HOLLAND -- A DAY OF MEMORIES

16 October 2015  Saturday

Today we spent the day in Wageningen where I went to school in 1964.  My school building was just blocks from our Bed & Breakfast so we drove past and noticed it was open.  It is now a private music school.  Roger talked me into going inside and asking to look around.  A lot of memories flooded over me.  It was a hard year attending that Gymnasium.  I was in the first form and the regular students took so many subjects:  History, Dutch, English, French, Greek, Biology, Algebra, Geometry, Gymnastics and Art. My school at home required me to bring along my American textbooks and study them, so I did not take all the classes the others students did.  I took Algebra, Geometry, Art, Biology, History, Gymnastics and for awhile, English.  I dropped English when it became apparent that the teacher spent too much time mocking my American English and I wasn't getting anything out of the class.  So I would go up into the turret of the building and study my American texts during those classes.

I was pretty shy, didn't know Dutch yet and the students were not friendly to me.  I'm sure it was hard for them to want to befriend someone who was shy and didn't know their language.  Our desks were two-seaters and we had the same seat partner for most classes. My partner was a large girl named Jos.  She didn't seem to be pleased to be placed next to me instead of a Dutch girl and ignored me most of the time. 

At the beginning of the year I rode my bike the 4 kilometers to school from Renkum where we lived.  But as the weather got colder and the skies darker in the morning, Dad would drop me off on his way to his office at the University of Wageningen.  He would first drop off Marolyn and Janet at their elementary school and then drive to my school.  Since their school started a half hour earlier than mine it meant that I had to stand outside for half an hour.  So Dad began driving me around the countryside until it was time for me to go to school.  We saw such interesting things--barns attached to houses, farmers wearing real wooden shoes out working in their fields, charming little villages.  And Dad would give me pep talks while we drove.  I'm sure this cut into his work time where he had important projects to do, but I didn't think of it then.

My Gymnasium -- my homeroom is the left window on the bottom floor
You can see the turret on the far right where I studied my American textbooks

                                             The entrance to my scary school

                                                  Hallway inside my school

  In the stairwell of my school

Then Roger and I went to the church square in downtown Renkum to the open market for lunch.  We couldn't find parking that allowed us to pay with coins or that would take our credit card. We drove through many parking lots and finally had to go very far from the square where we finally found a parking machine we could use.  I know this was divine intervention.  As we locked the car and turned to walk to the church I looked straight across a small canal at a view I hadn't seen since I was 13 years old!  My dad's office!  I have visited Renkum several times but never before had been able to find this building that hasn't been used by the university for many years.

I was instantly in tears.  There's a lot of story to that office.  We had a really neat gym in our school with fun equipment that we played lots of games on.  I loved that class and wished we had it every day.  Sometime after the weather turned cold we stopped using that gym and rode our bikes down to the University of Wageningen to use their gym building.  This building just happened to be right next to the building where Dad had his office!

This worked for me as long as I had my bike.  But I never figured out exactly when we would be having gym class and it was getting too cold to ride my bike (most the other students didn't live in another town like I did so they always rode their bikes and of course, they were Dutch! Dutch children ride bikes from almost as soon as they can walk and no weather stops them.

So on the days when I didn't have my bike my poor seatmate, Jos, would have to PUMP ME to the gym on the back of her bike.  I could tell it was hard for her and she hated it.  I was also sure she hated me.  So then I started noticing that sometimes I had a free hour before or after gym class when I was to work on my American schoolwork.  This was perfect!  I could walk to Dad's office during that hour and save Jos from having to pump me.  I would arrive a little early and spend the time reading in Dad's office.  Or if my free hour was after gym I could stay with Dad for awhile and then walk back to school.  Jos was spared from pumping me!  And wasn't Dad lucky that his daughter could spend time with him (oh, I wonder what he would say about this if I could ask him.  Was he embarrassed of having a terribly high-maintenance daughter?  What did his colleagues think about this arrangement?  Did they approve of my being there?)

So as I stood in the parking lot looking across the canal at Dad's office building with the little gym building next to it I couldn't help remembering all that Dad did for me to get me through that difficult Dutch year.  Not only did he drive me around and build up my courage to face another day at school and help me for hours and hours at night with my math homework.  He also had to have me hang around his office a couple of times every week.  I will always be grateful for having such a devoted father.

                        The view I saw of the former University of Wageningen.

                          Dad's building is on the left, my gym on the right behind the blue truck

Close-up of my gym building

       Dad's building -- his office was in the short addition on the right side