Life in Holland Life was tough once I got to Holland. I had to go to school. My aunts had problems with me. I didn’t know the daily life there, I wasn’t used to stoplights or cars. The aunts wanted to take care of me, but I’m told I wasn’t an easy child. In school the teacher was always saying something to my parents about my being disorganized. I would forget my books and my assignments. After a yearand-a-half we had to return to Indonesia because my father was still in the service and he got reassigned there. In the meantime, my sister had been born in Holland, so all four of us went. I attended Catholic school there. Everything was pretty chaotic. I remember getting private tutoring at the Catholic school. Sometimes I would go to school with two German police dogs my father had bought for protection because at that time there were actions against the Dutch. They wanted the Dutch out and for Sukarno to take over. Lots of moving for us again, and again my life never felt settled. My mother and I were understandably very close. She was a fantastic mom. You can see this from photos of us when I was young. She, my sister and I came back to Holland a second time when I was ten. Sukarno was taking over, the Dutch people were being killed, so my dad had us go back to Holland. We would go visit him in Indonesia every so often, always on the freighters where I would play games with the other children, but in the end, I was always with my mother. I wasn’t that close to my father because he was gone for such long periods of time. It felt strange to me when he finally came home to Holland after his service in Indonesia was over. That eventually changed over the years, and I did get to feeling closer to him.
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