast. The Dutch beach- so loved and desired by Hollanders... certainly not an Australian beach. But it was nice.
Now, I have to admit... I was nervous. STILL I hadn't been able to get over all my stupid fears and doubts and worries. Mum said to me at one point in the midst of my endless neurotic email-rants that I berrated her with day after day after day, like the never-ending air raid from Hell, she said "It must make you tired, worrying all the time what people think of you", and she could not have been more right... sooooooo tired. In fact, life becomes one giant yawn! Ha ha ha... But really, it is such a waste of energy and brain-power. It just drains all your battery life, and I end up flat and lifeless like a rag-doll.
However, as much as I know this... well, it didn't help to know it! Hadewig was so beautiful and vibrant and full of life and Dedmer was confident and energetic and strong... and all I could think was "oh my god, I will never be cool enough to pull it off with these people".
And their lives are so impressive. They're always moving, always doing something. We went to a BBQ which acted as a reunion for Hadewig's RopaRun team. A team of... I don't know, maybe 25 people- some were runners, some were cyclists, some were drivers, some were caterers and some were masseurs- they travelled from Paris to Rotterdam to raise money for people with cancer. This is such a small example of the incredible things they have moulded out of their lives, the amazing and inspiring little models they've cast from the clay of their being. So much committment and effort for such a wonderful cause. Hooooweee I wish I could say something like that about myself and my life... maybe one day. I plan to make it so.
Anyway, it made me slightly more scared, to see that this would be the first impression I carved out for the latest additions to the family album I'm compiling in my memory and in my heart. Being already quite socially awkward... the language barrier only magnifies the problem probably, oh, I don't know... a million-fold. I got pretty good at pretending I wasn't completely socially inept... but this was only when the people around me spoke my language. When people who have gathered to relax and have a good time, have to constantly think and analyse and grind their brains just to include me in a conversation that I won't have anything of value to contribute to anyway... well, it basically doesn't run all that smoothly, and I usually end up folded in the corner with an awkward, aching grin pasted above my chin. I try, I really try, but it's a skill I have yet to master.
Anyway, there was another tag-along, a South African lady who turned up and we both enjoyed feeling as though we were present there, and just being able to weild our native tongue guilt-free for a while.
It did make me happy that Hadewig felt like she could share that occassion with me, that I was something in her life that could be brought along to an event like that. I was someone, and I could be seen!
It also stroked my worried, quivering little soul (and if I'm being honest, I guess my self-esteem is a bit of a player in all this too), that Hadewig took the next two days off work to show me around. I was still quite worried that first day, I was still a while off settling into my own skin. We cycled to the market, then to the city centre of Den Haag, where we saw the Parliament buildings, beautiful cobbled squares and alleys, splendid light trickling through the trees that lines the streets. We cycled through beautiful gardens, past the Queen's palace, through the dunes to the beach where we sat and ate-surrounded by meandering naked bodies peppering the 'normal' beachogoers. We went to the Panorama Mesdag- the biggest panorama in Holland. It is a massive painting of the beach and neighbouring city that surrounds and engulfs you and comes to life all around you. It was as though the essence of this place, the Hague itself, the atmosphere, the life and work and play of this space and time, it had been captured and condensced and then lapped all over the walls, and there we were, breathing it all in. It was actually quite moving, aside from being technically spectacular and breathtaking. It made you dizzy to look at it too long- the sheer realism of it coupled with the fact that the sails and the waves and the sea-gulls don't actually move like something that lifelike should.
It was art not merely reflecting the world, but building it up around us- concentrating it and hitting us with a triple dose. It was beautiful.
Slowly I began to dissolve the film I'd wrapped myself in, and I started to be able to move my joints again. I was so happy to share this time and these moments with Hadewig.
Dedmer too was SO kind. I am inexpressibly shocked at the kindness these people have continually showed me. Especially these partners. It was the same with Pieter back in Amsterdam. The connection between Dedmer and I was pretty much a fraction of a hair on a fly's butt... but he put so much effort, so much thought, so much kindess and selfless generosity into ensuring I was happy and comfortable and safe. It was incredible, inspiring and deeply touching that someone could be so welcoming and kind and could embrace me so open-heartedly without any 'obligation' (in whatever sense of the word...). There are so many good people in the world, people who are good because it's good to be good. People who are kind and giving and open and loving, not because they have to be, and not because they get something for it, but just because their hearts are giant, pulsing centres of... goodness! It really does inspire me, and makes me desperate to achieve such a presence in the world and among people.
The next day we went to Delft. What a beautiful city! Already, my stresses were being thrown off behind me like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs... slowly but surely I was leaving all that shit behind me. I felt so much more comfortable, and it meant so much to me to share these spaces, these moments with this woman whom I was really beginning to love like a sister. We went to the Prisenhof (?) museum, the Old Church which was beautiful and serene and dripping with history and culture. We had lunch at a cafe by a canal, and I could sit and suck in the Delft air, full of richness, density, history, culture, depth and beauty. The whole town smelt of rich, earthy yeast because of the yeast factory situated there and it only added to the pleasure, to the earthly humanity of the beautiful, layered city.
We saw the Vermeer Museum, had coffee and cake which tasted about 200 times better because it was freeeeeeeee! We went also to the New Church which was beautiful as well, and we climbed about ten million steps that wound and spiralled to the peak of the church where we stood and gazed out at the expanse of wonder around us.
One of my favourite things that I have found here in Holland/Europe, is the role that history plays, the form it takes. There is SO much history here, more than the child of such a remarkably young nation can even comprehend. Every crack and corner is lathered in it. But the people don´t place it all in a glass container and observe it with a yard-stick in their fingers. They walk around in it, they breathe it and touch it and taste it in the air. It´s a character in their lives, another person they interact with every day, not a distant, abstract idea. I think it´s very special, and I love it!
As we stood up there on the Church tower and our thoughts and words and memories drifted out and mixed with those of hundreds of years worth of hundreds of thousands of people, I felt this incredible sense of being part of something, of being present, of being alive in this world. Hadewig was my family, my kin, Holland was my country, my home, my past, my present- and I have no doubt in my mind, a significant player in my future. 'Twas lovely!
By that evening, as we ate a ridiculously late dinner which I had tried with all my might, but spectacularly failed to prepare on time, the walls were well and truly gone, and those stupid voices had choked and passed out in the corner. I was so comfortable, and so relaxed, and my experience there with these wonderful people was real and true and not marred by neuroses and worthless, wasteful paranoia.
The next day I went to Leiden which I was to witness through an almost inpenitrable wall solid rain. But despite the ridiculous amount of liquid all around me, I was very contented and very happy there. Leiden too was so very beautiful and rich and satisfying. I ate too much chocolate, too much ice-cream... and came home to a wonderful night of Wii action with Hadewig as Dedmer embarked on three hours of real-life sword combat training. What a lovely surprise to find that my inhibitions had moved elsewhere, and I could just have fun and laugh and be free. What a lovely surprise to find that here too, I had a home.
The next evening I was taken to Voorburg to meet another of my Oma's sisters, Virginie, and her husband, Martin. Before we arrived at their house we went on a desperate search for food, the finale of which saw us eating take-away Thai on a park bench with plastic bowls and spoons bought from the supermarket. I would recommend it to anyone stupid enough to ask for my recommendations...
It was lovely to sit in Virginie and Martin's home- to look around and see animals crafted by my Oma; to cast my eyes downward and see the exact same Ikea table that adorns Opa and Oma's living room, and then up to see the same little storage drawers (also from Ikea, which if I didn't know better, I would say is the only furniture shop in all of Holland...). It was lovely to sit and hear stories about my family, spoken by my family, with flecks of speech and turns of phrase and bends of voice that I am so used to from my family. It is so lovely to constantly experience these moments in which I feel part of something, part of a world and (an entity almost) that doesn't define me, but definitely adds something profoundly to my identity and to my sense of self.
That evening I had to say goodbye to Hadewig and Dedmer, as I would poke my head from the bedroom loooong after they had left for work the next morning. Oooooohhhh the emotion! I was SO sad to say goodbye. It is an odd dimension to this whole experience. I come here, and I find these people who fit so perfectly in the empty seats in my heart. They'll sit in these seats, and I'll carry them forever there. But in finding them, and in tying a string so tight from my heart to theirs, I then have to turn my back and leave again- and as special and as precious as it is to collect these strings, as I walk away they pull tight, and it stings. I wouldn't want to go through life without the strings, so I'll accept the sting as an inevitable and DEFINITELY worth it side-effect, but it does hurt when I have to leave people I've grown to love a lot.
So, it was sad to say goodbye. Even though it's only two nights now until I see them again... but the point is that this time that I could share my life with them is over, and it's sad... but as I said before... such is life. It's ok. The pain is worth the pleasure, and then some!!!
I was so happy, so comfortable, so contented and at home and warm in their house. What a special time...
I am now in Doorwerth, with Hadewig's parents, Mechtild and Nuky. Two wonderful people, who I have loved already for a long time now, and here I am also SO very happy. I think the bricks of my walls have been put into permanant storage now for a while, and hopefully won't see the light of day for a while. But I am so comfortable here. Not even once have I worried. I am just free to be myself, and I don't have to watch and worry and wonder. I can just exist with two incredibly kind and accepting people who show me only love. Tomorrow I can spend with them, and then Sunday is the big party- Great Oma's birthday where the family gather from all over the globe and hopefully I will hold my own alright, and represent for the Australian faction acceptably! I'm excited, also a little scared, but not in the same way as I have been. Not in a crippling, self-deprecating way, but in an... excited way!
Anyway, that will be a blog on it's own I reckon, that party, so stay alert!!
Thanks for reading...
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