100. Two Sisters

This blog post is about the early lives of two of my sisters, Liesbeth and Margriet, and about why remembering and recording their stories is important to me, their older brother. It is an attempt to retain and preserve some childhood memories and to pass these on to their children and grandchildren and to those who were fortunate enough to know them.

Liesbeth passed away several years ago, as did her husband, Dick. We miss them greatly. Margriet, thankfully, is still active and very alert and I am very grateful to be in frequent contact with her.  However, her husband, Frank, is sadly, also no longer with us.

This blog post refers to their childhood and teenage years and to their very early careers.  It does not cover the later years. Most of what follows is based on Margriet’s file notes and recollections, as well as on information contained in a book, written by Liesbeth in 2018, titled “Het Huis aan de Hoofdstraat” (The House on the Main Street).

War years

Liesbeth and Margriet were born in March 1943, right in the middle of the Second World War (1940-45), during the German occupation of the Netherlands. They were born at home, within fifteen minutes of each other.

Margriet weighed only 4 pounds, suffered life-threatening breathing difficulties and hypothermia and needed urgent specialist care. She was taken, in a shoebox, to a hospital at night, by both her father and the local doctor. A night curfew had been put in place, and it was very dark and dangerous to be outside. Luckily, the German soldiers who noticed and stopped them, let them pass through, after having been made aware of the baby’s desperate condition. Margriet remained in hospital for 6 weeks and, thankfully, she returned home a good deal stronger.  

The war affected our parents and us in many ways. In her book, Liesbeth wrote about her own experience during a bombardment. She and Margriet had been sitting in their highchairs, when an aircraft flew very low over our house, shattering all the windows. They were grabbed out of their chairs by our mother and then they all hid under the dining room table. For a long time afterwards, both children remained very scared of aircraft noise.

Childhood

Both Liesbeth and Margriet remember several of the significant events which took place after the war, such as when our mother fell ill and was taken to the local emergency hospital. The two girls then had to stay for six months with our Aunt Eta, who lived in a beautiful big house in Leiden. Aunt Eta was mother’s eldest sister and she, and her daughter, were very close to us and always there to support us when needed.

Liesbeth wrote that when she and Margriet were first allowed to walk to kindergarten independently, they treasured their freedom and enjoyed all kinds of little adventures, such as talking to the fishermen who were sitting at the side of the towpath, along the old Rhine river. As a child I also loved to walk along these paths in our village, watching the busy traffic on the Rhine, with many large barges, small seagoing ships and pleasure craft, passing by.

Liesbeth and Margriet, as far as we, their older siblings, were concerned, looked the same, had the same voice, dressed the same, shared the same girlfriends and shared the same bedroom.  They slept together in a double bed until they were 10 years old. They attended the same kindergarten and the same primary school. As Liesbeth summed it up: ”Margriet was my everything. I never felt alone when she was there and this did not change until we were 18 years old and we went our separate ways”.

I think the twins had happy years as young children. They played with the boys and girls who lived in the side street bordering our house. Games such as playing with spin tops, marbles, hopscotch and hula hooping were popular at the time. They loved being part of a large family. It was “gezellig” in our family. “Gezellig” is a Dutch word which describes a feeling of being in a relaxed, cosy and happy space, while experiencing togetherness. I asked Sue how she would interpret this Dutch expression and she immediately offered the words “warm and embracing”, which I think describes the   togetherness which we all treasured in our family.

Margriet and Liesbeth occupied a place right in the centre of our large family. Of the eight children, 3 were older and 3 were younger than the twins were. Ria (post 14) and Henk (post 97) and I were older. Max, Marjan and Wilma were younger.

As Liesbeth described it, Mother was always present when we children came back home in the afternoon after school.  Then we all drank “gezellig” tea together, which meant that they shared precious moments of comfort, cosiness, closeness and love.

As a family, we never went on holidays together. It was simply not possible to manage the logistics and the expense for our large family. But Liesbeth and Margriet often stayed for days or weeks with one of their aunts (our mother’s older sisters), who lived in different cities in Holland. Also, in summer, our family made day trips, on our bikes, to nearby seaside villages. As Liesbeth described it: “My father had one child (in a seat) in front and one child (in a seat) on the back of the bicycle. My mother had one child on the back, and the slightly older children rode their own bikes”. We took little shovels, drinks, and bread rolls with us to the beach.

When they were about ten years old, the twins were given a swimming pass, along with a lesson card, so that they could get their swimming certificates. The water was sometimes only 15 or 16 degrees and, according to Liesbeth’s book, the girls got out of the pool with blue lips. “Every Saturday morning Dad came to check to see if we had made good progress.” I still shiver when I think back to my own cold, early morning swimming lessons, in that huge outdoor public swimming pool.

Liesbeth and Margriet attended the local primary school located in the centre of our village, a Christian school with a good reputation, which had been established by the Protestant church community in 1933. I attended the same school, and I remember the strict discipline imposed by the same headmaster.

Teenagers

The birthdays of our parents and of each of their eight children were always important events in our family and were celebrated with parties and presents. Margriet and Liesbeth always bought the same gift for each other. As Liesbeth relates, “The night before our birthdays, we would put it under each other’s pillow and then be very happy and “surprised” when we woke up and found it.”

Family celebrations were important and special and always involved Liesbeth and Margriet. At the celebration dinner for the 25^th wedding anniversary of our parents, the twins performed a short play for the guests and on their 17^th birthday they entertained 49 guests “with dancing and games”.

Together, they also shared sadness. Not long before their 17^th birthdays, our grandparents, Opa and Oma van der Kwaak, passed away. They died within two weeks of each other and Liesbeth and Margriet were greatly affected by their deaths. Our grandparents had been very important to us. They had always lived next to us and as children the two girls had spent many hours there, playing with what Liesbeth called the button box, the stove and the small cabinet containing beautiful stone jugs.

There were, of course, boyfriends.  Liesbeth met her friend Ben (“Benno”) at Sunday School and, by the summer of 1961, when she was 18, they were “going steady”. Benno was studying to become a schoolteacher. Margriet also had boys vying for her attention. She attended a New Year’s ball with one of them.

Separation

During their secondary school years, Liesbeth and Margriet had both been drawn to the “Childcare” and “Youth Care” programs available at the school, which influenced Margriet to begin her nursing career in mental health care, receiving her training at the “Dr. Mr .Willem van den Bergstichting”, in the village of Noordwijk. Caring for children with an intellectual disability became central throughout her entire working life.

Margriet had deliberately chosen an “in-residence” program for her training, because this would allow her to break free from Liesbeth and develop her own identity. Both she and Liesbeth had, initially, a very difficult time adjusting, because they missed each other so much. Looking back many years later, however, they could both say that it had been a good decision.

Liesbeth also trained to become a nurse. Her initial training was in a large hospital in the city of Leiden. She later moved to work as a nurse at the “Dillenburg”, a home for elderly people in our village, where she was made very welcome.

When Liesbeth was 21 years old, she announced that she had a new boyfriend, Dick, a 2nd year student in electro-technical engineering at Delft University. He soon became very popular with the whole family, but, as Liesbeth observed, hospital life (being serious and organised) and student life, were two worlds apart. With the arrival of Dick, Liesbet’s life changed completely. Dick became president of the Students Society and president of the Rugby Club, and their life became a whirlwind of parties and celebrations.

They married in September 1967. The family records show that: “the pre-wedding parties were fantastic. The oldies at the Dillenburg had composed songs and poems and performed individual acts. It was unforgettable. Their wedding day was fabulous. The wedding itself was beautiful and moving. Ma was overcome with emotion and shed many tears. During the church service two choirs sang, one made up of the children and the other one made up of the staff of the Dillenburg. The reception was a wild and happy affair, with some of the students clowning about. The dinner was exquisite.”

Margriet’s life followed a different path. After obtaining her nursing diploma and working as a nurse, her career changed when she was asked to collaborate with the psychologist of the institution. She obtained additional diplomas in psychology and completed a four-year study in “orthopedagogiek”, a field of study focused on guiding children who did not fall within the “normal” range. She became the first psychological assistant within the boarding schools for the mentally disabled in The Netherlands. She was allowed to administer tests and prepare the accompanying reports. I found it interesting that her pioneering work was explained and shown on Dutch TV.

In 1970, Margriet’s interest turned to Canada, where her sister, Ria, lived and she decided to take six weeks of vacation to investigate possible work and living opportunities there. It was in the aircraft, on the return journey from Canada to the Netherlands that she met Frank, a Dutch sociologist. They had a pleasant conversation, but upon arrival back at the airport, they went their separate ways.

Within a few months, Margriet decided to return to Canada as an emigrant. She followed through on this decision, but in the meantime her friendly relationship with Frank had developed and within a year Margriet again returned to The Netherlands.

Frank’s religion was Catholic and Margriet’s was Protestant. In a country, at a time, where interfaith marriages were not common and were frowned upon by many, Margriet and Frank were not married until 1978, when it became a little more acceptable. The wedding itself took place in a beautiful church in the city of Utrecht. The church ceremony was conducted jointly by a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister, both part of a student organisation. It was a very special occasion, enthusiastically supported by both their parents and families and attended by many people. As the saying goes: “Love conquers all!”

There is so much more to say about my twin sisters, about their developing careers and those of their husbands, about their families, their children and grandchildren, about their travels and their lives in different countries and about our many family reunions and more. Hopefully, their continuing stories will be recorded by someone else.

I believe that Liesbeth and Margriet greatly valued their closeness to each other as well as the support of the family surrounding them. It was an environment which would prove to be  nourishing and beneficial to them, later in their lives.  

Liesbeth’s afterword in her book reads:

“I grew up in a very warm and loving family. We learned to appreciate the small and simple things and that it is important to be considerate of one another and to care for each other. Of course, I changed later in life. The extensive traveling, the contact with so many people and cultures, also shaped me. Nevertheless, I have always tried to maintain that simplicity, to be grateful for a pleasant conversation, for being able to do something for someone, grateful for a beautiful sunny day, for the closeness of my family, relatives, and friends.”

I am grateful to Liesbeth and Margriet for showing me the importance of a happy childhood and of being brought up in a warm, supportive family.

And I am grateful to my parents for teaching us about love and kindness to others.

P.S.

Writing these short stories has been an enjoyable and rewarding experience for me. Stories about Sandgate, the Shorncliffe Pier and Moreton Bay, about the wildlife I observed there and about the people I was fortunate to meet.  Also, stories about my travels, my working life and much more. I enjoyed, most of all, writing about my Dutch family as I remember them when I was younger. It helped me to reconnect with my siblings and with the younger generation.

Sue, my wife and best friend, edited and greatly improved numerous drafts. Without her encouragement and expert editing, I would not have been able to write this blog. Sue has also written seven of her own stories and I am very grateful to her and to my walking friend, Frederick, who has contributed three more.

I thank all family members, friends and other readers who have responded to some posts and sent me their generous comments.

Post 100 marks the end of 3 years of publishing fortnightly posts. I started this blog at the age of 87 and I am now 90 years old and, with having some age-related problems with my vision, it feels right to have a break from this blog and then consider other possible options.

O.P.