School life in the Netherlands was much more liberal and relaxed. I spent most of those three years catching up on the year I was behind and pining after my latest crush—whether it was a boy from the boys’ wing of our segregated school or a teacher who had caught my fancy that year. Homework was still not much of a priority. But thanks to some great teachers and a headmistress with a sense of humour, I had a good time and still learned plenty of things that proved useful later in life.

The nuns also insisted—after we finally got a male gym teacher, hallelujah—that we wore a rather strange kind of breeches with a short skirt over them during physical education lessons. All in the school’s dreary aubergine tartan material. And all those layers in 40 degrees centigrade in the shade—just in case the teacher might get naughty thoughts from seeing the shape of our crotch.

By the second year, we got secular management and were allowed to wear our own clothes, but still: no trousers for the girls in school.

I can proudly say I was one of the organizers of our protest march to school, all of us dressed in trousers. We were duly expelled and called the newspaper—the only one we had—which reported on the event and helped us put an end to that particular bit of discrimination between the boys, now allowed in, and us girls.

It was probably one of the few times I actually enjoyed going to school. Being a cynic and a rebel didn’t make those years easy for my poor teachers. Though I think a sense of humour would have helped them a long way.

For example: once, our Dutch language teacher, who fancied himself a great actor, was reading a long and dreary poem to us in an overly theatrical manner. I suddenly pulled out my handkerchief (we all still carried those) and threw my face into it, making loud sobbing sounds.

“Lowik, what is wrong with you?” he said, impatient to get back to his Oscar-winning performance.

“Sir,” I sobbed, semi-overcome with emotion, “I am so touched. I can’t help myself.”

The whole class roared with laughter, but I was immediately sent to the Headmaster for ridiculing Art with a capital A.

When it was my turn to go in, the Headmaster couldn’t quite understand what the fuss was about—you really had to have been there to feel how funny it had been. I came off lightly that time.

Do children still have to sit lined up in front of a Headmaster’s office waiting for a green light to go on before going in? In my school, we actually had three colours: red meant busy, orange was “get your story ready,” and green was “enter.”

Next came my secondary school years, which for me were split between three years at the Gymnasium in Curaçao and three more in the Netherlands, in ’s-Hertogenbosch. For a teenager, that isn’t easy. You usually make your friends at the beginning of this period, and having to start over socially in the Netherlands felt like a bit of a disaster. I can barely remember the girls from those last three years.

After living through a mix of boredom and terror during my early education, secondary school was a very pleasant surprise. We were finally learning interesting things I hadn’t heard of before. Maths especially became an amazing subject for me during those years.

I was still reading voraciously, though, so homework was never my strong suit. That eventually led to me finishing high school with rather poor marks. But apart from my first job application, no one has ever asked about them. I feel I chose the right path by learning through reading copious amounts of books rather than wasting time learning things by rote for school.

My first three years were spent at a school rather piously called Maria Immaculata, which was run by nuns. As their head convent was in France, some of the Soeurs were French and made us start every school day reciting the Hail Mary in French—after we’d all cleaned our desks of the soot from the neighbouring oil refinery. No health and safety in those days!

The last year of primary school, though, was a completely different story. Our teacher was also the headmaster and already advanced in years. We all knew he loved to whack children on the head or lash out with his ruler. He would creep up from behind if you weren’t paying attention and suddenly hit you on the side of the head until your ears were ringing.

One time, he did the same to me while I was chatting with my neighbour, as he stood in the back of the class reading some story. Remembering my father’s advice, I grabbed my school bag and headed for the door. I can still hear him shouting, “If you leave through that door, you will never come back in!”—foaming at the mouth. I left anyway and went home.

My father went to have a little talk with him, and by the following week, I was allowed back in class. Knowing my dad, he must have made it very clear that if the headmaster ever touched me again, there would be serious consequences. My dad wasn’t exactly known for his diplomacy. I get that from him.

Some time after, apparently not having learned his lesson, the headmaster was sneaking up on another pupil—a local boy who didn’t have the benefit of a violent father and the disadvantage of not being the right colour—and was about to give him the usual wallop. But this boy, frightened as he was, held up his metal dip pen, and it went completely into the teacher’s hand.

You could hear a pin drop as we waited for the fury to unleash on this poor chap. And it did.

My final school report from that teacher had me at the top of the class, but he still wrote in the comments that I was ready to go to the MMS—which in those days meant training to be a housewife or secretary. I don’t need to tell you my father did not follow that advice.

Much later, I heard that teacher died of a very nasty cancer, and I remember thinking: there is some divine justice after all.

So as you can see, there was still no real incentive for me to start liking school.

Looking at the school picture above, some strange memories pop up. One of those little guys used to put a small mirror on top of his shoe to look under girls’ skirts. On the second row from the bottom, third from the left, sits our brave dip pen boy. I hope he went on to have a great life.

And on the first row, third from the left, is a boy called Tonnie. He and his brother Joshie, sons of the redoubtable Tante Gladys, lived quite close to us. We loved spending time at their house because they had a donkey we were allowed to ride. Sometimes my brother and I were allowed to sleep over. It was always a treat, but also a bit scary. Tante Gladys, when fed up with us fooling around instead of sleeping, would storm into the bedroom with her belt and wallop us—without making much distinction between her own children and their guests.

But the donkey made it worth it.

They say the older you get, the clearer the old memories become and the hazier what you did an hour ago. It’s true.

ntroduction

My parents met at a dance organized by an Air Force colonel—my mother’s uncle. At the time, my father had just finished his teacher training and was serving his draft as a sergeant. It was love at first sight. To impress her, he made his men march up and down the road where she lived.

After a shotgun wedding, they had two more children in quick succession, as being practicing Catholics in those days seemed to dictate. The country was still in post-war depression, so my father—restless and adventurous as he was—soon decided to move the family to the island of Curaçao, one of the Dutch Antilles, which had just become independent in 1954.

After living in a house with no heating or hot water, and a single bicycle between them, expat life—with luxuries like a car—felt like a dream come true. There were parties, life lived practically outdoors, and endless trips to beautiful, unspoiled beaches.

But after nearly twelve years, my mother wanted to return to the Netherlands, to be closer to her family. It still took them another two years to make that happen.

My story begins around the time that decision to return home was almost settled. I was 14 at the time and had fully adapted to the island’s slow pace of life. From April 1968 until I had children myself in 1988, I kept a diary. The earlier years, I’ll write about as far as memory allows.

Spring 1968

By spring of 1968, I had already heard that my best friend, M.J., and her family were going to “go back” to the Netherlands.

The first time we met, we were both around three years old, sitting in the front child seat on our dads’ bikes when they bumped into each other by chance in the city of Nijmegen. They knew each other from some teacher’s event—both were junior school teachers. During that conversation, they discovered they had both just applied for teaching jobs in Curaçao, in the Dutch Antilles.

The education system there was mainly organized by the Catholic Church, and Dutch was the sole teaching language in the schools. That’s why my father had to start his job at a Catholic school, even though he hated religion—“poison for the people,” as he called it. But the Church paid the passage for him and his family, so to begin the adventure, he set aside his principles for the sake of giving us a better life. The Netherlands was still struggling with post-war depression, and making ends meet wasn’t easy.

My mother, barely in her twenties, often had to tell the rent collector that her mother wasn’t home, as she looked too young to be a wife and mother of three.

My father’s patience with religious rules didn’t last long, but more about that later.

That first meeting must have sparked my friendship with M.J., because when we met again in Curaçao and eventually came to live in the same street, we became inseparable. We even looked alike. During school holidays, our families would swap children: I would stay with her parents, while her younger brother Robbie stayed with my little brother Clemens. After a week or so, we’d switch again.

My parents were always strict about bedtimes, except on weekends when we could stay up as late as we liked. During the week, we were sent to our rooms with clear instructions not to bother them again. These days, parents might be shocked at how firm those rules were—any noncompliance could be met with a wallop or some dire threat if they heard one more peep.

Now, I see tiny children running around at midnight because their parents, having both worked all day, feel guilty about not spending enough time with them. And then they wonder why children today are so nervous and need to be tagged with all sorts of acronyms.

With a stay-at-home mum and a teacher as a father, by 8 p.m. my parents had had enough of us, so off to bed we went. Living in the Caribbean helped; the sun set at 6 p.m. every day, so it was always dark by bedtime. Reading was encouraged—no playing or talking, but we could read as long as we wanted. For me, that was bliss. For my brothers, not so much, as they wouldn’t read unless forced.

When I had nothing left to read, we’d think up ways to get around being stuck in our rooms. One was to remove the glass shutters from our windows—our rooms adjoined—and sneak out to talk to each other outside. We never went anywhere, just stood there for the thrill of breaking the rules.

Another game was using a long string with the ends tied together to send each other notes. Before bed, we’d make sure each end was secured in our rooms. Using clothespins, we’d attach messages to the string and slide them along. Very Enid Blyton.

It all must sound terribly boring now, compared to the ability to kill hordes in a video game with a few button presses. But for us, outwitting the grown-ups gave a real thrill. Looking back, it also taught resilience and creative problem-solving. And since those little adventures tired us out, we slept like logs and arrived at school full of energy.

Our parents were seen as a bit too lenient by their friends: the late weekend bedtimes, allowing us to refuse foods we hated—porridge, sprouts, vegetables in my case—and letting us roam unsupervised wasn’t typical. But they were very young when they had us and, I admit, a little careless.

Sometimes I’m amazed we survived our childhood. Take New Year’s Eve, for example. While our parents partied, we kids—twenty or more of us—would carry shoeboxes full of fireworks, some of which would now be completely illegal because they could blow up letterboxes or worse.

If you were lucky, you had a cigar-smoking dad to light your stash; otherwise, you made do with mosquito spirals. We’d roam around the neighbourhood, throwing firecrackers, bombs, and ground-spinners at houses, cars, and even each other. Occasionally one of us would be sent inside to fetch snacks or drinks while the adults, by then quite inebriated, didn’t notice a thing.

I can proudly say all of us made it into adulthood with all limbs and eyes intact. The only real casualty was my little brother Clemens. One New Year’s Day, while our parents slept off their hangovers, we were out early collecting all the fireworks that hadn’t gone off. The idea was to cut them open with one of Dad’s Gillette razor blades, pour the powder into a heap, and set it alight for a big flash.

That year was Clemens’ first turn, as his big brother had been sent off to boarding school. He lit the match—and got his arm badly burned when the whole thing went up. We had to wake up our parents to take him to the doctor.

Now, seeing children with helmets, knee and elbow pads, and constant electronic supervision, I have to smile—and maybe feel a bit sorry for them.

Next time, I’ll tell you about our adventures at the coast.

Early Education Memories

I remember my early education as being quite boring. It all started with my preschool year when I was five. I was sent to a school where the class size was approximately thirty little kids.

By then, I already knew how to read and write, so being made to cut and paste, do very simple embroidery, and play in the dolls’ corner—with no access to books or anything remotely educational—felt like torture. I hated every minute of it.

One of my strongest memories from that time involves what they called “sleep time.” For a whole hour each day, we had to put our heads on our desks and “sleep” while the teachers had their lunch or whatever it was they did. Even now, at the age of 64, I find sleeping during the day impossible. My mind barely lets me sleep at night, let alone in broad daylight. You can imagine that for my five-year-old energetic self, sitting still with my head down felt unbearable.

One day, after yet another reprimand for not staying still, the teachers decided to have some fun at my expense. While I was dutifully putting my head on the table with my eyes closed, they secretly tied the bow strings of my dress to the back of the chair. When the hour was finally up and we were told we could get up, I couldn’t. The chair was stuck to me, and as I struggled, the teachers screeched with laughter.

Being a very proud child, I was mortified.

The only good thing that came out of that experience was that when I told my dad about it, he wasted no time pulling me out of that hellhole. From then until I started primary school, I stayed at home, reading and helping my older brother with his homework.

That first introduction to institutionalised learning left me with a long-lasting dislike for school, but thankfully, it didn’t put me off learning new things altogether.