Missing you

I've heard it a good few times now:  you guys are missed.  While hurtling along the ringway Elf asks if they are on the way to Felix's house, and Daantje sees ghost versions of me while biking through town.  Sergio's given up on out-of-office coffee as the flavor's not the same without the conversational topper.  Frank and Nina have friends over for dinner and realize that subconsciously they're waiting for us to arrive, too, and letting the food get cold in the meanwhile.  You look for us but we're not there.

We do not look for you here, any more than we look for canals or herring stands.  We miss you (and we also miss canals and herring stands, though not quite as much), but we don't expect to see you.  The context isn't right.  Things, and people, just don't translate.  This is sad in a way, but it does ensure that I don't walk around in a state of perpetual longing, and for that I am very thankful.

We haven't brought much of our Amsterdam life with us and a good deal of what we have brought is still in boxes, yet those fragments that are out and around us are often redolent of one or another of our Dutch loves, friends and places alike.  Jip en Janneke, nightly fare, are a constant reminder of all the kids we know, and many of the situations.  I've been looking at a blank space on our wall for weeks now and have only just realized Jorge's lightbox is the only thing to fill it.  (The lightbox is now disassembled in the garage, awaiting rewiring for US use, Jorge.)  The small rug brought back from furthest Mongolia by Coosje and Remco receives our feet here just as it did there, and reminds us as it does.  I cannot make coffee in my french press, mainstay of my office existence, without thinking of Sergio, my coffee-drinking colleague, now relegated to the reconstituted machine spew that passes for a hot drink in the Dutch kantoor.  Babette and AJ, horse fanatics, are present in spirit at the stables Felix and I visit 'most every week.  Johannes's face peers out at me from the spine of the Dikke, still my usual lunchtime read.  And so it goes.

But it isn't just the old that makes me think of you, it's the glorious new, nature in particular, and the thought of sharing it with my Dutch friends.  Do postings like "Mooi Marin" look a bit like a travel brochure?  There's a reason for that:  they're supposed to encourage you to come visit.  We'll be back, for sure, but don't wait for that before seeing us again!

It is a lot easier leaving than being left, I admit.  Apologies.