Mom 1946-54: On track

Clara stared out the train window listening to the tracks click by beneath her, “What’ve-I-done? What’ve-I-done? What’ve-I-done?” echoing in her head. She would have to give notice at Organon as soon as possible, but they would still insist on a full month, and then she would have to make arrangements for the boat to Canada. Clara looked at her reflection in the glass and thought at how she possibly could have gotten herself into this. She had just signed a three-year contract to work as a secretary for the Dutch foreign affairs ministry at the embassy in Ottawa, Canada.

When had she first seen the ad in the magazine for the job? Before Christmas?  “I have the secretarial skills,” she thought, “and it would be neat to work in Canada and perhaps even have the chance to meet up with Cooky or Bill”. She had heard nothing after sending in her application on a bit of a whim. The weeks went by, and she had almost forgotten about it, until now at the end of February 1954. Clara got the call to come to the embassy after another girl had backed out at the last moment, and after a day of interviews and tests, she had needed to make a snap decision to take the offer on the spot. They needed her on the boat to Montreal in three weeks.

In a way it all made sense. Papa had sent her to secretarial school the year after high-school, and she had done very well. So well in fact, that she had a job as soon as she got her certificate in 1948.

Fresh new secretaries in 1948; Clara far left

Ms. Loomans, a saddlemaker, had asked the college for a top student, so Clara’s first job in Nijmegen was helping with the office duties of this young woman’s leather goods and saddle-making shop. Clara enjoyed the work and learned a lot about running a small business, helping out in the store itself from time to time. She and Ms. Loomans had become good friends, an occurrence that happened often as Clara met new people, starting back in the days when Mama billeted British and Canadian soldiers like David or Cooky at Groesbeekseweg in the last months of the war. Clara could not quite put her finger on it, but people seemed to have an affinity for her—or was it she who had an affinity for people? Either way, as she collected new experiences in this crazy world, she also seemed to be collecting people along the way…

Clara liked travel and adventure in reasonable amounts and had already gone abroad a couple of times, but moving to Canada for a few years was pretty big. What could she compare it to? With her older sister, Willy, she had spent a holiday in England in the summer of ’49. They were two young women who had had a taste of adventure from the events they had lived through and the people they had met. They both wanted to see and experience more about this world, a world that was changing quickly with the end of the war. 

Willy and Clara in London, July 1949

A year later they had both quit their jobs in Holland and went back to England looking for work. Willy had found a program with Thomas Cook Travel. Clara had hoped to join this also, but she was too young to qualify. Instead she got a job as a nanny to a pair of young twins. These two boys kept her busy to the point of running her ragged. Clara looked at the shiny glass of the train window and thought of the time both boys decided to throw a temper tantrum in tandem while she was cleaning a goldfish bowl. Due to her distraction, it slipped out her hands and shattered in pieces, spilling gravel and flip-flopping fish all over the plush carpet. Perhaps it was the London “pea-souper” fogs coupled with her weakened constitution from poor nutrition and ill-fitting shoes during the war, but a British doctor ordered her home, advising her to choose an occupation where she didn’t have to run around on her feet all day. After taking a little break, she worked a couple of other minor secretarial jobs and felt lucky to find a quite good position at Organon, the chemical company based in Oss, a short commute from Nijmegen.

Her “break” in the spring of 1951 consisted of helping Papa and Mina, now her stepmother, set up house in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland. She remembered the unpacking of endless dishes and washing them in the sink. True to his word, Papa had waited until Clara turned 21, finalized his divorce with Mama, and married Mina shortly afterwards. He and Mina had moved to the shores of Lake Constance as he took up a new job posting with Unilever. Clara, Willy, and even Mama had essentially accepted the new reality of Papa’s relationship, and they were on cordial terms with Mina. Perhaps it was easy for the girls as all of their lives they had essentially seen Mina as an older, wiser sister and not much different from a stepmother. Who were they to question life’s hard realities, thought Clara. These were just the circumstances of the crazy world we live in. Be practical, adapt, and move on. 

Mina and Willy at the beach at Katwijk in 1946

But so much has changed, Clara thought, sitting on the train back from the Hague and reflecting on the years since ’45.

After Frits returned home from Switzerland at the end of the war, it soon became apparent that he had found a girlfriend there. Else had come for a visit in 1947, and really hit it off with Frits’ two sisters. It was a bit of a surprise and disappointment when he broke up with her a year or so later, yet Else remained a close friend to Clara and Willy. She had even moved to Holland permanently, and was doing well. Was it true that she had met and was dating another Dutchman? Frits had also found someone else and announced his engagement to Diny in the spring of 1950. They married the next year.

Frits and Diny engagement celebration, Easter 1950
Oma is peeking from the center with her ex-husband and daughters to her left.

Soon enough, Clara found herself as Tante Claartje to little Frits junior. She liked children—except, perhaps, for those two terrible twins back in England—but for herself, she still felt so young and eager to learn more and explore the world. It was not quite time yet to settle down and have a family, and she had no boyfriend, really. There was someone who seemed to have an interest in her that she had met at the time of Diny’s and Frits’ wedding, but that relationship was impractical…. just not right. Especially now if she would be gone for three years.

The train pulled into Nijmegen Centraal Station. Clara stepped out onto the platform and decided she had enough to think about. She had a job to quit, a trip to plan, and a big change ahead of her.