The End of the World as I Knew and Loved It… August 26, 2006

There was much going on that early summer in 1960, first I had a baby sister. That brought on much change. I was no longer the centre of my parent’s universe. In fact it seemed to me I no longer existed as anything too important at all. I was largely invisible. So it did not surprise me that no one thought to mention that we were moving, and not just a few streets over either, but what seemed like a world away.

I was told in essentially fairy tale format what a wonderful new life we would have in the new house. A house mind you, not a flat as we had always had. I was told about all the wonderful new friends I would have and the bicycle and toller skates I could have because in this village there was little if any traffic so it would be safe. Of course I could neither bicycle or roller skate and had a miserable time learning anything new.

Where I sat there would be chaos in my life. I would lose the friends I already had and loved, notably Toni and Robbie. There was no ballet school where we were going so that would be given up. Mom had already stopped singing and the piano was largely silent now she was so busy with baby. We would no longer live by the sea and I found all this change very, very scary.

I knew I could not do anything to change their mind. Pointless to cry about it. Mostly I was very frightened and felt very lonely. Toni was very upset that I was moving even though mum promised she would visit and could sleep over. Everything I had known would be gone with the exception of my family and my toys and books. I was going somewhere very, very different. They might not even have sparrows.

The men with the truck came and picked up everything and a big car came and got us, the dog slept at daddy’s feet in the front and mom, baby sister and I were all in the back. I watched through the back window as the world I’d known and was happy with my entire life rapidly grew smaller and smaller until I could not see it at all anymore.

Windmills and rows of poplars flew by and slowly the landscape changed. Flat polder land softened into hills and valleys. There were more and more trees and lots of wildflowers were growing along the roadside. Towns became less frequent and farms and villages were strung together like beads. There were almost no windmills anymore and the ones I did see were very different, squareish rather than rounded and very few were working. I saw many more horses and cows. In village streets horses [pul;led carts with everything from milk to manure being brought house to house. The air had a thick moist, almost musky smell about it and the rumble of city life had dulled and then gone quiet. I hadn’t seen a sparrow yet but spotted many birds of kinds and colours never seen before.

As exciting as all of this was I wanted to go back, back to our flat with the black metal stove in the kitchen. Back to the little room with the blue-green walls and the purple linoleum floors, back to my ballet classes and the walks through the polder to the sea. My mother was very quiet, and so was my father. I sense d they had not agreed on this move away. The baby lay snoozing and suckling intermittently and mother barely looked at either of us, staring with moist eyes out the automobile’s windows.

A few hours of driving late we arrived. The house was much larger than I imagined. Tall, of a red orange brick. There were roses blooming in the front and trees on one side of it and neighbours attached to the other side. Lots of neighbours all at the front in an informal reception line. I couldn’t understand any of them well. Mum had been quite right when she said they spoke very differently here, Dutch here was softer and less guttural.

The big men were already unloading our belongings when we arrived and made short work of it. Daddy told me to go inside and pick a bedroom, apparently there were five of them, or six, he wasn’t sure. In our old flat we had two, and frankly it had seemed quite enough. Well, we weren’t going back, I had to give that up.

I was up the stairs two floors and at the end was a little room with odd little corners and angles where the floor met roof and a window jutted out facing the street. Out of that window was the most beautiful view. I could see not just the whole of this village (which was very, very small), but also another village and another behind that.)

“That’s Germany”, explained my father who’d come up to see how I was and to show the burly men where to put my bed down. Daddy chatted and put the bed together as soon as the men left. I stayed upstairs to put my books away and watched as my father cycled won the street to pick up fries for supper because we didn’t yet have a stove. I cried because I missed Toni and because I was scared of the loud kids paying outside. I had just got used to being beat on in school and knew how to avoid being to hurt and these kids really seemed tougher, well they were noisy, playing with toy guns and ropes and bicycles. After eating the fries I was off to bed and watched out the window for a while. Even thought I heard and saw many people I was more lonely than I had ever felt.