Yesterday was the 76th anniversary of Holland’s Remembrance Day. My father was a five year old boy living in Lisse, Holland (my family ran a tulip bulb export business) at the time, but still recalls the joy, relief, and celebration of that moment, particularly as his home was occupied by soldiers.
I had a chance to visit my father’s childhood home 10 years ago with my uncle, (and a few years later again with my immediate family). My uncle wasn’t exactly sure of the address so we literally drove – I think about 100 miles per hour on both sides of the road – down a rural road in Holland going from door to door asking people which house it was (I was embarrassed, but amused), and we finally determined it on a gut feeling. The owners were kind and we were able to have a look around. It was a cute little house with an infinite rows of tulip fields in the back. This was the first week of April, so peak tulip season. It was impossible to picture it during war times.
In an odd twist of events, on our drive home my uncle very casually informed me that no air traffic was allowed due to a volcano erupting in Iceland, and I was ‘quarantined’ to my cousin’s house in the Dutch countryside for a week, surrounded by canals of children rowing around right behind her townhouse, as well as sheep, horses, and the ‘Breuekelen’ Bridge a short walk away. My cousin was a gem and brought me food and wine all day while I was on conference calls and we snuck into Amsterdam to the Heineken Brewery one afternoon when I was supposed to be working. A friend from the states was with me as well as we had just run the Paris Marathon together.
This is one of my favorite travel memories, and a reminder of why some good can come from things beyond your control, and sometimes you need to just surrender to it. (Something I’m still relatively horrible at, but working on.)
What we are going through right now is awful, but there will be an end to to the madness, and there will be a great deal of joy as there was 75 years ago – and hopefully that joy and hope is what we all remember 75 years from now.
PS – In the event you are interested to know more about what the Dutch liberation day looked like, my dad found this video which is pretty spectacular: https://nos.nl/l/2332852
A sense of place 