Yesterday I was up before the sun. 5:26 and I was roused from bed by an insistent wakefulness. The sky was so bright and I marveled again at the length of the days. I made tea in the kitchen, writing in my journal as I stood at the counter watching the rabbit and the two pheasants in the grass across the way. I wrote about things that are tickling my fancy here in the Netherlands, like the fact that although the bakery bread is all bland uninspired variation on Wonderbread, there is bread in a box.
Good bread in a box. Heavy, square rye bread that is thick and tastes of coffee and cream.
There is yogurt in cartons. Pour, plop.
The way that secondary highways are labeled with distance, not just every kilometer, but every 100m. 27,4…27,5…27,6…
The rest of the early morning was spent starting a cropped sweater from yarn leftover from the green vest, listening to podcasts, enjoying the time alone. I made porridge and ate with Rainer, then sent him off for a 76km bike ride. Before he returned I’d roused the kids, fed them yogurt and HoneyLoops, and we’d sat at the table and done our formal learning. Somehow, while searching for an online video explaining how tides work, I stumbled on a homeschooling blog called Little Acorn’s Treehouse with a link to a full-length Magic School Bus video on mussels and tides.
We’d finished it just in time for Rainer’s return and, while he ate 2 bananas and drank water, we scurried to get ready. The kids clambered onto their bikes and we headed off. It was an hour-long speed interval run for me, although not for Rainer. He’s far faster than I am. But still, an hour of running after 2:40 on the bike is still tiring. We loved the paths, the straight sweeps of tall trees giving us shade. A country with this many official and unofficial bikepaths seems extraordinarily civilized.
Lunch was Asian coleslaw with tofu. Cool and crispy. Just right after a hot run. Afterwards Rainer did some research while the kids played and I tidied. Then, the beach.
It’s 6km to the west of us, and we hope that yesterday was the only time we’ll take the car. There are bike racks for the bike racks there. The tide was going out and the beach just kept getting bigger. I lay down and nearly dozed off. I was so tired and the breeze off the ocean was cool in the hot sun. The water wasn’t as cold as I’d feared. Warmer than many a Canadian lake. Tias wasn’t to be gotten out. He did flips over the waves.
Home for showers and a supper of leftover cinnamon chicken soup. Then the kids had ice cream while Rainer read our three pages of history. We lugged our immense Usborne World History encyclopedia to Europe. It’s so big and heavy it’s embarrassing to think that we brought it. But we really wanted the kids to get a sense of the sweep of history, and since we’re still in the Middle Ages in our history co-op, we needed some way to cover Napoleon and communism and, well, all the rest. Traveling makes so much more sense when you have hooks upon which to hang new sights and new facts.
Bedtime routines. Right now we’re reading “The Little Riders”, a story about a little girl in Holland in WWII. I was looking for something that would help us talk about WWII without depressing the living daylights out of me and without being too much for the kids. This short chapter book is just right. A little girl works to save the town clock’s metal riders and horses from being melted for German ammunition, and she’s helped by a kind German officer. A story in which even the bad guys have a few good guys. The World Wars are tricky things to talk about in our house. Rainer’s a German, I’m a pacifist with a childhood full of British Empire-centered war talk.
I stumbled to bed, so sleepy from the long, busy day. I was only able to read a few pages in my current Jane Austen novel, Emma. I’m reading my way through them again over the summer. Emma is such fun the second time, when you know what you do about Frank Churchill. And now it’s early morning yet again and I was woken by the pigeons that seem to live on the roof. Rainer’s made porridge this morning so that he can be fueled up for his trip to the pool for lane swimming. Right now I’m glad I’m not a triathlete and can stay home and drink tea.
That sounds like a lovely day. You packed so much in. And the Netherlands is very civilized in so many ways. Have you read the Ernst Gombrich “Little History of the World”. That is what we took on our trip (for much the same reason). It stops at the end of WWI but has an afterword in the English edition written many years later. That afterword might help you with the particular difficulty of dealing with the German and British views of that historical period. The book was originally published in German in 1937. Gombrich is Austrian and Jewish. Moved to the UK in 1936 and stayed there. He is actually an art historian, and better known for that, but wrote this between finishing his doctorate and getting a “real job”.
If you get in to Amsterdam, I recommend the Dutch Resistance Museum. We didn’t spend enough time there but it does a very good job of dealing with daily life in the war and the kinds of moral dillemmas people faced, as well as questions of nationalism and occupation.
I don’t know if I have commented here before, but I wanted to delurk and tell you that I am so enjoying reading about your trip and all of the activities you are doing as a family. It’s inspiring to me, as mom to a 2 year old daughter, to see the creativity and learning going on with you and your children. While homeschooling most likely isn’t in our future, you make me wish that it was.
And obviously I need to read Emma again. It’s been ten years, and while I remember specifically reading it (in the summer, sitting on a park bench under a tree across from the front door of the Seattle Times), I don’t remember anything about Frank Churchill.
Do you know Lois Lowry’s book, Number the Stars?
It’s the story of a family in Copenhagen who help some Jewish friends escape Nazi “relocation.” It is free of graphic horrors and focuses instead on bravery– the bravery that ordinary people had– during WWII.
I’d love to join your history and geograph “class” right now!
Thanks, Jove. I don’t know that we’re wanting to drive more than an hour while we’re here, so we probably won’t get that far. But thanks for the tip about the afternoon lace demos in Brugges. We should be seeing that on Friday.