NAARDEN - BUGS, TAR, AND MUD

When we first moved to the Netherlands we lived in Bussum and Blaricum for a year, after which we found a house in Naarden. It must have been in Spring that we took up residence there, as my first real memory of it was intense pleasure at the small pink stalky flowers in the part of the garden overlooking the old factory on the next lot.
I remember warm days in that spot among the irregular shrubbery, happily discovering pale yellow butterflies, ladybugs, and grasshoppers. Bright green grasshoppers, the hue of apples.
Plus little dark green insects that hid in the grass.
But most of all I remember the flowers.
They were coarse but charming.

In Autumn the factory was torn down, which left a beautiful huge hole in the ground that stretched forever and filled up after the rains. My mother would not let me go anywhere near it, as it was threateningly deep and dark. But it was very tempting.  Grass grew in clumps down the steep sides, and neighborhood children clambered down to the edge of the water.
It froze over during Winter, and they filled it up and paved it in Spring.
It made a lovely parking lot, but I preferred the hole.

One week the roof of the warehouse behind that hole was being tarred, and the smell was strong, mysterious, and alluring. I may have been the only person that thought so.
Hardened black chunks, when fragmented, yielded shiny glass-like surfaces. They did not taste like licorice.
The smell still adhered though it was not so delightfully sharp.
I collected them for a while, then lost interest.

My mother was not at all pleased when she found them in my pockets.
Odd treasures that broke or decomposed often ended up there, which was a pattern that played out for several more years.
Shan't even mention the dead moth with shiny eyes and blue spots.
Luckily I had put it in a match box......


EARLY SOCIAL LESSONS

When the neighborhood kids discovered us during school break they didn't like what they found. My older brother and I were two strangers who could not speak Dutch well yet, and persisted in using words and phrases that were foreign. We were still learning Dutch at the time, and whenever I did not know the local word I threw in the English locution and just hoped for the best.
For a long time I preferred to stay in our garden, the green areas beyond having become out of bounds due to enemy activity.
One time my brother and I had to face down a dozen of them, and it took the adults to establish a fragile and very hostile calm.

Later that year my brother went into the hospital, which was much more frightening than the conflict beyond our garden. By the time he came out, a friendship of sorts had been established with some of the neighborhood kids, from a house next to the irrigation canal.
In addition to the Bakkers, there were five other children on that street, divided among two families who were not from Naarden, and who presumed themselves a higher class than the six Bakker kids and their parents.
Not surprisingly my mother made friends with mrs. Bakker. That was probably the cause of agreeable relations with the children - I cannot claim a talent for diplomacy at that age.
As it turns out, I remember the Bakker family far far better than the other nearby households, although I do remember the roses in the garden across the street, roses that were a source of much pride.
They were very lovely flowers, variations on deep pink, orange, and yellow.
Some were quite fragrant, but the loveliest blooms had no smell.
Oddly, there were no insects at all in that garden.
It seemed strangely empty without bugs.
There were snails, though.


In Fall I went to a kindergarten down the road where the other children didn't speak to me and I got sand thrown into my eyes. After that I drew depictions of huge black creatures with wings and tendrils devouring houses, amid dark clusters with intersecting purple lines. These frightened my classmates and got them to leave me alone.
The teacher was convinced that there was something wrong with me for a while, until she finally understood that the drawings were road maps that also showed the canals, ponds, and forested areas among and in addition to towns and farms. She still thought my creations odd, but realized that there was something else there than just infantile scrawls.
I was the only child using a ruler to draw. That may have been it.
I could not read and write yet, so urban areas naturally were represented by buildings and blobs.
Big-eyed bugs were what made them each different.
This one here is Naarden. A big BIG bug!
Those are villages. Small bugs.
It's so simple!

The next Spring a new kindergarten opened up, much closer to our house.
I didn't know anybody, but it wasn't a hostile environment.
Yes, there was sand. In a neat shallow rectangle.
A very well organized place indeed.
No interesting insects.
Still too new.


AND LATER

The final summer I went bike riding with one of the Bakker boys out past the fortifications that surrounded Naarden. On an overgrown rise overlooking the moat around the town we stopped, and explored among the trees. There were pale yellow blossoms in the undergrowth, and small iridescent beetles. Lovely twitchy creatures, with black shells that reflected rainbows, and funny horned heads. They were fascinating, and tickled as they tried to escape.
I wanted to take some back to show my parents, so I put them in my pockets.
By the time I got home I had entirely forgotten about them.
My mother discovered them a day or two later.
Their charm had faded entirely.

In Autumn of that year we settled in Valkenswaard, a town near Eindhoven where my father had found an engineering job. After recovering from the measles I went to a new kindergarten without sand, beetles, or plants. Instead, there were nuns there, and shy obedient children who did not understand proper Dutch.
The nuns praised my diction.
They themselves were hard to talk to, and I was not impressed.

In the last week of kindergarten I made a painting filled with green plants and sunlight, and entirely without any buildings or insects whatsoever, which more or less represented Spring beyond the walled courtyard where the nuns let us play at regimented intervals.
It was hung on the wall along with everyone else's paintings.
One of the nuns said it reminded her of the time she spent in Java as a child, but there really should have been bugs somewhere in the painting. There were always bugs!
During break, on the very last day, I added a bug.
I may have given it too many eyes and legs, but at least it was there.


RETURN

Ten years later, I went back to Naarden during summer break.
I did not remember the bugs then, though I did recall bicycling out beyond the walls, as well as the sugar sandwiches we ate that day.

The house itself looked smaller, and the garden was very neat, very green.
The Bakker family still lived on the corner, next to the irrigation canal.

Bertje Bakker and I drove all over his dad's back pastures in a battered car.
He had learned to drive three years before when he was twelve.
We were still teenagers, but he seemed so "adult".
He had a motor vehicle of his very own.

One afternoon he taught me how to operate the car, how to accelerate, brake, and steer.

We then turned wheelies in the mud of the furthest field.

It was, appropriately, a Beetle.


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