But to kindergarten I went. In wintertime much too heavily dressed. I walked all by myself about 1 1/2 km. on a, for that time, quite heavily travelled road along the canal. I was to walk on the less busy road on the other side of the canal, but since I had to walk all the way to the next bridge and than go back quite a way, I never did heed my mom’s command. I got sandwiches along. Raw liver would restore my red blood cells, so no brown sugar or cheese between my sandwiches. I hated the raw liver and dumped it forthright into the canal. I think those long walks in the fresh air did more for me than raw liver could have done.

You will have noticed by now that my sentence structures are often not non par with the strict laws of English grammar. Although there is a small chance that this is occasioned because I am re-living events happening in the Netherlands, events which are buried in a subconsciousness which has never deemed it necessary to change over to a new language, it is probably closer to the truth that, although my English vocabulary is quite extensive, I’m still forming my sentences in Dutch grammar idiom. I do this especially when I type fast and do not wish to edit what I have written. That would simply take too much time. You’ll get used to my style…

The kindergarten I attended was a Christian kindergarten. My parents did not have to pay extra for Christian education as we have done for such a long time in Canada and the USA. Through the influence of Christian political parties and statesmen as Abraham Kuyper, the guilder followed the child, and public as well as Christian schools were subsidized by the government already for many years. My siblings went to another Christian school, but that school did not have a kiddy department. The fact that I would be able to listen to Bible stories and be surrounded by nice Christian children weighed heavier than the protection and togetherness my older brother and sister could have given me on the way to and from school. Indeed Ms. Rosenthal could tell beautifully, and I would forever be one of her pupils, even after 30 years when I came back to Holland for a vacation and met her in church. She then was the first one to clamber out of her pew and shake hands with me, something bit out of the ordinary in the still staunch Gereformeerde Kerk (CRC) in Winschoten.

The next schoolyear I did not return to that far-away school. Instead, I attended a public kindergarten close to the Hoogklei school where my brother and sister went. But I can’t remember that they were overly protective of me. The only thing I remember of this school was my encounter with St. Nicholas and his black servant Peter.