Birds in a Row

On this day, a few years ago, my dad was born to a family of a small Dutch town. The circumstances were difficult for various reasons, and when he was about 11, they moved to Australia.

Thirty years later, he went back and visited the house he had grown up in. And then thirty years later, I was in Amsterdam, and he asked me to go and find the house again. So I bought myself a day tripper train ticket, and set out for a small town at the very edge of Schiphol Airport.

I found the house quickly - it is on one of the main roads, but couldn't see any signs of life in it or the neighbouring houses and businesses. By the time I got there, I had my brave girl hat almost fully on and became steadily more determined to do everything possible (and legal) to see the inside of the house. But it wasn't looking good. So I did a few more circuits of the town, working out what to do next. The solution came to me quickly - when all else fails, ask at the library.

But the librarian also did not know anything about the people living in the house.

"Drat", thought I.

And then, "I'm hungry. Food will help."

With that thought, I ventured into the library cafe. This proved to be the best decision of my day.

After ordering and eating an excellent toastie, the waitress asked what brought me to their small town, and I explained my quest. "What's the address, I might know who lives there." This was quickly followed by "oh, I do know, hang on, I'll call my mum and get her phone number." And within five minutes, she had called the home owner, established she was home, and would be very happy to show me around. So along I poddled.

The next hour was spent in the house, as the owner pointed out different features - renovations she had made, "typical Wegman alterations" (steel reinforcing in the roof space - my father's family were engineers and similar), original walls and windows. She told me about the ghost that lives in the house - a boy or man who apparently bounces a ghost ball upstairs when she is downstairs, or opens a specific door then closes it again after a couple of minutes. And the mattress, blanket and hat in the now sealed space under the floor which she theorised might have been from someone hiding in WW2. All things to ask my dad about.

She also told me that the house is very old, and doesn't have stone foundations. Instead, and I need to find out more about this, it is built on layers and layers of leather. I hadn't ever heard of this happening, and am yet to find the internet key words that will tell me more. When large trucks drive past, she tells me, the house shakes and bounces around (that may have been a translational exaggeration).

I never thought I would actually see the house where my dad grew up, and I'm sure that the town is now very different to the one he knew - being on the edge of the airport, and not far out of Amsterdam, I heard about how it is expanding and changing. It is always difficult to imagine your parents as children, and so in many ways I couldn't imagine Dad in this house or town, but with those little glimpses into the traces his family left on the building, I got just a tiny flicker of those people I've never met.