The Day I Didn't Know the World Had Changed — A Memoir Excerpt
Updated: 5 days ago
Twenty-five years ago this week, the world changed. I didn't know it had — not for a few hours, anyway.
That fall, our family of five was barely three months into a new life. We'd packed up everything we owned in the Netherlands, put it in a single shipping container, and moved with our three young children to a log home on a hill, west of Bragg Creek, a small mountain town in Alberta, Canada.
Here's a glimpse of what that new life looked like, from the pages of the memoir I'm writing:
"It's so small!"
"Where's the rest?"
Only eight weeks earlier, the shipping container had seemed enormous. It had drawn the entire neighborhood in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, out to watch. Now, it was arriving at our new home on the back of a pickup truck.
It looked small. Almost too small. We even wondered if the rest would arrive later.
But the sealed lock on the back told us everything we needed to know. This was the one and only container holding everything we owned, besides our new home and the truck in our garage.
These past weeks, the kids had already claimed their rooms. They made themselves at home with the few things they'd brought in their suitcases. Their camping mats and sleeping bags lay in one corner, with a handful of toys and books in the other. They could hardly wait to get the rest of their things out of that container. They'd missed their toys so much.
Finally, the cargo doors opened again. The kids crowded the movers, eager to peek inside the container. Just before the container doors were closed back in the Netherlands, our oldest daughter's beloved bicycle had to be shoved in. She loved that old bike so much; it was the last item to go in and now the first thing to come out. She was so excited!
She jumped on, rode up our gravel driveway towards the cul-de-sac, and… fell.
She'd never ridden on loose gravel before. The little round stones gave way as she turned the corner a little too enthusiastically. A scraped knee and a little blood were not enough to dampen her spirit. Within minutes, she was back on her bike, this time taking the corners a little more carefully.
We had packed strategically, knowing how much the kids would miss their favorite things. Next came the boxes holding our second daughter's dolls and our son's LEGO. Each disappeared into their own room, overjoyed to be reunited with the toys they'd been without for two months.
As our furniture and household belongings slowly found their way from the strong shoulders of the movers into the various rooms, we realized how much more space our new house offered. Our home in the Netherlands had always felt comfortably full. This one still felt spacious after everything had been unpacked. It was actually half-empty. We definitely needed more furniture.
Our house was not the only thing that was bigger here. Everything in Canada was bigger.
Milk came in gallons instead of the one-litre cartons we were used to. Cereal boxes looked big enough to feed the whole football team. Even the chocolate-strawberry-vanilla ice cream, our favorite, came in giant tubs that took us months to finish.
It was all part of our big adventure. Rowing around our little island. Swimming in our own pond. Homemade pizza picnics along the Elbow River at the end of a hot summer's day.
Our first months in Canada felt like the permanent vacation we'd imagined they would.
New Beginnings at School
Summer came to an end, and it was time for the girls to go back to school. Every morning, I drove the six miles into Bragg Creek, to the Bragg Creek Community Kindergarten. Mrs. Sney and her classroom assistant were already waiting at the steps of the small wooden building behind the Community Centre. Inside, colorful cubbies held lunch boxes and shoes. Outdoor shoes came off each morning, replaced by indoor shoes. At the end of the day, the routine reversed. Above each cubby hung a coat hook with the child's name neatly written on it.
The locals joked that Bragg Creek had only two seasons: winter and July. And they weren't far off. It was only early September, and the girls' winter coats were already hanging on their hooks at school.
The girls quickly made friends. They picked up English with remarkable ease and were soon joining games at recess, following story time, and completing the language activities Mrs. Sney prepared for the class.
For our son, I found a home-based daycare where he spent a few mornings each week. My hope was that it would help him settle into a new language. The poor boy… at two years old, he'd only just learned that his little tricycle was called a "fietsje". Now everyone insisted it was a bicycle. He refused to adopt the new words. A few mornings at Yvonne's quickly changed that. Before long, he was chatting away and had made a few little friends. Despite speaking different languages, they seemed to understand each other perfectly.
For our oldest, school—and life outdoors—became the first building blocks of the carefree childhood she so deserved.
Cut logs stacked between two trees became a fort that our oldest built with one of her new friends. They covered it with leaves and branches so nobody would find it—or so they believed. They carried down snacks for picnics, along with a few dolls, and spent hours tucked away in their secret hideout.
When she wasn't in her fort, she'd be riding her bike up and down the cul-de-sac. And once enough snow had fallen, she made her own skis from two-by-fours and a length of rope. From early morning until dinner time, no matter how cold it was, that girl was outside somewhere. Always exploring. Always on an adventure.
I'd often watch her from the kitchen window, overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude.
How different her future looked now compared to just a year earlier. We had made the right decision. There was no doubt about it.
A Day to Remember
It was Tuesday, September 11, 2001. My husband was in Chicago on business, and a dear friend from the Netherlands had been staying with me for the past week, together with her baby girl. We were both enjoying our morning coffee as I was making my kids their lunches. The sounds coming from downstairs told me the girls were getting ready. It was almost 7:00 AM; the bus would be here soon.
The phone rang… it was my husband.
"Have you heard the news?"
I hadn't.
His voice sounded panicky… "A plane just hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York!" He had just witnessed it on the TV while having breakfast.
"No! What? … Wait, what!?"
It was at that moment that the second plane hit the South Tower... he gasped for air as he tried to explain to me what he saw happening on the other side of the continent.
I tried to grasp what he was telling me, but it all seemed so distant to me. His words felt surreal as they landed in the tranquility of the forest. We didn't have a television yet — didn't miss it either. In fact, we'd been so busy settling into our new life that I hadn't noticed how disconnected we were from the outside world. Until that very day.
I cannot remember whether school ended up being canceled or whether the kids got on the bus shortly after, but what I do remember is that my friend and I went over to our neighbors' to watch the horrible events of September 11 unfold. And that we did drive into the city later that day to purchase a TV of our own.
The Sears Tower, where my husband was on location with clients, was evacuated that morning, and every flight across North America was grounded within the hour. With no way to fly home, he decided to take the Greyhound bus to anywhere in Canada, as fast as he could get out of the United States. He bought himself a plaid shirt and jeans to blend in with the bus crowd and packed his suit and valuables into a backpack. As he was getting ready for his trip, our neighbors had contacted their friends in one of Toronto’s suburbs, and they generously offered to take him in. So Toronto it became, and he boarded the next bus out of Chicago.
He finally caught one of the first flights out once air travel resumed. He'd left Alberta in short sleeves the week prior and came home to find the season's first snow on the ground.
Tucked away on our little hill, surrounded by evergreens, the outside world felt unimaginably far away.
And it's exactly how I liked it. After everything I'd lived through… I would not have it any other way.
I felt safe, right where I was.
Memoir Excerpt
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, The Woman I Had to Find, which traces my journey from complex trauma to emotional freedom. You can read more about the manuscript here:
Comments