Ode to Gini

As most of you know I have family scattered throughout the northern hemisphere of this globe. Most of you also know of the historical aspects of this family (and hopefully soon you will know more). Those of you who follow me on Facebook or my blog have seen the articles and photographs of my parents and other members of note.

Today, however, I want to introduce one member of my family who most of you don’t know. Her name is, or was, Regina. Everyone called her Gini for short (and the “G” is a cross between a hard and soft pronunciation best done from the back of the throat. It’s a Dutch thing). I first learned of Gini when I asked my father who was that young woman in the photograph on my parents’ dresser. You must understand that to a young boy, as I was then, I didn’t spend much time in their bedroom. It was a place that had an air of sanctity about it.

I’m not sure how old I was when I learned that my father had been married before…before he was married to my mother and became my father. I was old enough to have some curiosity about this young girl. I became curious about my father’s previous life, and the mystery in my mind grew.

Gini beside our Grandfather Elibartus. (I don't know who the two on the left are,)

I was a teenager when Gini first came to the US. We drove to Seattle to meet her plane and then returned with her back to Portland. Of course, my father was giddy with excitement, and perhaps I was a little jealous. Having been what I thought his eldest, meeting a usurper of that role, innocent though it be, wasn’t easy for a teenager. I didn’t get to know Gini, partly because of my conflicted feelings and perhaps partly her own, as I was to learn in time.

Years later my father passed away and in the course of giving that news, my mother cultivated a relationship with Gini. Gini’s mother was still alive, and I believe it may have been the first time those two spoke to each other. A year later her mother also passed away.

With my father's passing, my mother wanted to make one more journey to Holland. Her remaining siblings were getting older, and she wanted to take me to my roots. The trip included spending most of our time with my cousins in northern Holland. The trip was planned out with various family reunions and visits to places of her youth. It was a fateful step off a curb as she was startled by a passing cyclist which caused her to fall and break her leg. This changed everything.

We had planned to visit Amsterdam in the following days but her confinement to a wheelchair made that unlikely. The visit would’ve included time with Gini. A phone call to her to say we wouldn’t be coming made Gini say that instead, she would come to us. She rode the train from her town to Groningen.

Gini, Mom and I in Groningen, in 2001

In the meantime I was trying to salvage what I could out of the trip and was planning to visit Amsterdam by myself. Mother was uncomfortable with that idea (and perhaps a wee jealous as well) but my cousins thought it was a great idea. They would take care of Mom while I was gone for a few days. Besides, Gini could accompany me to make sure I changed trains at the appropriate station. Despite being almost 50 at the time, I think my mother still looked at me as a child. I also think she was not comfortable with me being with Gini…alone and without her directing the conversation.

I thought the train ride from Groningen to Amsterdam would be fairly routine and we would make small talk to pass the time. I invited her to meet in Amsterdam and sightseeing together, but she politely declined. And I was somewhat relieved.

I don’t know how the conversation about our father started, but I suppose it was inevitable. It was what we had in common, and as I learned had kept us apart. Here we were, half-siblings struggling to communicate (with her little English and my meager Dutch) and coming to grips with our respective pasts. I learned of her resentment towards her father’s “other family”, of all the birthdays he spent with us…and not her. True, he called often and wrote many letters to her, but he wasn’t there. I realized she missed him terribly, especially now that he passed just a year or so before. Perhaps now she could also share that grief with someone who also knew her father. Interestingly, I remember looking in her eyes, and seeing my father. They both had brown eyes.

The train ride took several hours and tears flowed. It was one of the most difficult conversations of my life. Then Gini surprised me. She said, “We were the innocent ones”, acknowledging that we (her, I and my brother Mike), had nothing to do with her parents' divorce and his subsequent marriage to my mother. I felt the years of resentment melt away. She again surprised me, saying she would love to spend the day in Amsterdam with me. I got off the train at Amersfoort and she went on to Utrecht and her home in Breukelen.

We connected the next day and spent it sightseeing, including a visit to our father’s home on the Prinsengracht (canal). It was truly a wonderful time. The next day I took a bus to her home and she showed me Breukelen and the surrounding area. We promised to write, and we did. I followed my father’s tradition of sending postcards of places I visited in the US and Mexico. Gini loved travel and I found a postcard she sent to my father from Egypt. We wrote to each other several times. Occasionally I would call, usually on her birthday. I last visited Amsterdam in 2014 when I introduced Gini to my wife Karen. We toured the canals by boat and had a lovely time.

Gini in 2009, in front of our father's house in Amsterdam

Then one year I didn’t receive a letter. I wrote to her, but no reply. Time passed but I couldn’t shake the worry inside me. I googled her name but to no avail. Then, earlier in 2021 I tried again and found what I hoped wouldn’t be, but it was an obituary. Regina Angelica Helena Kluvers passed on April 2, 2019, at age 76. She is buried next to her mother in a cemetery near Breukelen.

Children of the same father yet separated by divorce, a condition all too common these days. Interestingly I always looked upon my childhood with its seeming perfection, completely unaware of another aspect of family that wasn’t as “ideal”. As I grew older, I looked at life through different eyes and learned more of my family’s past – both the heroic and the banal. In the end, Gini and I reconciled ourselves and each other to “it is what it is”, and life went on.

Karen, Gini and I in Amsterdam in 2014