Our theme for the month of June is “snapshots.” Writers were asked to submit a piece with a cover image that they took or created.

Last month I wrote a few predictions for my family’s pilgrimage to the Netherlands. Considering I had just barely emerged from the end-of-semester-due-date haze and hadn’t really read the itinerary of our trip yet, I think I put together some bang on, incredibly prescient predictions.

  • After landing in Amsterdam at 6:05am local time, waiting for my brothers’ flight to arrive and feeling grumpy from airplane-seat sleep, I find a place to get coffee—I think about saying “bedankt” after ordering but chicken out.

I ended up making a Mother’s Day card instead of getting coffee and my first transaction experience was just standing next to my brother while he ordered sandwiches for the two of us, BUT in almost every single interaction after that I did think too much about whether or not to say “Thank you” in Dutch or not.

  • I tear up on four occasions (once when standing on the bridge from Ocean’s 12 where Rusty and Danny come up with the plan to sink the house so they can steal the painting, the other times either from a moving encounter with history/beauty or from irritation with my brother repeating his chosen catchphrase of the week twelve times too many).

We didn’t make it to that bridge and I didn’t quite cry from frustration with my brother’s catchphrase, but I did get irritated with him for repeating the four Dutch words he learned every ten minutes. And I only teared up once… but it was when I was angsty about how poorly I steered our very slow boat in Giethoorn.

  • Around day four, I get kinda tired and think, just for a moment, “I’d rather be on my couch,” before eating a baked good and feeling much better.

More like day three, but otherwise bang on.

  • My dad attempts a joke with the waiter. (x4)

He was pretty good about playing it straight with waitstaff, but my brothers and I did witness an incredible one-joke-and-three-BIG-laughs maneuver with the rental car clerks at the airport. We were too far away to hear what he said, but he got three at once, like dominos: heads tossed back, big smiles—it was a masterpiece. Incredible to witness. And a very different energy from rental car transactions in US airports.

  • I panic and attempt a joke with the waiter. (x1)

I’m happy to say, this one I got wrong.

  • I meet a dashing Dutch man, marveling at the ease of our connecting despite my usual antipathy for talking with strangers. We figure out that we’re related, like crazy distantly, but it’s still too weird and I wave farewell as he drifts away down the canal.

Not quite, but I did make a tour guide laugh. And we found a copy store run by a family with my mom’s maiden name who we might be distantly related to, so. 1 + 1 = close enough.

  • I see a bunch of bridges, possibly exceeding the sum total of the rest of my life.

I don’t have accurate tallies for either, but it’s genuinely possible.

  • I try to tell my family some historical fact that I only dimly remember. (x7)

Waaaay underestimated with seven, especially if I count art history. I dragged my family through the Rijksmuseum trying to find some paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder but could not have told you if he lived in 1400 or 1800. “But trust me, he’s important and he’s gotta be here somewhere.” (I did not find him)

  • I think about moving there. (x3)

Yup. And realized I am not good enough at riding a bike to make it on those streets.

  • I buy a wooden shoe or windmill knickknack.

Check and check (both Delft ceramics for bonus points)

  • I hope being there reminds my parents of stories about their grandparents who spoke Dutch and moved to the US as kids. I hope I feel some sort of connection with those far-away, dimly remembered people—who were real and had birthdays and favorite foods and best friends and unique laughs and sneezes. I’ll think about what it will be like to meet them in the sweet by and by and I’ll wonder what they would make of the world that I live in and the choices I’ve made and The Masked Singer Wednesdays, 8/7c on FOX.

We did get some nice moments of family history and recollection, but to be honest I was more focused on how impressively old and tall the churches were and getting over feeling like I’m inconveniencing store owners with my presence. And, no great loss, I didn’t think about The Masked Singer once.

  • I’ll enjoy so much just being with my close and present family—who are real and have birthdays and favorite foods and best friends and unique laughs and sneezes, who I live far away from and who are all building lives of their own. I’ll feel the bittersweet sensation of beautiful moments turning into memories that are never quite wholly captured.

Absolutely.

  • I’ll get pooped on by a bird.

Ok, so it wasn’t me, but there was bird poop on our rental car before we picked it up. I won’t fault the bird for timing, I think the intention was there and it counts. The scoundrel.

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