“My mother had a waste basket on her head here, sometime in the 1950s. We had a lot of laughs about it later. They had met just after the Second World War, in Voorschoten, at my aunt’s birthday. They immediately fell in love with each other.
Thank God they had survived the war, and that was not a given. At that time, my mother regularly went to the east of the country on a bicycle with wooden tires to get food. Once she was stopped by two Germans who wanted to confiscate her bicycle. But she cycled quickly and heard gunshots – probably in the air.
My father was trained as a technical engineer and was employed in the Ruhr area during the war. He fled there; together with a buddy he walked all the way to the Belgian coast, and from there they crossed to England. He took flight training there, including in Spitfires, but the war was almost over so he no longer flew missions. A few years after the war he became an air force pilot with the 323 Squadron in Leeuwarden. There they initially flew with a British fighter jet, the Gloster Meteor.
My mother was a piano teacher and I can still hear her practicing in my mind when we lay in bed at night.
Together they often went to France and Spain with a small ‘crawl tent’. They kept it simple: they pitched their tent near a farmer, where they were sometimes washed away by heavy rains. My three sisters and I, their only son, were then sent on holiday to my aunt in Rockanje. My family had a farm there right by the sea. We always had a great time there, but we were also happy when our parents came to pick us up four weeks later.
My parents grew very old and died shortly after each other. I cherish their ideas that simple things in your life are very important and sufficient.”
