Letter to a sixteen-year old daughter

 
It was only months after I wrote this letter, that the police came to interrupt the worship service we were attending.
The news: Lisa had been in a roll-over accident on the way to our service. Her injuries were life-threatening. (This traumatic story, "The Accident," is included in Through Dark Places, Exxel Publishing.)
That's twenty years ago today, a day we rejoice that healing came, and an education, and marriage, and motherhood, and godliness.
 

March 12, 1994

TO MY LYSKE ON HER SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY

I think now of you, my teenage daughter

the one whose unexpected birth

surprised by joy already 16 years ago,
and I feel my heart well up with love
and gratitude for the life that became a part of mine

and made it fuller than it was before.

I think now of the many times I've watched your face:

first when you were a tiny fuse of dynamite,

asleep at last after a fierce fight against the dark,

your face turned up, its pages open like the book

beside the bed I'd just been reading from,
all icy traces of the Snow Queen melted now,

dissolved in dreams of little Kai & Gerda,

leaving the soft glow, like embers, of

noble thoughts and deeds that fill the heart

with goodness, truth, and love.

And often since I've gazed at you

to watch the Snow Queen's quest for domination,

the ancient ritual played out on the human stage

of Lisa's life--a serious play of lights and shadows,

of shards and splinters that can freeze the heart

and blind the eye.

Sometimes it nearly took my breath away

in awful recognition.

I've also seen the goodness in your heart

through words you said and wrote,

through acts of love and through the

stirrings of your feelings when you watched

the helpless, needy orphans on TV

reach out to friendly strangers for a home,

a heart to take them in and care for them.

There's so much promise in you, Lisa,

that I'm grateful for,

this world has need of you:

the gifts of your imagination

your intellect, your heart

offered to serve there with your Maker

and all he's made that's broken,

that hurts, that needs a helping hand.

You too will hurt sometimes, my dear,

from which I'd like to spare you, if I could,

but this Dad's arms no longer have the reach

to hold you close; I must learn to let you go

and trust that you always will

beware of trolls that carry mirrors recklessly,

beware of dragons in disguise

that gorge themselves on innocence

and trust betrayed;

I must learn to trust the Father's arms

to hold you close and never let you go.

Learn to love the Lord, my Lisa,

more than all that comes your way,

when you hear his voice

(who knows how exactly)

listen to it closely and let it take

you places where you ought to go,

let it change you and empower you.

Don't be afraid of caves or castles,

of uncharted paths through deep dark forests,

but fear the easy rides through Disney Worlds

that feed the senses but starve the soul.

Growing up is high adventure, Lisa Joy,

It has been and will be more so still.

Enjoy it as God's gift with passion and good sense.
I'll be watching as long as I'm allowed,

I'll be praying for your needs,

And I'll be loving you even more than I do now.

Happy birthday, dearest daughter!

Happy Life, and Love, and Joy!

Dad

 

The struggle intensifies

Excerpt 5        -from De Treastfugel by Hylke Speerstra

 

In the chapter “Like King Hezekiah,” Hizkia and Ytsje encounter a series of setbacks after initial progress from much hard work.  The economic recession of 1879 shows no mercy. Ytsje keeps pushing for emigration, but Hizkia drags his feet.

 

By 1881 the recession slashes so deep that more than 700 residents from the municipalities of East- and Westdongeradeel, It Bilt, Ferwerdereel, Barradeel, and Wunseradeel decide to emigrate.  Between 1880 and the onset of WWI in 1914, some 10.000 people from the North-Frisian agricultural region eventually risk the big step.  (Annemieke Galema: Frisians to America, 1880-1914.) Meanwhile Ytsje runs out of patience.  She approaches her oldest son Sibbele who lives away from home as a farmhand: “Son, it’s time, we sail under Jesus’ protection to America.  That is the land of deliverance for people like us.  I want you to take the boat to America as our forerunner.”

   “I’m not ready for that,” is Sibbele’s response.  Sibbele Namminga doesn’t want to waste any words on the subject; he wants to go his own way.  For his mother there’s no solution but to peddle bakery goods for a local baker.

   And so Hizkia’s Ytsje trudges from door to door with two baskets on a yoke, from Bolsward to Burgwerd, from Wommels to Witmarsum.  The yoke of the recession and the discipline of the free market weigh heavily on her shoulders; in one year the number of bread peddlers has more than doubled.  Besides, it seems as if there are only Dutch Reformed bakery goods in her basket.  Her honey bread may be the best, but the more conservative Reformed, the Mennonites, and the Catholics stick to their own taste.

   But Ytsje is not easily defeated.  She decides to take a chance on the Reformed farmer with the large family in the hamlet of Pankoeken near Witmarsum.   After an hour and a half of slogging underneath the heavy yoke, she hears: “We stick to our own town; the widow Zylstra has already been here.”  When she comes home, she finds a husband who’s struggling with depression.

Nearly a decade later there’s some improvement.  But Ytsje will not let go of her dream.

 

“I have good news,” Hizkia says.  “The heifer has calved, so we added a nice little heifer calf today.”

   It is the “golden calf.”  She doesn’t come up with this herself, no, it just comes to her.  “The golden calf that will lead you and me finally to the land of justice, Hizkia.”  She wakes her husband up in the middle of the night and tells him that she was shaken awake just now.  “Through Him I was shown a moment ago the path to a world without troubles.  I have to take Sibbele aside again and present my vision of this night; this time I’ll get him to go as our pioneer to America, like the oldest son of King Hezekiah who was sent ahead to the other side of the ocean as quartermaster.” She looks at her husband, counting on his bible ignorance not to catch her fib in her run-away imagination.

   “The ocean.”  Hizkia is cruelly disturbed out of his sleep. “The ocean, you say it just like that is nothing, but you don’t know how much I dread it, those newfangled steamboats forged out of iron that will sink like a brick.”

   “You have to trust me and the Lord, Hizkia.”

   “But my dear, the times will get better here too.”  Hizkia, anxious now, sits up: “We just got a heifer calf, and now this.”

   Do the times improve?  …it’s a matter of what one wants to believe or not believe:  Ytsje heard that Jetse Feenstra from Allingawier says farewell in a newspaper notice to all his family, friends, and acquaintances with this announcement: “We’re going to America.”

 

Excerpt 4

Excerpt 4

Ytsje at age 12 is placed with a farmer.  Farmers show no mercy; life is hard, but young Ytsje is spunky. 

She meets her friend Meindert Birdie again briefly and learns that he takes no guff from anyone, including mean, miserly farmers.
The excerpt traces Ytsje’s journey to adulthood and motherhood.

… When after the bitter cold February of 1863 the last snow has finally disappeared, the mail brings three letters especially addressed to Ytsje. 

The first one is from an uncle who proves to be the writer for her Dad Sibbele Wytsma:

 

   “Due to the last stage of consumption your Father’s weakness has already called him to be bedridden, thence it appears advisable not to come home, however dearly your father would have you with him once more.”

 The second saved message is one with a black border around it: Dad’s death notice.  The third letter comes from the village Rommerskirchen right beneath Cologne where the young Meindert “Birdie” is earning a good monthly wage as milker.

    “Nevertheless the year passes too slowly, I desire more and more intensely to return to my Fatherland, where the first lapwing egg will well-nigh have been found. […] In view that I am a free man here, I do wish that I, accompanied by lapwing and godwit, could return to Hichtum, where I should also very much like to see you, worthy wool-seeker friend, to ascertain  your present condition.”  

 Ytsje, with her religious inclinations, sometimes comes out with the strangest stuff.  One day she informs the farmer’s wife that a divine mission is awaiting her.  “I received the prophecy that I will travel to the New World.  America, that is for me the Promised Land; my stay here is but temporary.”

   The farmer’s wife pays little attention, for where would such a half-grown girl get the money to pay for a trip to America. …   

   On the first of November 1870 a new farmhand appears in Sieswerd.  It is a tall young man, not a run-of-the- mill kind of appearance, especially not in Ytsje’s eyes.  And then the man’s name: Hizkia Namminga.  This man bears the name of the biblical king Hezekiah.  Ytsje thinks: there must be a higher purpose behind this, she’s destined to marry this Hizkia, and with him she will find the way to the New World.  The intensity of Ytsje’s faith is rivaled by her flaming passion for this handsome fellow. There is no stopping it now. …

 When the farmer and his wife discover in the spring of 1871 that Ytsje is pregnant by the new farmhand, both are fired that same evening.  … All of Ytsje’s worldly possessions as live-in farm maid fit inside a wheelbarrow, and there’s still room for Hizkia’s bundle as well.   …

   On May 13, 1871  – a civil marriage.  … “We were married in dry spring weather,” it says in Ytsje’s diary which she begins on May 1.

 [They land a job with another farmer.  Hizkia dreams of becoming a farmer himself, while Ytsje talks night and day about America.]

 … thus Ytsje Namminga-Wytsma gives birth to a healthy boy on the shortest day of the year 1871.  It is not likely that the procreator was present at the birth, because giving birth was exclusively for female attendance.  Contrary to tradition, the boy is not named after the late Grandpa Nammen Namminga, but after Ytsje’s early deceased father Sibbele Wytsma to whom she had such a loving attachment.  Hizkia approves all of it; as far as he’s concerned, this will not be their only child.  Ytsje is of the same mind: after all, the biblical king Hezekiah had a whole bunch of sons.

   At Pigskin on the 5th of January, a memorandum appears in the margin of Dr. Staring’s almanac from great-great grandma Ijbeltsje.  By then Ytsje no longer has the services of the midwife; she’s very much back to milking.

    “Now that the winter weather is tempering and it is thawing hard and foggy the ice is not to be trusted so that Hizkia’s Ytsje can walk again through the fields, Jan together with Sjoerd has laid  boards for her across the Klooster Canal so that she can be here on time.”

 Though Hizkia may be the accommodating kind, each time he manages to postpone Ytsje’s emigration plans.  Ijbeltje Mensonides-Faber:

   “Ietje is full of emigrating to America while her husband seems more sensible, Hizkia is very fond of  Hichtum.”