My recent trip to the land of my mother, the Netherlands, Rotterdam in particular, is something I have not blogged about to any great extent. I’ve been saving it for my non-awaited memoir which is currently in its third rewrite (if you had read it in its current form, you’d know why) but, sod it, some things can’t wait. Waiting for tomorrow is never a good idea because tomorrow never comes.
Rotterdam 2023 was meant to be closure, an itch to be scratched, or was it a scratch to be itched? What people call ‘unfinished business’. For years, I felt I was somehow being drawn back to the city where I spend my childhood summers. While my Dutch family have long shuffled off their mortal coil, part of me will always be a Rotterdamer. I knew that once I arrived and pounded the streets, the memories would come racing back. But it didn’t happen like I expected.
I followed the journey we took in the 1960s, by train from Bristol to London Paddington, by train from London Liverpool Street to Harwich, by overnight ferry to the Hook of Holland and finally by train from the Hook to Rotterdam Centraal Station. As I travelled, I felt some kind of Deja Vu, except that it wasn’t Deja Vu because I really had travelled this route before, many, many times. So, what was I expecting?
In reality, I had no idea what I was expecting. Would the city roll out the red carpet for me? When I arrived at Leopoldstraat, where the family lived, would people come out to say hello. “Goedendag, Reee-chaard,” they would say. “Dropje?” (A small piece of usually salted liquorice, guaranteed to make your teeth rot.) Or perhaps, I would simply recognise the former neighbours, or the boys I played football with? Did I really think and expect that? Of course not. I suspect I may have hoped that might be the case, but in the cold light of day I knew that I was just dreaming. In the whole time I was there, which was nearly a week – and I visited the grandparental home on at least three occasions – I never saw anyone I even vaguely recognised. It was half a century ago for God’s sake. More than that, actually.
It being Rotterdam, some things were the same, like the place where we stayed. The shops around the corner – an ice cream parlour, a tobacconist were two that I remember – were clearly long gone, but just around the corner, the wonderful Rotterdam trams rumbled by.
Speaking off trams, for a mere €9.50 you can tour the city and beyond by public transport for 24 hours and I did just that, sometimes getting off to admire the views or more often seeing if I remembered anything about the places I was passing through. My mum had cousins and I know that sometimes we visited them. Was this long road where the apartment was? It felt like it might be. But then I would pass another apartment block that looked much the same. Needles and haystacks and all that.
But there was zero by way of recollection of anything, except the twice-weekly market and the grassy area at the back of my grandmother’s flat, my field of dreams. There were no faces in my mind, but for one brief split second I felt myself swivelling to score a vital tap-in goal in one of the nightly games. I looked across the back to where Jackie and Gerhard lived, two brothers who got everyone together by way of some very loud whistling and magically a football match would take place. Now, there were just elderly dog walkers. Could they have been the players? I’ll never know.
I watched the trams go by, I watched the trains go by at Centraal Station. I definitely felt part of Rotterdam, a close relative; certainly part Dutch. I’m not sure I am proud of being half Dutch – I don’t know what that kind of pride means, given I had no actual influence over my creation – but I like it and I definitely feel it, despite the steady decline in my ability to speak the language. Sometimes it comes back and I amaze myself. More often than not, I communicate like the tourist I really am.
I learned that there were few memories to conjure up. We must have stayed in pretty well every day of the week for six weeks. I realised this after less than a day and the memories I hoped to rekindle and come flowing back didn’t exist and never had. And I remembered, for the first time in maybe 50 years, my mum saying something along the line of her mother saving up all year from her pittance of an income and paying for her daughter and only grandson to stay for the summer. We had no money either, and crucially no income during the six weeks we were away. My mum took unpaid annual leave for the English summer from her job in the fashion houses of Bristol, which by the standards of the time would have represented great generosity by her managers. What we did and what we had was courtesy of grandma’s small pension, her husband and my grandfather having died long before I was born. So, actually I did have memories of my childhood. We went to Rotterdam and walked around or looked out the window.
I don’t remember it as a sad or unhappy time, but then again my path as a loner – and my preferred status is as a loner until the time I am actually with people, that is – was confirmed by those years. At the time, it felt normal and it was, it was my normal. Now, I know what other people were up to and most people’s normal was a bit more, well, normal than mine.
Above all, I walked and I walked and I walked. Some things looked the same, most things, Rotterdam style, looked very different. But the feel was definitely there and far from being closure, by the time I got home I knew I would have to go back again, not least because I know time is running out, as it ran out for all of my Dutch family many years ago.
My DNA is far more Dutch than it is English (only 17% of me is English, DNA wise) and although I feel overwhelmingly English, the Dutch part is more important than I thought.
I need to go back mainly because I love Rotterdam and I always will. And my memories of the place will be the ones I make from now on.
