Excerpt 6 -from The Comfort Bird
by Hylke Speerstra
It’s around seven in the evening
of May 1905 when someone’s at the door.
A young man. Did Ytsje really go
so far as to respond to that small ad in Hepkema’s paper? [a Dutch regional newspaper, Nieuwsblad van Friesland, but often
called Hepkema’s paper after the editor] A “decent milk hauler” asked for a place to
board in the area of Bolsward. Yes, they
had become subscribers to the paper, and mother didn’t skip a word. “A decent milk hauler,” she had said aloud
while reading. Now that the oldest boys
were out of the house, there was room for “a tame sheep.” Where is the ambitious young man who dares to
cross the ocean with daughter Geartsje to take up quarters on the other side?
A boarder makes his appearance. But will that be the one? Geartsje, sent by mother to the door, opens the door slightly at first, then wide. For the moment she is speechless.
“Douwe Hiemstra!”
“Come on in.”
She shakes hands with him but forgets to identify herself. She feels the firmness of his handshake. And callouses. This could well be the milk hauler.
“I’m Geartsje of Hizkia and Ytsje,” she hears herself say. The old man in the arm chair has the appearance of an old patriarch with his snow-white hair and beard, but it doesn’t take the guest long to realize who’s the one that waves the scepter. Mother! “And how old is Douwe,” the wife wants to know.
“Almost twenty-two, Mrs. Namminga.”
“As if foreordained, Douwe is not much older than our Geartsje!”
…
A boarder makes his appearance. But will that be the one? Geartsje, sent by mother to the door, opens the door slightly at first, then wide. For the moment she is speechless.
“Douwe Hiemstra!”
“Come on in.”
She shakes hands with him but forgets to identify herself. She feels the firmness of his handshake. And callouses. This could well be the milk hauler.
“I’m Geartsje of Hizkia and Ytsje,” she hears herself say. The old man in the arm chair has the appearance of an old patriarch with his snow-white hair and beard, but it doesn’t take the guest long to realize who’s the one that waves the scepter. Mother! “And how old is Douwe,” the wife wants to know.
“Almost twenty-two, Mrs. Namminga.”
“As if foreordained, Douwe is not much older than our Geartsje!”
…
“Board and
room.” Mrs. Namminga doesn’t want to
skirt the issue anymore. She’d been
thinking of four and a half guilders a week.
Bed, meals, laundry – everything included.
“Let’s go with
that.” Douwe had really regarded his
mission a success already at the door.
Who knows but there could be more included than board and room.
…
On the first Monday morning after Douwe’s
arrival in Hichtum, a long new-fashioned snow-white underpants is dancing in
the spring breeze right next to Geartsje’s flesh-colored panties.
“Oh gosh, this is
going to be trouble,” Meindert Birdie calls out right after twelve when passing
on the church path. “Watch out, Geartsje
girl, all you need is a clothes pin letting go and the new boarder has you
pregnant with child.”
…
Not a half year
after Douwe entered the backdoor, he leaves with Geartjse through the front
door. On Saturday morning, 20 May 1905,
they marry in Witmarsum. And it’s high
time. They quickly rent a room in the
neighborhood.
…
In the cruel cold
of February 1906, after a long and difficult delivery, Geartsje gives birth to
twin boys: Jabik, named after Douwe’s father, and Hizkia. … .
After a day and a night filled with worry and empty doctor promises,
both boys die.
…
It’s a half year later when an informational evening is held
in Bolsward about emigration to America.
“This is where all of us need to go.”
Ytsje succeeds in taking Douwe and Geartsje, her son Nammen with his
Lysbeth Struiving, and her still single son Lolke along. Douwe even gets his peer Johannes Boorsma to
join.
But Johannes challenges the speaker: “People, don’t let
anybody mess with your heads, what we’re hearing here is nothing but gospel,
syrup and honey. You can also earn good
money on the German dairies, you can travel in one day from Leeuwarden to
Cologne by train, but even there by Ruhr and Rhine it’s not rice and raisins
every day. Except that from Germany you
can go home for a few days for the egg hunt or celebration of the Bolsward
Fair.”
…
A good four months later, on Friday 21 September 1906,
Hizkia Nammens Namminga passes away. The
cause could have been a strangulated hernia.
When the immediate family gathers in the mortuary in Hichtum on Saturday
22 September, the oldest son Sibbele looks his mom straight in the eyes when he
says: “It was out of respect for my dad that I didn’t go to America as quartermaster. Only in Hichtum could this man be
happy.”
…
It is the third son
who not much later is the first to board the boat to New York. As bachelor he wants to prepare the way for
those to follow.
…
Four years later, Ytsje gets her way: she will travel under
His care to the new world. Accompanying
her will be Nammen, his wife Lysbeth Struiving with their five children, and
daughter Geartsje with her husband Douwe Hiemstra and their three small
children. On the night of 16 to 17
February, 1911, the steamship Noordam will be ready for sailing – regardless of
weather.
