Elsie My Grandmother Continued

ELSIE (CONTINUED)



After 4 years in a Japanese concentration camp and 63 years old, she arrived in Holland together with us. Everything she had left behind in the care of others was sold or gone and the storehouse she had put her beautiful furniture in was gone, she had lost it all and she had to start all over again. She rented a large apartment with a lot of floorspace in the Minrebroederstraat 11 bis in Utrecht, close to the Cathedral, from four sisters who all lived together on the ground floor. These four not so good looking unmarried sisters always dressed in black, were very fond of my beautifully dressed and nice looking grandmother and watched over her and were chatting all the time, also cleaning here apartment for here.

A lot of families went to Canada, Australia and New Zealand after the war. Her business was booming. Elsie has been a beacon in my life, a beacon of determination, independence and softness. From her I learned that softness was not synonymous for weak, it could also be very strong. She was reading a lot and was always busy spiritually. When I stayed with her for 14 days each summer vacation, it always was a fascinating experience. Her large living room was already beautifully furnished. Behind the large and wide living room was a corridor on which two other doors came out, one was her bedroom which was also large and high and the other was her junk room. Through the corridor around a corner was a small kitchen, which was terribly cold in the winter. Above her were two more floors where students lived, whom she helped with their English. Every morning at 7 o’clock her alarm went off, then she first did a leg massage in bed, then she did gymnastics while singing a song “Every day and in every way I get better and better”. When her son Dennis stayed with her, he always sang “you get fatter and fatter”. After this ritual I helped her in her corset with boning, which was incredibly tight. Then she put on her make-up and thereafter it was time for an extended breakfast with lots of tea. At 10.30 a.m. the first lesson started, sometimes she also taught in the afternoon and in the evenings. Once a week we went to V&D (a department store) at noon for a hot meal, tables were covered with white tablecloths and large white napkins. There was also a waiter present. After lunch we went to the cinema, where she had a fixed place. The rest of the week we went two more times to the cinema and in the evening ate with the students in the University cafeteria. Every Tuesday it was her “jour” (day), everyone could come then and she always had lots of food and drink at home, all that it takes to receive her visitors. Friends, acquaintances and sometimes family always came around and it was a wonderful day full of surprises. When she taught I often went to see the students upstairs to talk to them or read my books on her lovely large bed. Movies were her hobby, she gathered everything about it. She had a two door wardrobe which she used as a filing cabinet. At the end of every movie she got all the publicity leaflets which she later donated to Simon van Collum, the director of the movie museum, who was extremely happy with it.

Later, when I lived in De Bilt for a year with my first child and expecting the second, I went on my bike to see her almost every day. A solid ride with my big belly and Walter in his child seat behind my back. When I arrived all four sisters ran cooing upstairs to warn my grandmother and all of them were waiting at the top of the stairs. My grandmother saying: “Hello my darling, here you are again, what fun, come in quickly”. After little Walter and I got a cuddle from the sisters for a moment, we went quickly inside. At that time my grandmother didn’t teach anymore and she loved it when we came. After spending a few hours with her I cycled back to De Bilt. She also helped me with everything, a cooker, a vacuum cleaner and specially by coming to me by bus and staying the whole day . When later we lived somewhere else, she got cancer and lost one eye, as a replacement they gave her an artificial eye. When she stayed in Moordrecht with me for two weeks,I saw how she every day patiently and bravely took the eye out cleaned it and put it back again. Unfortunately she wasn’t spared much my lovely grandmother, the cancer came back and she moved to The Hague, where she stayed in the house of two man who were living together and took care of some very old lady's, they were very nice for my grandmother, loved her a lot, after a long and very painful, difficult road, she died in hospital at the age of 82, this lovely woman, my grandmother Elsie.

One day coming out of Xenos I saw a woman walking by, although I only could see her back, I had a shock and shouted: “Elsie, Elsie”. The woman turned and I saw that it was somebody else and suddenly everything became dark around me and luckily Willem caught me otherwise I would have fallen. “I think you better sit down”, Willem said. Only then I realized how very much I missed her that sensible little woman, Elsie.

Dinkie