Generally speaking, we were all healthy children. Sometimes we were in each other’s hair but we never had big fights. We never went out much. Martje often came to our house when I was home for a weekend. Later she said: I really loved that. She stayed with the school principal, so she lived close by. She did not have a pleasant home environment because her mother had remarried, and that marriage did not work well. While I was going from the one job to the other, I sometimes went out with a boy, but it never did much for me.

It was when I was at Boelman’s in Scheemda that Harm and I got engaged, on the 21^st of September, 1930. Harm always came on his bicycle. That was a 1 1/2 hour trip. From Boelman I went to mevrouw Buzeman as companion lady. We really wanted to get married but mother van der Laan was not ready to leave the farm. She also found it hard to lose her son to someone else. Her husband had died of pneumonia when Harm was 15, at forty-seven years old. That was terrible. A mother staying behind with 6 children after a sickness of 6 days.

It was difficult to stay on the farm. So, Harm’s life was full of worries and hard work. His mother was often sad, strict and sombre. Until our marriage, Harm meant so much to her. Now I can understand these things much better than at the time. Sisters Manny and Tine were also both at home, but finally, in 1934, mother was ready to leave, and she built a new home with a store for Manny.

Manny was an invalid and had followed a course to spruce up ladies’ hats. That went OK, for she was a happy and friendly girl who did her work well. Tine bought a knitting machine and so they earned enough to live on and settled nicely in the village of Vlagtwedde. Tine was not so friendly — she was much like her mother.

Harm and his sister Manny often had words. Manny warned me often and said, you are getting a very angry man. I laughed and thought to myself, I’ll deal with him differently than you.