Ode to Oma van Marjan | Thank you for all your love, hugs, attention

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Dear Grandma,

This letter is for you and about you and all those beautiful memories you have given me both in Amsterdam and about Amsterdam.

You came to Amsterdam as a young woman from the German countryside in the 1930s because there was no work for you in the village where you grew up. With a friend you came to that big busy city and you found work as an au pair with a well-to-do family who also had a handsome chauffeur and you fell in love with each other and married. Several homes and 5 children later WW2 broke out which also became a very difficult and painful time for you as a German immigrant, mother and wife which you never spoke much about but which I did hear a bit about much later from your son. Your heart that was so warm and big for everyone must have been broken regularly.

Then you became a grandmother (just as I am now) and that is how I got to know and love you as your son's oldest grandchild. You babysat when our parents went on vacation and my younger sister and I stayed with you in Lutma Street 2 high every summer vacation - hard-boiled eggs on fresh hard rolls, marble pot in the tarp that our father also used as a child, the organ man with his copper tray, Artis visits are just a few of those beautiful memories that I will always cherish and have passed on to my grandchildren because I have 7 of them now and enjoy them just as you did.

I also became an immigrant like you but much further away, to Australia. Did come back to Holland regularly and always visited you with my children, your great-grandchildren. Also for your 100th birthday I was there and so many other people who loved you very much.

Thank you for all your love, hugs, attention, reading and the time and energy you gave me and the knowledge about and love for Amsterdam a city I love and visit every other year and enjoy and admire. In my thoughts you walk beside me and we enjoy ourselves together.

With lots of love from your granddaughter,

Marjan xoxox