Chapter 17 ~ Learning to understand

Opa en Oma van Dijken and daughters (Mamma far left)

A child views the world through new eyes. Eyes that see leaves uncurl, the reverence in a praying mantis - a rabbit resting on the moon's face. Then we grow up, and look at the time, look in the mirror to see if you are presentable, look at robots change colour and work pile up and your shrinking bank account and messages and news on social media and the frown on your friend's face and... too often, SEE very little. Then a child takes you by the hand and says: "Come - look!" You bend down with one eye on the pot on the stove and glance down at the small hand under your nose. Right before your eyes a butterfly rests lightly on the soft palm, it's wings slow and trembling in the last minutes of life. And you see. Then the child looks at you and sees a "grown-up". Slightly alien, pre-occupied and perhaps a bit unpredictable, but one with whom he can feel safe and secure.

When you become a parent, you again start seeing things completely differently (you have no choice really...). You often have to "see" beyond what is before you. See the child's need in it's cry, the world he has entered into through his eyes. A new dimension opens up - life becomes layered, maddeningly complex at times, but wonderfully rich, and full of colours never imagined before. You look back and see your own parents with aching understanding and empathy. Saddened that you did not "see" then, when you were so heedless and self-absorbed. You long to understand more. To see them as children, understand what shaped their young lives, influenced their convictions and decisions. Determined their way of parenting, of loving, of surviving. Your eyes probe an old photograph, hoping to catch a glimpse of the heart behind the smile, the periphery of the scene beyond the picture before you.

And so, little by little, the angle widens, the picture grows. Fractions of a life lead before I became a reality, are revealed.

I could not hope to understand my own parents, without trying to enter into the joys and suffering they went through. Time and again this brings me back to the outbreak of WWII in Europe and the invasion of Nazi Germany in the Netherlands. For in the aftermath of this, everything was altered. Families, relationships, landscapes, global economy, industry, politics, religion, trust - nothing escaped.

The Netherlands proclaimed neutrality when war broke out in September 1939, just as it had in World War I, but Adolf Hitler ordered it to be invaded anyway. My mother would have been about 3 years old and my father a young boy of 10. On 15 May 1940, one day after the bombing of Rotterdam, the Dutch forces surrendered. The Dutch government and the royal family escaped and went into exile in London.

Following the defeat, the Netherlands was placed under German occupation, which endured in some areas until the German surrender in May 1945. Active resistance was carried out by a small minority, which grew in the course of the occupation. The occupiers deported the majority of the country's Jews to Nazi concentration camps, sadly with the cooperation of much of the Dutch police and civil service.

Most of the south of the country was liberated in the second half of 1944. The rest, especially the west and north of the country still under occupation, suffered from a famine at the end of 1944, known as the "Hunger Winter". This struck when my parents where aged 8 and 15 years respectively. I can understand neither the concept of real hunger or real cold. The combination of the two must have left a deep imprint on children of such an impressionable age. They were victims, but tracing their footsteps in the years after, also survivors. After times of refreshing had come, they prevailed. The scars had softened and they were able to look back with a gentle sadness for what was lost and nostalgia for what was good and sweet.

Mamma and my adorable sister

I now understand why there was always a bit of a veil over the stories told of their childhood. On the lighter side; I can grasp why my mother meticulously counted out the amount of biscuits according to the amount of people in the room, plus one extra, so that it would not look "mean". And no one ever dared to take the last one anyway... Why birthday presents and wrapping paper were often "recycled", why even loo paper was rationed. Why the cheese was grated and frozen, then measured out in exact portions for the daily need. Why nylon stockings were repaired with dabs of "cutex". Which also happened to be the only place nail varnish was used. Apart from a light facial powder, no make-up ever made it's way into my mom's "objets de toilette".

My mother once told me about an "onderduiker (person in hiding) who had taken refuge in their cellar during the war. I took the bit of information as a matter of fact, not understanding the danger the family had placed themselves in by doing so. The life stories of Corrie ten Boom and Anne Frank are examples of the real peril which people in hiding as well as the people offering the hiding places faced. This has made me view my parents and grandparents with a new respect, in light of the things they faced and the choices they made.

These quotes from Corrie the Boom's Hiding Place say it better than I ever could. For they flowed from a warm Dutch heart which had seen and endured the deepest pits of suffering, but did not stop loving, living and flourishing. Regardless.

“Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do. ”

“Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.”
~ Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. ~ Proverbs 3:5

In all my quests to try and understand people, there is one person whom I have never been able to fathom out. Myself. But I have stopped trying to - and am hopefully learning that "understanding" is not everything and it is certainly not the same as "knowing". My days have become significantly lighter since I've given up all the inner probing and prodding. There is after all much more to captivate my attention these days...

We've celebrated birthdays, which seem to follow each other faster than the bodies can keep up with. I look back and can hardly believe that I am now the mother of a five and seven year old, and we are all still relatively sane and surprisingly content. There is much of what other parents have told me about raising children, which I have taken on board and appreciated. But there is also much that is more an old norm and pattern, which has been accepted - like an animal accepts it's fate when it is haltered and penned. We have so much more freedom than what we realise. This freedom is almost a bit of an inversion of what we accept to be logical. When I have made choices in order to gain a bit of freedom for myself, I have often ended up at a dead-end with another trap in it. But the choices and decisions which we have believed to be God's will, have often come a bit more grudgingly, with initial personal sacrifices and limitations. But then one morning I woke up and realised that a great weight had been shed. Our days start gently, with the merry sound of children at play. My husband is a joyful early riser, which affords me the luxury of letting the early hours unfold slowly and without haste. As the door closes behind him, the three of us snuggle a bit longer, often with a book between us or an invented game which mostly turns out to be the first "lesson" of the day.

The one choice which my husband and I have had to defend and explain more than anything else, was the decision to teach our children at home. "Home-schooling" it is called. But what is a school? And were did it start? When did "schooling" become public? Do our children belong to God or to the state? There are questions about what children should be taught at public schools and what not. Evolution theory or creationism. Objective history or politics. I often wonder if we are asking the right questions. What if we took it a step back and asked: Should there be public schools? Can of worms. We are afforded the chance to vote for who rules the country. But who "votes" for what should and should not be included in a school curriculum...?

The systematic provision of learning techniques to most children, such as literacy, has been a development of the last 150 or 200 years, or even the last 50 years in some countries.
Since the mid-20th century, societies around the globe have undergone an accelerating pace of change in economy and technology. Its effects on the workplace, and thus on the demands on the educational system preparing students for the workforce, have been significant. Beginning in the 1980s, government, educators, and major employers issued a series of reports identifying key skills and implementation strategies to steer students and workers towards meeting the demands of the changing and increasingly digital workplace and society. 21st century skills are a series of higher-order skills, abilities, and learning dispositions that have been identified as being required for success in 21st century society and workplaces by educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies. Many of these skills are also associated with deeper learning, including analytic reasoning, complex problem solving, and teamwork, compared to traditional knowledge-based academic skills. ~ Wikipedia.

Educators, business leaders, academics and governmental agencies decide what students and workers (our children) should and should not know to meet the demands of the workforce and society. What are "deeper learning" and "higher-order skills"? Perhaps, just perhaps it is not that people should not ask questions, but that we should ask the right questions about personal choices about how to raise, educate and discipline our children, not just for success in this lifetime, but for eternity.

We cannot know what the future holds for our children. Right now seems so whole and wholesome and I wish it could remain this way. But this is a dream-hope. We, as well as our sons will have to face much which we cannot possibly foresee, let alone prevent. There is a narrow tile, with a beautiful Dutch poem written on it in elegantly slanted script, which sits above the basin in our bathroom. It serves as a gentle reminder to me each morning as I splash my face and look up to see the first lines: "Ik leg de namen van mijn kinderen in Uw handen" (I place the names of my children into Your hands). To this Highest Order I surrender them, in His hands they are safe. Amidst all the controversy about what they should and should not be taught, this remains unshakable, infallible, steadfast and secure.

Our soft little ones have become tough and angular. Fortunately this has taken place on the surface only and they remain dear, with all the loving generosity of a child who feels secure. The circumstances which I sometimes bemoan as being limiting, have also led to an unusually deep bond and understanding between the four of us. I grew up with two brothers who were (and are) like opposing poles. Chalk and cheese, mist-rain and monsoon, day and night. Therefore it did not come as such a shock, that the two entrusted to us sometimes seem to be two different species, as far as character is concerned. Both are precious, with his own gifts and talents and short-comings, but they each dance to their own beat. Despite the differences and occasional fisty-cuffs, they get along remarkably well and never seem to tire of each other's company. "Boezemvrienden" (bosom or heart friends). Luke sums himself up as a "head-guy" - meaning his mind is ever busy, curious, hungry. Daniel tempers that with his easy going - stay in the background, then they demand less of you - approach. Until he is crossed or loses a game or is called a baby. Then there be dragons...

I turned away from my writing for a moment to stretch and look out over the peaceful, hazy scene outside the window. The top branches of a silver birch swaying in the breeze, a hint of new green where the first sign of spring is borne. A cardboard box moved into view, then continued floating across the deck unhindered. I blinked hard, did a double check as it floated out of view. A few minutes later it re-appeared and I stretched taller to get a better look. From under the box protruded a pair of arms, hands holding firmly onto a push bike being propelled by a sturdy pair of legs. Upon closer investigation I learnt that this was in fact Daniel "in disguise" - a spy looking out for "bad guys". That was until the spy crashed into the rails, resulting from "box vision".

So my days continue unfolding with moments of sweet simplicity. I could sweep and stoop and become weighted down by the magnitude of a task which, even though it has no externally imposed deadlines, never ends. Or I could look up and see the little spies with sparkling eyes, the bees buzzing busily around the new lavender and honeysuckle blooms. The cat stretched out in a lazy curve in the sun, the wide, wide vista of mountain and forest with whispering tree-tops. I may not always be able to understand everything. But I breathe deeply and raise my arms in gratitude to the One who does.