Andijk

Visiting my mom's childhood town and home on my lineage trip in 2022 to the Netherlands

I had woken up from the second nap I had taken on the side of the road that day.  Jet lag was on my heels and being solo, with a full itinerary throughout the country of Holland that day, I knew I had to punctuate the adventure with rest along the way.  The first nap was in a park where little kids and their families were for Saturday morning soccer games.  The second nap was along a side street near the house my mom was born, in a small town called Andijk (pronounced On/dike because it's literally surrounded by dikes to protect the town from water).  

I was in Holland for a week-long study abroad program for work and decided that I’d add a few days on to the time to road trip around and traipse through the towns that my family once walked and called home.  

In Andijk, my first stop was to the church where my Opa was the organist.  I sat in a pew, a congregation of one, and imagined him playing, imagining being filled with the reverberations of his music.  There, seeing the very keys he pounded, I could almost hear his beating heart expressing in song all the things he couldn’t say.  My mom always says with such love: “he was a quiet man”.

The next stop was my mom’s childhood house.  Of course, with an impromptu nap first.  I think anyone who may have walked by my car, seeing the empty coffee cups, a suitcase, the passenger seat filled with snacks, would have wondered who the heck this strange sleeping lady was. Had they asked, I had my answer ready to go.  “My mom grew up right over there.  I’m the daughter of someone from this place.” I grew up in a small town and you can best be sure, you know when someone is from out of town, but here felt like a little piece of home.

If this little plot of land could speak it would weep for joy and pain. It was the home my mom was born in, it was the home with the canal behind it where her older brother Peter drowned when he was five.  It was the home where my Oma and Opa hid two young Dutch men in their walls after they saw the writing on the wall of what Hitler and his army were doing:  enlisting men from the counties they were occupying for the Third Reich.  It was the home where a family was raised and where hundreds of conversations took place mulling over the possibility of leaving their life and all they knew for a new one. 

With these stories, I mustered the courage to knock on the front door.  

Who would answer?  How many people have lived here since 1951?  Would the person living here now speak any English? Would they even answer their door to a masked stranger in a time of distancing and the awkward relating amidst pandemic protocols? 

A dog barked, footsteps approached from the other side of the door, and then a tussle at the knob.  As the door merged open I could quickly tell the woman was warm and friendly.  I also learned that this was going to be an interesting challenge as she did not speak very much English and I did not speak very much Dutch, but here we were both trying.  I pointed at the home and said “my mom was born here”.  She smiled.  I guess she understood me or at the very least could tell I wasn’t a door to door salesperson or a murderer, so waved for me to come in. 

I couldn’t believe it.  Someone was actually home, the person was actually friendly, and here I was walking into my mom childhood home.  She led me through the living room and the kitchen.  We were doing our best to understand each other and then I had an idea.  I would ‘Who Wants to Be A Millionaire’ this situation and phone a friend. Thankfully, even with the time change as a factor, my mom answered.  I said “Mom! I am inside your house in Andijk and I’m with the woman who owns your old house now.  I need your help though, can you please translate for us?!”  My mom shared in Dutch about being born there and the story of the hidden men in the walls.  The woman led me to the room my mom was describing which was her bedroom now. Sometimes walls do talk and I could see her amazement to know the stories that once animated these rooms.  

I followed this woman through her home as she talked to my mom on speaker phone.  I can’t tell you exactly all that was said between them, but I do know I will always cherish that I got to hear my mom speaking in her first language, her voice filling those rooms and hallways.