Letter #71 - Xander

I've mentioned before I have a lot of "adopted" family.  Xander is also a member of this group.  He is my dutch big brother and I miss him a whole bunch.  I've been thinking about his family a lot lately (he has a son who has West Syndrome) so I sent him some love.  When my family lived in Rotterdam, Xander started out as our gardener/handyman and quickly evolved into part of the family.  He would come over and spend time with us, help us figure out cultural challenges, keep my brother and I entertained and (mostly) out of trouble, and more.  When my family got to return to Rotterdam to visit in 2006 it was great to be able to meet his wife Patricia, then when my husband and I (boyfriend at the time) went to visit in 2008, we got to meet his son.

Writing to Xander allowed me to remember all of the things I love about him and his family.  I have so many great memories of time with him... from goofing off and singing loudly as a kid to more grown up conversations and glasses of wine as an adult.  I adore him, his wife is awesome and their son is simply amazing.  I hope my letter brings him as many happy memories as it did for me in writing it!

Letter #60 - Herman

I am so blessed by my family.  I had a wonderful upbringing and so many opportunities that most kids don't get.  I lived the life of an expat and as a result I also got to meet a lot of family and friends I would have otherwise never had the chance to meet.  While I *had* met Oome Herman prior to my family moving to Rotterdam, I wouldn't have gotten to know him nearly as well as we did having lived so much closer.  Hetty & Herman are my dad's aunt and uncle, making them my great-aunt and great-uncle.  And they are truly great.  They took us under their wing from the second we stepped off that plane in Amsterdam, and my life wouldn't be the same without them in it.  Last month I received news that Oome Herman is once again battling cancer.  I was devastated.  In 2008 I had the chance to bring my (then boyfriend) to Europe with me for a two week stay.  During that time we spent a few days in Eindhoven with my dutch family.  Oome Herman was ill then as well, and I really really struggled with seeing him that way.  He wasn't up to leaving the house, which meant we spent way more time with my aunts and cousins, and only saw him a little bit.  It was troubling to me, but at the same time I was so incredibly grateful to be able to sit with him and watch tv and snuggle.  When we left, he promised that the following year he would be coming to visit for our wedding.  I laughed and told him it might be more than a year and he assured me I was wrong.  I wasn't, but it wasn't as far off as I had expected.  Just 2 years later we were getting married, and Herman was too sick to come.  Again I was devastated.  I of course understood but was so sad that he was no longer able to travel, since I don't know when I'll have another chance to see him.

This week I sent him a letter in a card that I hope will make him laugh.  I sent him some photos and a whole lot of love.  He's having surgery this month and I just pray it helps, he's in a lot of pain which bothers me tremendously.  I pray my next trip to the Netherlands won't be for his funeral but for another visit with him.  He makes me laugh so much, I have never laughed until I cried more often than in his presence.  He has so much love in his heart and I miss him so very much.  Those reading this entry, I would appreciate prayers or good thoughts or positive energy... whatever your form of well wishing to him and his wife... that they may get some relief from these struggles.

Letter #55 - Andy

So remember a few posts ago when I thought my numbering was all screwed up?  It was.  I got a note on facebook this week from my dear friend Andy thanking me for the card I sent him.  So I'm not crazy :o)

Andy is from the same era of my life as Haitham, and he had a birthday last month.  Andy and I just reconnected within the last year thanks to (you guessed it) Facebook.  Andy and I are self proclaimed siblings.  When my family moved from Rotterdam he came to the airport to see me off and gave me a beautiful silver bracelet as a reminder of our friendship.  Within a year of our move that bracelet disappeared and I was devastated.  As a result, I worked twice as hard to keep him in my heart because I am usually big on physical mementos (not as an exclusive reminder but as an enhanced reminder).  Andy and I had only just gotten to know each other a month or two prior to my family moving.  I already knew that we would only have a little time together, and I think he actually adopted me as his sister so he could redirect his crush on me since he knew I was leaving... he's never said as much but I have my suspicions ;o)

I lost touch with Andy for years and years, and he was one of those people I would often initiate searches for.  When I finally received a message from him, I was elated to reconnect.  I always think of him on his birthday, and was so excited this year to finally be in a position again to send him a card (since previous years had left me with no mailing address for him)  Writing out his card gave me an opportunity to send him so much of my love and the gratitude I have for his love and friendship.  He's loyal to a fault and even though years had gone by without us speaking, we were able to pick up as if we had never been forced to let off.  I adore him and desperately hope we can be reunited in person some day!

Letter #54 - Haitham

For someone who didn't get married until the age of 27 (not that I'm so ridiculously old!) I have had an awful lot of marriage proposals in my life.  Not a single one came with a ring (including the one I accepted, come to think of it...!) and most weren't actually serious (many were from boys under the age of 7).  My friend Haitham is responsible for many of those proposals.  For most of them, he wasn't single at the time, so I chalked it up to him trying to make me feel good about myself.  Others I chalked up to him being a hopeless flirt... one of the many things I love about him!  Proposals aside, we developed a wonderful and love filled friendship.  Over the years, Haitham has been much better at keeping in touch with me than I have with him.  When my family returned to the Netherlands in 2006 to visit, he made time to take me out for an evening and catch up (and propose again...).  We are now both happily married (not to each other) and he and his wife are expecting their first child.

I wanted to reconnect with him to share in his excitement and to remind him of how much he means to me, even if I'm not always good at returning his messages.  As I wrote his letter, I was struck by the face that I have no concrete understanding of how he and I became friends in the first place.  We met in high school, he's about 5 years older than me (which in high school is a HUGE age gap), we had no common classes, no real common friends, and yet we hung out at lunch and breaks nearly every day.  We laughed A LOT together, and pondered human behaviour and human relationships.

I dearly wish I had the means to visit him once his baby is born, to meet his wife and child, to watch him glow as a father, to give him a hug and a kiss and to laugh with him again.  Maybe someday that will happen... who knows, by then I may have a family of my own to introduce to his!

Letter #53 - Ivana

My first year of high school was an international experience.  Not just because it was our last year in Rotterdam, but because I went to the International high school there.  My class had about 14 students representing 12 countries.  For someone who has a sharp ear for accents, and a tendency to unknowingly adopt them in her own speech, I sounded WEIRD by the time I left that school :o)

One of my classmates was a drop dead gorgeous Croatian girl named Ivana.  Ivana and I got along well that year, though we weren't bestest friends.  I think had circumstances in class politics been different, we may have been much closer during that time.  Since then (and it's been about 15 years) we have kept in somewhat regular contact, and I just recently got a really great email from her.  I was glad to write her this week and catch up a bit again.  She had asked a bit about our wedding so I sent her a photo and told her about it.  Caught her up on my life a bit and asked how things were with her.

It's really awesome to me that I have some friends I am able to keep in touch with even though we haven't seen each other in 15 years.  I moved to the US the year after that, and she has since moved back to Croatia.  We keep in touch online and facebook stalk each other with some regularity.  She's a beautiful girl with a beautiful personality and I hope someday that we are able to see each other again and catch up in person!

Letter #25 - Mary

I have always had friends from different generations than my own.  As I progressed through school, our moves ended up putting me ahead of my age group in school meaning I was usually the baby of the class (age-wise).  The nature of my dad's career for most of my life constantly had me conversing with grown ups, and so age has just never really been a factor for me when it comes to feeling comfortable or who I gravitate toward in a friendship, etc.

Mary is one of my 'older' friends.  Older as in she is older than me, but not OLD :o)  Her 5 year old daughter is my goddaughter.  Mary lived with her husband in Rotterdam during part of our time there, and got to know my mum.  The two of them became very good friends, and I remember always loving when we'd get to spend time with them because they were fun, outgoing, didn't treat us like dumb kids, and were a cultural connection to 'home' for us (read: English speaking and knowledgeable about very important cultural icons like Kraft Dinner and Double Stuff Oreos)  When Mary & her husband moved back to the US, I had no idea that life would not only continue to sustain our friendship, but that specifically my friendship with them would continue to grow and develop in ways I had never imagined.

Mary is an amazing woman.  Her life rarely seems to go "as planned" and yet she is a champion at rolling with the punches.  I have had the great blessing of being a part of her family's life over the last several years, and was so incredibly touched when they asked me if I would be a godmother to their daughter.  That has brought us even closer together.  When my family moved to Michigan, Mary was living in Indiana, and then Ohio.  Both driving distance for a weekend trip, something I often took advantage of.  Last year, they moved to North Carolina.  I was bummed.  Now they're no longer a quick weekend trip away.  As I've kept in touch with Mary (we're both big social media users which is awesome for keeping tabs on each other!) I've really empathised with some of the struggles they've had in transitioning.  Nothing hugely major, they got a great house, found a great school for their daughter, her husband seems to really be happy with his job (the reason for the move), they're closer to family, etc.  But the small things keep coming up, and those are the ones I completely get.  The community center isn't as cool as the last place, the grocery stores stock different options for their preferred locovore habits, the restaurants are different, the neighbours are different, and let's face it, sometimes you just crave a specialty beverage from that cafe down the street... except it's now in a different state.  I get that.  I get not being able to pick up the phone and make plans with a girlfriend anymore because she lives 10 hours away instead of 10 minutes, I get wishing that the guy at the library had the same disposition as the intern at your library "back home"

My letter to Mary brought a lot of those feelings of homesickness back for me.  Homesickness for every place I've lived that isn't here.  While for some that may seem like a really sad and wallowy place, for me it's always a place of comfort as well.  I can wrap myself in the memories of the places and faces that aren't right by me anymore, and it always ends up sparking really great memories too.  I hope that their move proves to be an even better adventure than past ones, and I know that in time it will be as much home to them as the last one, but in the meantime, I continue to try and be that piece of 'home' to help through the rough spots.

Letter #18 - Brenda

This week I have been feeling very homesick for Europe.  I think this is in part because this project forces me to spend a lot of time thinking about the people in my life, which of course includes all of the people from that time in my life as well.  I also have been chatting with a friend of mine who is soon to become an expat as she moves her family to Brazil, and that has had me very focused on my family's experiences.  This brought me to Brenda for today's letter.

Brenda and her husband were expats living in Germany while my family was in the Netherlands.  They were also church members, which is how our lives became intertwined.  I was never excited to travel to Germany when we lived there.  Partly because of my own cultural biases (I was living in one of the most devastated cities of WWII... those wounds haven't quite healed in most people), and partly because there were never any kids our age, usually a heavy concentration of older people who didn't speak much or any English, and it was BORING for my brother and I to be on those trips.  Brenda and her husband gave us a reason to look forward to going there.  When mom and dad would announce a trip to Germany, our first question was "are Brenda & Meredith going to be there?"


Writing to Brenda allowed me to remember many happy times spent with them, at camps, in their home, shopping at the American Stores on base where they worked... Mum and I were lucky enough to spend some time with them last year at our church's world conference, and so I was also able to reflect on those conversations.  Brenda has a warm and inviting spirit.  She is very motherly, and quite elegant.  She is someone who will always make me feel at home, because we were lucky enough to share the incredible experience of living outside of our own culture and language, and learning to see the world in a whole new light.  Granted we went through these experiences as two very different people in two very different places in our lives, but we still share the core of that experience, which is something I share with fewer and fewer people in my life as I've become more "geographically stable" as I like to call it.

Letter #10 - Jeri

This afternoon I finished writing a letter to a woman who has been a part of my life since I was four years old.  Jeri's husband was a classmate of my fathers' when he was completing his Masters' of Religion degree.

Jeri is a smart, funny, clever lady with a sharp wit and a great smile.  She's always embodied the "cool aunt" stereotype for me.  When my family moved to the Netherlands, I was entering the oh-so-delicate pre-teen years (I have since decided that it's the pre-teens who are the real terrors... full blown teens are already beginning to mellow...)  To this day, I do not know what inspired her to do so, but Jeri took me under her wing.  She knew that I liked to read, and so she would send me books she would find at this amazing used bookstore in her town.  While I became fluent in Dutch by the end of our time there, I still read mostly English books.  Books in general were pretty expensive over there, and English books were even pricier - when you could find a store that carried them!  Jeri had a knack for sending the exact kinds of books I would love, and I spent hours losing myself in the stories.

I know I sent her thank you notes at the time, but they were strictly for the books.  Today, I got to thank her for what was behind the books.  Jeri was a role model for me, even if I didn't get it at the time.  In my letter, I got to tell her how I've recently been able to pay her kindness forward to some pre-teens in my life.  I hope that my influence on them can be every bit as positive as Jeri's was on me.

Letter #9 - Ylva

Today's letter had made me incredibly homesick.  One of our old babysitters asked me awhile ago if I would mind sending her one of my wedding photos, and today seemed like the day to do it.  Writing the letter to go along with it instantly transported me through space and time to our home in Rotterdam, sitting on the floor in my room (even back then my desk was rarely clear enough to function... she says sitting on the couch typing this because her desk is currently not even reachable...) working on whatever.

Ylva was one of those babysitters who made us actually suggest our folks go out for a night because we wanted her to come over.  She would play with us, watch movies with us, help us work on our Dutch, play with our cat (R.I.P. Domino!), take us out shopping, swimming or to the playground... downtown to the really cool library, grocery shopping, to the pet store to look at the rabbits (which we eventually got one... and learned that we prefer not to have rodents as pets as they are far too much effort!)  Her family lived right down the street from us and all went to our church, so a lot of times Ylva would even have us come to her house where we would watch wrestling with her family, play with their seemingly endless family of hamsters, or watch her mom work on whatever project she had in her hands at the time.

As I grew older and began babysitting I tried to model my style after Ylva's.  She had always treated us like grown ups instead of dumb little kids.  She would have conversations with us, really interact with us and care about what we had to say or wanted to do.  She was also good at keeping us in line.  Being cool didn't mean not making us follow the rules.  Even if she didn't agree with all of the rules, she always made sure we followed what our parents wanted us to do, and she did it with love.  She knew our likes, our dislikes, our friends, our bad habits.  When I sat for kids I would try to establish that same spirit with them.  I love kids and so it's pretty easy to just hang out with them.  The important part (which Ylva excelled at) was to also remember to be that influencing source of authority (in a good way) so that kids can learn right from wrong and learn how to operate within the society they're in.

Writing to Ylva made me reflect on all these things, and still get homesick for the life I lived then... I know for sure I'll go back and visit many more times before my life is over, but I wonder if I'll ever be lucky enough to go live there again and share that part of my history and culture with my family?

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for those interested in viewing photos from the Netherlands, here are two albums from my two trips back to visit:

Eurotrip 2006 Photos

Eurotrip 2008 Travel Log (with some photos)

Eurotrip 2008 Photo Book