Dakota

Excerpt 9: a continuation of my translation of Speerstra’s The Comfort Bird.

On Wednesday morning, 1 March 1911, the Noordam glides past the Statue of Liberty into the New York harbor.  It is clear, cool, and almost windless.  While Ellis Island – the island of tears – lies waiting a bit farther on, here and there a tear is already wiped away.  But in the huge customs warehouses everything runs like clockwork.  After three hours all passengers, except for a few with medical, administrative, or personal issues, have set foot on American soil.

…

   There they go, finally feeling the solid ground of the Land of Deliverance under their feet.  …

The real America.  They’re standing in Grand Central Station, ready to begin their train journey.  To the city of Sioux Falls. 

It becomes a matter of patience, the journey lasts 33 hours. 

But then they’re welcomed by a bright late winter sun; and there five adults are standing with eight children in the middle of America on a nearly forsaken platform.  Each one looks around cautiously, one even more worn out than the other.  The shortage of diapers was supplemented in the train with pieces from Grandma’s flannel undershirt and underpants.  And still the old lady acts as if she knows nothing of the letter in the pocket of her undershirt.

…

It’s sixteen hours later, in the late night of 5 March.  Douwe and Nammen look at the station clock of Yankton and note that their watches are still in sync.  An old lady with a basket stands in the wooden station building.

…waiting for them in front of the station are two large covered wagons and a one-horse-drawn flat wagon, with the moving crates already loaded.

“Namminga folk to Springfield, Hiemstra folk to Running Water,” the driver cries with a shrill voice. 

…

That morning at half past seven Douwe and Geartsje with their three children reach the address in the area of Running Water.  Farther ahead, in a depression, the Missouri River

lies glistening in the first light of morning.  It’s almost too much for Geartsje again.

In what kind of town or region did Nammen and Lys with Grandma and the kids end up?

   They themselves happened to arrive on the Ulbe Eringa Farm.  They can promptly pull up at the breakfast table.  Eringa’s prayer sounds like a sermon in a cathedral. 

…

   For the exhausted Hiemstras there’s bread with pork lard, but no rest.  And neither diapers.  For Eringa was only responsible for the welcome, the sermon, and the stories.  “Well, I’ll bring you now to the Wijnia Farm, there’s plenty work there for a farm worker and his wife.  All right!  We’ll see each other again in church tomorrow.”

   That same afternoon around mealtime they find themselves with the three little children on the Wijnia Farm.  Again, Geartsje doesn’t dare to mention sleep; and after all, for the first time in her life she’s lodging somewhere.  But Douwe takes the chance.  “It’s high time that my wife and kids get a little sleep in their system.”

   But no, the dinner table is ready.  “The river!” Wijnia begins, “we can’t quite see the Missouri River from here, but sometimes we can sure hear it. Watch out, I’m warning you now!” 

…

Wijnia plants himself at the end of the long dining table and closest to the pot.  There is his own chair of command.  To silence his large household the man merely needs to hem.  As one very much in charge, he looks around, and commands:  “Respect for God!”, folds his hands, and in a wide-ranging prayer makes mention of a blessed trip from Hichtum to Springfield.  Amen.

…

   Douwe …glances at the forsaken prairie through the small window.  The way the land looks here must be the way it first saw light after the Flood.  He feels himself drenched in a wave of emotion, and he thinks to himself: we shouldn’t have done this.

   An hour and a half later Douwe Hiemstra, formerly milker in Hichtum, is farm worker and Geartjse a help for day and night on the Wijnia Farm in Running Water.  It lasts for a week, …then: “Wijnia, I can make a lot more on the Lee Nickel Farm, so I’m going to leave with wife and kids.”

   “Then off with you!”  Wynia is getting angry; his other half stays milder: “Oh, how ungrateful!”  She says it while she snatches the plates off the table.  What Douwe says next is nothing Geartsje has heard him say before; he quotes Meindert Birdie: “It’s been drummed into me here: Whoever makes himself a sheep is going to be eaten by wolves!”

   When the Nickel boys pick them up the same day with horse and wagon, they stand ready, fully packed. …

A half year later Douwe and Geartsje move for ten dollars more a month to the Tommy Jones Farm, and after that it’s on to the large town of Avon, for there they can acquire eighty acres of good farmland for a moderate price.  First rent, of course.  As one who came from Penjum, Douwe seeds it first with wheat, but by harvest time the price of grain has gone south.  After a couple of months Geartsje’s household ledger is in bad shape.  Poverty.  If the oldest children hadn’t come home twice a week from the Thys Bakker Farm with a gallon of soup, they would have been at hunger’s door.

On a Sunday morning after church, Douwe bumps into a side job: he can become gravedigger for the cemetery of the fast-growing  village of Avon. 

…

   When Douwe comes home one night in 1916, later than usual, Geartsje notices that he’s not well.  He lacks appetite and has trouble sleeping.  It’s as if she sees her own dad in him, father Hizkia who from all the setbacks could also hit bottom.  What if Douwe himself should have caught the deadly flu?  It didn’t take long for the truth to surface: “Geartsje, I can’t take this job anymore, the grief in the cemetery kills me.”  In a week’s time he’s had to dig who knows how many children’s graves.

   And so Douwe leaves the dead of Avon and moves his young family to Norwegian Hill.  There, in the middle of nowhere, a forsaken farm is for sale.  They take it; they don’t ask why it is forsaken.

…

It’s a warm Sunday afternoon in the last part of July 1918, when a hot prairie wind blows around Norwegian Hill; in the hollow the Missouri shimmers in the backlight.  The Rocky Mountains are apparently generous with water again - the river is lively as a deer.  Together the farmer and his wife stroll to the top of the hill and see, deep in the hollow, their wheat field, undulating in the hot wind.  Their golden triangle, the fruit of their toil in sweat and tears.  The crop is ripening, almost three feet high.  Together they walk down the slope toward their wheat field.

   In the distance against the slope the dark red of their house with barn and cowshed contrasts against a steel blue sky.  “Grandma is taking care of the kids,” she says, “I think that she can see us.”

    “What a wonderful promising crop,” he says.

   “Nobody can surprise us here,” she says.  “Come.”  He understands. They do it, in their own ripening grain.

   …

 A good two days later, during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, the barking of the Scottish collie Birdie wakes them up.  The barking becomes a howling cry.  Douwe shoots out of bed and strides on bare feet across the yard.  He hears noise behind the wooden barn.  He goes down, and the murmur turns into a rushing.  The Missouri!  Now he dashes down the hill.

   When some fifteen minutes later he resurfaces in his underwear, Geartsje has come to meet him.  “The Missouri,” he pants, “the Missouri has ripped all of our land with it.  Geartsje, my dear, we’ve lost everything.”  All their hopes and expectations have been torn away, every scrap of land by a roaring river. 

But just as a healthy tree always grows new leaves, so Douwe and Geartsje will gather new courage; that same year they return to the forsaken Tommy Jones farm to try again through hard work and smart farming. 

…

  It’s the beginning of November 1919.  They were able to rent some additional land.  And then the winter hits.  Forty degrees below on top of a knee-high layer of snow.  In the meantime Douwe has more than one in Geartsje: any day now another child may come and this time she is so heavy, she hardly knows what to do.

   …

   Grandma emerges from the side room with birth news: “A great big boy!  I’d say at least ten pounds, and I’m talking about Frisian pounds.  I think it should be a Nammen.”

   A half hour later Grandma is back:  “Another big boy!  Another heavy one.  This should be a Lolke, Douwe!”  Doctor estimates the boys together at nearly eighteen pounds.  And Geartsje is doing great.  “Only, the old doctor is exhausted, so I tucked him in next to Geartsje in Douwe’s place.”

   …

   “As long as I have you here now,” begins Grandma Ytsje Namminga-Wytsma, “I want to give you some good advice: If you as man and wife want to yield to each other’s desire, you should do it after the day’s work in the evening.  Not in the daytime, and never outside, that only makes for hefty babies.”

I Want to Live

Excerpt 7

[Note:  this is an ongoing series of excerpts from my translation of

Hylke Speerstra’s De treastfugel, published both in Frisian and in Dutch.

The book, translated as The Comfort Bird, seeks a publisher.]

(Johannes Boorsma, driven by need and ambition, seeks his fortune in Germany.

It wasn’t easy to leave his parents behind.)

A father in tears, a mother trying in vain to calm the storm.  He remembers that he ran outside and through the window saw the old man sitting in the house, his back turned to the outside world.  Mother brought her son to the small gate by the road.  “Son, wherever you will go, weigh your words.”  The mother and the son, who dearly love each other, shake hands, while the father has his back turned against the evil world.

Dad.  He felt himself tied to his birthplace which he seemingly hated and loved at the same time.  And always longing for a better place.  … The real fate of Meindert Birdie was that he had been born without wings; he had always talked and sung with the birds, even able to fly around a bit with them.  But he caught on that he lacked wings.  What remained was only an anchor which he dropped then here, then there. 

…

What do you want to do, Johannes Boorsma?  Live in fear all your life, or live? …

Johannes , on the way to Frillendorf.

[He finds work, enjoys himself, and is paid well.]

On Sunday evening, 11 August 1912, Johannes is at the door of his old parents in Hichtum.

   “Dad is waiting for you, boy,” his mom whispers.  “He’s close to the end.”

   “Here is Johannes,” his mom whispers while she opens the bedstead doors a bit wider to let in some light. …

   “Dad!”  Two dull eyes that light up and fasten on the son.  He reaches out to his son what once was the iron-strong fist of Meindert Birdie and now seems as if the son is holding all of his dad in that one hand.

   A day later, on 12 Monday August 1912, Meindert Boorsma, age 63, dies.  Laid out with his hands folded on his chest, and hidden in those hands the thing with which he had serenaded his longing for the Better Land.  Johannes had taken the bird whistle back home with him from Germany.  “It belongs with Dad on his last journey, it is the mirror of his soul.”

A Shipful of Hope

Excerpt 8

Geartsje Hiemstra-Namminga feels herself trapped in a haunted no-man’s-land where chaos and confusion reign.  …

   She hears the blast of the ship’s horn.  The 12,000-ton ocean steamer is leaving the dock.  Her stomach churns, then it turns.  A ship loaded with uncertainty and hope.  More than a thousand men, women and children of a hundred different kinds and who knows how many languages.  Torn loose from their roots.  …

Geartsje’s three fall asleep at last: Jacob four years old, Ytsje two, and Hizkia eight months. …

   Some more hours later, deep in the nausea-inducing stomach of the steamship, Geartjse Hiemstra-Namminga stumbles around with three whining kids.  They are wet and dirty, and the lost diapers have not re-surfaced. 

   “The little fella is asking for the breast.”  Grandma is awake and in command again.  “Mom, I feel like I don’t have a drop of milk, I’m dry.”

   “No milk left?  I’ve never had that happen.”  The old lady has a way of hurting her daughter from time to time. …

   Later in the evening there are signs everywhere of the increasing wind.  …

“The Lord will protect us and take care of us.”  And with those words Grandma is going to go to sleep, trying again to get a head start on her rest.  Douwe and Nammen have been upstairs and come back with the news that an icy cold winter wind together with splashing water clouds chased all the happiness seekers from the upper deck.  …

   Something seems wrong with the Noordam.  It is rumored that in such a serious storm it can sail at only half its power, for otherwise it would bury itself so deep inside the enormous waves that it might never surface again.

   “The ship is just trying to stay afloat.” …

Now they discover the bad shape Grandma is in.  Totally done in.  For the first time the daughter has to wash and change the mother.  Geartjse carefully pulls the smelly undervest over her head, and then there’s still a flannel undershirt that needs changing.

   Wait, what is that?  Something drops out of a secret inside shirt pocket.  A white envelope.  A letter.  From Springfield  SD, delivered in Hichtum.  The address written in ink is from none other than Lolke.  Did Grandma in Hichtum hide a letter from Lolke?  She must have.  Why then didn’t she open the envelope?  Because there might have been an inconvenient truth inside?  Geartsje takes hold of the envelope and pretends to know nothing.

Because of the extremely bad weather and other setbacks, the ocean journey takes a week longer than usual, but then the weather improves.  After Grandma too has recovered, her first words are: “Are all of you still here?” …

Later, at night, while Grandma snores her own dream, Geartjse and Douwe open the letter from Lolke in South Dakota, and read:

  “Dear family

   […]Here west of Springfield the summer seemed to run its course so

    ideally, but now by us on Norwegian Hill the bitter cold winter weather

   is getting the best of us.  In the fall we heard little good news from the

   Biesmas who live west of Sioux Falls, and now nothing is heard from

   them at all anymore. It’s not likely that they crossed the Missouri, because

   over there it’s said to be even worse and twelve farm folk were frozen to

   death.  It is so bare and miserable here, every sane person

   is heavyhearted. Think hard before you start, tell our mother that. […]”

To America

 

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!”
…

   “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.

Letter to my newly ordained daughter.

Dear Cindy,

 

 

I think you began this journey early in life, soon after you were born.

Even as an infant, you knew who you were.

When sisters and brother joined you, you welcomed their company.

And you were prepared.

You organized and entertained their little lives with quiet confidence and goodwill.

 

And when I watched you some years later discuss a story with a select group of other 6^th graders, I knew the gift would flourish.

It did, to the glory of the Giver.

 

You shared it as counselor at Camp Tall Turf, learning and leading, walking with and caring for those with troubled lives.

You shared it in a classroom of your own when you became a teacher and could talk about stories and meanings all day long.

You shared it as Chapel Coordinator with students and apprentices, still learning and leading, all the while moving closer to the spiritual nature of the human journey – God’s purpose and meaning for our lives.

 

When the work in the Chapel ended, there was pain.

You grieved, for you had loved your work.

We grieved too, and prayed new paths would show.

 

Something had been growing within you, something that had been part of the Giver’s gift all along:

the desire for a greater immersion in the Word and devotion to the Word made flesh.

God’s gift had flourished, and now grew into a calling.

It was like a trickle from a well of living water that turned into a stream.

It was like a faint whisper that slowly drew closer till it became a voice that settled in the soul.

You were not surprised, I think.

You listened, though there were other voices too.

But you embraced the one that was embracing you.

 

We watched as you studied Greek and Hebrew, Systematic Theology, Apologetics –

we prayed that you would be blessed with fortitude and steadfast faith.

The work was hard, the days too short.

But you persevered, and learned, and grew – the gift still flourishing.

 

And one summer you were back at Tall Turf, as chaplain now.

And it felt right.

You practice preached in places and in your own church too.

And you were affirmed.

 

Graduation came, hearts filled with joyous gratitude when you filed across the platform for the degree in divinity.

Then came Synod.

I remembered the Synod years ago where I as delegate pleaded with others for allowing women to preach.

I did not know then that I was pleading for my daughter too.

But it was in vain.

Or was it?

For now Synod welcomed, applauded, and embraced you.

And feelings would not be suppressed; but the tears were not the same as at the Synod of my memory.

 

But then the waiting and the wondering began.

Would the inner call connect to an outer one?

Weeks passed, then months. 

More prayers, and pleas.

And doubts, but not despair.

You made sermons, you preached, and you were praised.

 

And when your church needed you, you were there.

You had served as elder the needs of parents losing their only daughter.

All through the valley you were there for them, sharing their tears and pain in their torn hearts.

You were still learning and leading, in Jesus’ name.

Now they needed you, for a time, for the pastoral care of the congregation.

Your heart was in it; your gifts flourished; and you were loved.

We thanked God for that wonderful blessing.

 

Meanwhile, some signals went back and forth, with long pauses in between.

Was God using those testing times to train?

At last, the signals grew into one steady sound, the outer call:

the call to Lakeside Church.

Not sure at first this was your place to go, it grew on you till you felt sure:

this was God’s call for you.

The classis met, its questions challenged you, but you sustained it well.

Their warm approval and embrace confirmed to you the rightness of your path.

 

At Neland your pastoral ministry ended with pastors and elders encircling you,

laying their hands on you, and sending you out with their love and blessings.

That holy moment, when I too joined that circle, filled your father’s soul with the Spirit’s joy.

Did you feel it too?

Yes, there was a strain of sadness too—your church family would miss Ed and Cindy who had meant much to the church for so long.

And we would miss you too, sharing the “family bench” with us on many a Sunday.

 

But then came the service of your ordination at Lakeside Church.

Your anticipation must have been intense.

Children and family and friends would come from near and far to witness the end of one journey and the beginning of another.

If you felt a kind of holy excitement within and around you as people began to arrive, I felt it too. 

It was a spirit of celebration, for you and for all who came.

A celebration of the “Light that Goes Before Us,” the theme you chose for this service.

A celebration of your spiritual trajectory that led at last to these people longing for a pastor.

To a small congregation --yes, but very much alive.

And on this Saturday night its numbers swelled with Neland members and others from Fremont Second, the calling church.

 

There was much in that service that moved us profoundly. 

Yes, the singing of “Bless the Lord, O my soul”; of “Praise and glory, wisdom and thanks/honor and power and strength/be to our God forever and ever”; of Ed and Amy singing “Cause your Word to come alive in me/give me faith for what I cannot see/give me passion for your purity/Holy Spirit, breathe new life in me”; of voices swelling on “Love divine, all loves excelling, Joy of heaven, to earth come down.”

Your gift of liturgical sensitivity was evident in the way the service was put together.

But there was also the ringing affirmation of your calling in Dale Cooper’s memorable message “Sent to Bear Witness to the Light.”

And to a parent’s heart there is something very special in hearing the congregation promise to “welcome Cindy as their minister and pastor, to take to heart the Word of God as she proclaims it, to promise to pray for her, to share in the work of her ministry, to encourage her in her tasks, and to respond to her work with obedience, love, and respect.”

 

But what is indelibly imprinted in my memory, and I think that true for all who witnessed, was your face as you took your place before us. 

Your face spoke the feelings that words cannot express: your whole being’s participation in the weight and the glory of the moment - sometimes stirred by emotions arising from deep within, sometimes radiating a heavenly joy.

The tears that welled up in us were tears of love and joy and praise.

When we stood at the end, joining hands, and sang “My friends, may you grow in grace…to God be the glory, now and forever…, I choked on the words sometimes, overcome by God’s glorious presence among us.

And I fought tears again when you spoke at the end, thanking God and others who had blessed and shaped you in what “I am becoming.”

 

By God’s grace, you are becoming what you already began when you were but a little child.

Watching that little-child-become-pastor for the first time raise her hands over the congregation in the closing benediction was a blessing my heart could hardly contain.

 

May your gifts flourish at Lakeside, dear Cindy, as you continue to learn and to lead.  

With much love,

Dad

 

 

  

 

 

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.”