My mother was a force of nature.
Known to everyone as ‘Hansje’ she would spontaneously speak out against
injustice whenever she saw it. Sometimes that didn’t go well for her. Once she
observed a young couple with their four year old son in a shopping centre. They
passed a toy store and the little boy paused to look through the window at all the
toys on display. The father grabbed the boy’s hand and yanked him so hard that
he fell down and was crying. “Come here!”, the father commanded. Hansje
approached them and said, “Don’t you ever do that again!” They didn’t take well to her interference and
the mother coolly responded, “Get away from us or I’ll kill you.” Another time she was on a flight and an
orthodox Jew was sitting next to her. Before takeoff the man complained to the
flight attendant that he can’t sit next to a woman and they should rectify the
situation. I don’t remember the exact
words my mother used but the gist of it was, “Oh, grow up.” The man punched her in the face. Whenever I
was with her nothing like this ever happened, we just always ended up laughing
till it hurt, either at her unusual expressions and flowing sentences or silly observations. She loved jazz and Leonard Cohen and sometimes when she spoke, you could hear those rhythms.
(Hansje in a scene from the film "Mensen van morgen" (People of tomorrow) dir. Kees Brusse 1964 A documentary of several Dutch youths discussing their experiences and thoughts on life. This film was iconoclastic, helping to break through many taboos in Dutch culture. It employed a unique montage editing method where the questions are never heard and participants seem to be reacting to the answers of others though they never actually met each other.
She was pregnant with my
older brother when she developed eclampsia.
With no treatment at the time she sunk into a coma and the doctors told
my father she wouldn’t make it. An emergency cesarean saved my brother but my
father was told to say his goodbyes. She pulled through but suffered from a
kind of verbal dyskinesia or aphasia. When talking about the founder and
publisher of Playboy magazine, he was ‘Huge Hefner’. Living in Canada she would
mention that the weather report said it would be bitterly cold because of the
‘windshield factor’. She had hundreds of these confabulations and whenever I
would point one out she would laugh that hearty laugh of hers.
Somewhere around 1986 when my
parents were living in Atlanta I flew out to visit them and lo and behold who
was on the plane, in coach? Muhammad Ali. We didn’t follow boxing in general in
our household but my mother loved watching his fights. As we disembarked I
could see my mother coming towards me at the gate and I was dreading the
embarrassment of her perpetual mama-bear hugs; “Oh Eric! I’m so happy to see
you!” She extended her arm forwards,
which confused me, walked right past me and shook hands with the legend.
“You’re the greatest of all time!” she beamed and his enormous hand enveloped
hers. He smiled and said in a whisper, “Thank you.” My hand, by no means small, also disappeared
into his, soft and warm and then he shuffled off by himself.
Serendipity was a mainstay in her
life. As she was stopped at a stoplight in Toronto she heard shots being fired.
She looked to her left and leaning her elbow on the door, inadvertently pressed
the lock on the door. Suddenly men were exiting a bank wearing ski masks.
‘Oh,’ Hansje thought to herself,
‘They’re filming a movie, how exciting!’
One of the armed robbers ran through the line of stopped cars and made
his way to my mother’s car. He pulled on the door handle several times. Hansje
just looked at him. The thief went for the car in front of her but was
apprehended by security guards.
In the 80’s she ran an art
gallery in Amsterdam. One evening walking along the street a man started
following her. She didn’t walk faster or look behind her but let him get right
up close and then wheeled around with a shout, taking up a karate pose. “Watch
it buster!” she said, apparently with so much authority that the man took to
his heels and ran off. She wasn’t shaken by the experience and didn’t give it
any thought after that.
She joined a women’s choir which
they officially named, “The happy mentally deranged women’s choir.” Joy and
happiness were an essential part of her existence and whenever someone had a birthday she always found the craziest birthday card to send or a handy little gadget, "Just something silly", she would say.
Many years ago I had to undergo some abdominal surgery and she flew in from Atlanta to be with me. She decided it would be best if I flew down with her to recuperate in the warmth of the south. I could barely take a few steps because of the pain from the surgery and as we sat waiting for takeoff, one of our inevitable fits of laughter began. The pain was unbearable and I had to tell her to go sit somewhere else or I would rupture my stitches. She got up and moved towards the back of the plane, still giggling.
Many years ago I had to undergo some abdominal surgery and she flew in from Atlanta to be with me. She decided it would be best if I flew down with her to recuperate in the warmth of the south. I could barely take a few steps because of the pain from the surgery and as we sat waiting for takeoff, one of our inevitable fits of laughter began. The pain was unbearable and I had to tell her to go sit somewhere else or I would rupture my stitches. She got up and moved towards the back of the plane, still giggling.
During the same trip as the
meeting with Ali, which was a few days after the Chernobyl disaster hit the
news, I wanted to get some more experience shooting video as I was studying
screenwriting in Toronto at the time. Hansje suggested we go to the local mall.
I was worried about light streaks and exposure, thinking this was simply a
challenge to my technical abilities. The camera was large, with a separate
recording unit and wired microphone and it became clear by people’s reaction
that they thought we were a real film crew. Hansje immediately picked up on
this and told me, “Give me the mic and start filming”. She went up to a tall athletic man and
introduced herself with her Dutch accent, “Hello, we are from DAF, Dutch
American Film, and we’d like your reaction to the Chernobyl disaster.” I was overwhelmed by her confidence, no
hesitation. He replied that he couldn’t
talk about it as he was an active air force fighter pilot and any opinion he
gave could be construed as that of representing the air force. After a few more
interviews we wrapped it up and she turned to me saying, “Well that was fun
wasn’t it?” Understand, she didn’t do
this to be in the spotlight herself or to try and prank people: she did it to
give me the experience that I was looking for and her saying it was fun was further
encouragement for me to overcome any fears I might have.
That’s how she did things,
subtly, without force and always with humor. She had a powerful intuitive sense
of what a person was going through. This often resulted in confused looks when
she would approach a stranger and tell them something. With people she knew she
would often say something which, while still part of the conversation, seemed a
bit odd or out of place. It took me about thirty years to figure out this mode
of communication that she had. She was fully aware that people often didn’t understand
her, but she didn’t mind and never forced an issue. She got along with just
about everyone and when I was out with her, if I left her alone for a few
minutes, to go to the bathroom or something, it was guaranteed that when I came
back she would be deep into a conversation with someone, more often than not
both of them laughing and her new friend sharing their life story with my
mother. “Good for you!”, “That’s great!” were her common phrases and almost
always, her patented goodbye, “Have a great life!”
I never heard her speak badly
about another person or have an argument. She had a rough childhood and was
swindled out of a substantial inheritance by her own relatives but she never
dwelled on it or cursed those that did wrong by her, not even under her breath.
It was in the past so it didn’t matter anymore; she was ridiculously
spontaneous and always looked to the future as positive potential. For years
she worked as a volunteer in a shelter for indigenous women in Toronto, with
whom she felt a kinship so deep that she was accepted into a tribe by the
elders and presented with an Eagle feather. Wherever she travelled language was
no problem, not only because she spoke four of them but because her hands were always
pantomiming regardless of whether she was speaking English to an English
speaker or trying to communicate in a foreign land and, because her laughter
was the great ice-breaker and people would respond to the great spirit that she
was.
When she became sick with ALS, it
was an especially aggressive form which attacked her speech first. Now
scribbled notes were constantly being produced: a mix of questions and answers
as well as philosophical exposition. She still smiled even after walking became
impossible. I would exchange emails with her and could feel the frustration of
not being able to communicate with hands and laughter. I would mirror her
thoughts in our discussions, clarifying what I thought was at the heart of her
ideas and I knew that I had finally understood her fully when she wrote me, “Eric,
my dear, you are able to write my thoughts.” Every day I think of her,
appreciating her positive attitude towards life, her love and openness, her
intuition and her patience. For me, there is so much to learn from those
positive attributes.
She often worried about me
because I had dedicated my life to my son, Segev, which meant not paying heed
to my own needs. “What about you, Eric?” she would say. But she left it at
that. She never once told me how to live my life or intervened or showed that
she disapproved of some life decision I had made. “Good for you!”, “That’s
great!” was what I heard, because she trusted that each of us are on a path, that
experience will bring knowledge and that one of the worst things a person can
do, is judge another. Another lifelong staple of our conversations, even after
she became ill, was her asking, “So did something funny happen to you today?”
Hansje passed away in January of
2012 and I still regularly feel like calling her and telling her a bit of good
news and I can hear her response clearly, “Oh Eric, that’s great!”