During the first New Year’s Eve in the Netherlands that I remember, I was about seven years old. We were just living here as refugees from a dictatorship. We celebrated New Year’s Eve in the Pijp in Amsterdam in the house that grandma and grandpa, it turns out, had stolen from hardworking Dutch people. After dinner we stood outside and fireworks went off everywhere. The adults in our party were surprised. They thought that setting off fireworks around the New Year was something typically Uruguayan. I can’t explain how that happened. They must all have consumed enough films and books showing other cultures celebrating New Year’s Eve with fireworks. Gunpowder was invented by the Chinese. Not by Uruguayans. My grandfather was also a chemist. He should have known that the Netherlands also had fireworks. In addition, fireworks are regularly set off in the days before New Year’s Eve. How could they think that nothing was possible in the Netherlands?fuegos artificiales’ would be done? At the stroke of twelve we were all stunned until that bewilderment, as it usually does, gave way to disappointment. We had no fireworks. No asterisks yet. Grandpa rummaged in the kitchen and came back with aluminum sponges. He tied them to pieces of rope. He brought his lighter to the sponge. As soon as it caught fire, I had to throw that rope around as hard as I could. Burning showers of sparks swirled through the air. Aluminum sponges became comets. We still had fireworks.
Twenty years later I worked in a café in The Hague. For New Year’s Eve, the regulars had bought a hundred thousand clapperboard that they strung between two lampposts. I felt like that thing kept popping all day long. At the final bang, a lamppost was completely crooked. Everyone laugh. I told that to my mother, who had long since returned to Uruguay. She didn’t think it was funny. In Uruguay, many streets are not lit. If the Dutch didn’t cherish their lampposts, I had to. I had to confront those brainless regulars about this. I was looking forward to it. She may have settled down completely again after all those years in Uruguay, but I had not. When in Rome, do as the novels doeven if they screw up their own city. When half of Scheveningen was flambéed in 2019, I had to send her the images before she believed me. This year I told her about Cobras, flash powder and entire blocks of houses that are now blown up with fireworks.
She asked if I remembered the aluminum sponges.
I could.
She asked what I was going to do for New Year’s Eve.
What many people do with animals living at home: withdraw with the frightened creatures to a space that is as light and soundproof as possible and spend New Year’s Eve there, swearing at fireworks and Romans. This is now really becoming a typically Dutch tradition.
Carolina Trujillo is a writer.