At the end of this month I’m going to the Netherlands with my family. Of the five of us, only my dad has been before and that was ten or so years ago. Growing up in Appalachian Virginia, there weren’t many Dutch people or much Dutch culture (I was asked “What country is Dutch?” on several occasions when I told friends about my family history), but I’m told that my family’s frugality and directness is a part of our heritage and my parents’ kitchen has a few wooden shoe and windmill knickknacks, so I’m probably going to feel right at home.

Armed with a PDF of family history and about three weeks of Duolingo between the five of us, we’ll be seeking a few spots of family history and doing some low-intensity tourism. I’ve been to the UK, Greece, and Holland, Michigan, so if I triangulate those experiences I’m sure I can completely, accurately anticipate everything that I’ll encounter. I’ll update you next month on how incredibly prescient I was.

 

  • 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 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).
  • 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.
  • My dad attempts a joke with the waiter. (x4)
  • I panic and attempt a joke with the waiter. (x1)
  • 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.
  • I see a bunch of bridges, possibly exceeding the sum total of the rest of my life.
  • I try to tell my family some historical fact that I only dimly remember. (x7)
  • I think about moving there. (x3)
  • I buy a wooden shoe or windmill knickknack.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • I’ll get pooped on by a bird.

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