90 (2)

Today would have been the 90th birthday of my mother. It is the first time we commemorate her, as she passed away on August 1, after a completed life.

My mother and I were best friends from a young age – I was also the last to leave home. Although she had trouble with the person I am, that did not stop her from embracing Toine in her arms and heart from day 1, in 1987. Because that is what a mother is for.

I inherited my creativity from her: together we took photography and drawing courses. I shared her love for animals, flowers and plants, for art. We watched TV series from back then extensively together.

Another passion that I got from my mother is travelling. From the 60’s onwards, our family went on holidays to Spain or Italy every year. For the first time by plane to exotic Romania in 1974 (where I celebrated my 13th birthday), to Austria, and to England. On a skiing holiday with colleagues from my dad’s work. I think my mother in particular played a role in all that travelling.
Later she travelled around Europe with my father and friends. I remember a cruise in the Mediterranean, where she put all the postcards to the family in the suggestion box instead of the letter box. I don’t know if they ever arrived. She went to Israel and Jordan, North America and Cuba several times with the Holland Choir.
She was already quite old when she drove to northern Norway with a friend, a journey of 6,000 km that I wouldn’t easily do. She loved driving, until she decided she shouldn’t anymore.

When I was studying in Moscow in 1984, she came to visit me for the last two weeks of my studies there. That time was very difficult for our family, but we had such a nice time together that we agreed to do it again. That had to wait a long time, but when she turned 75, her children and grandchildren gave her a trip to Norway as a present. Because she had few travel companions left at that time, I went on that trip with her. Unfortunately, that didn’t end very well, because of her health, and I think it was the last foreign trip she made. In recent years she often said that she would like to travel again – but she was satisfied with all the countries she had seen.