My oma lived in a small cottage on Sunny Side Avenue, just a block or so away from our house. She and my opa moved into it soon after immigrating to Fort Colson from Amsterdam. They had little more than what could fit into their steamer trunk. But what they lacked in material possessions they made up for in hope.
Hers was a house of yellow siding and white shutters. There was hardly a porch to speak of, and the two bedrooms were barely big enough for the beds and small dressers they contained. The stove in the kitchen was narrow and the counters short. If one wanted to take a bath, one would have to fold in half to fit into the tub.
Everything about the home was tiny. But Oma didn’t mind.
“It’s just me here now,” she’d said. “What do I need a bigger house for? Just to clean it all day long?”
I couldn’t imagine her being happy anywhere else.
I rounded the corner to her road, not in a hurry and glad to be outside. The neighborhood was a peaceful kind of quiet that afternoon. The breeze rustled through the leaves, and a cardinal made a chip-chip-chipping sound from across the street. I turned to see its bright red feathers where it rested on the branch of a maple.
The creaking of a screen door opening and the clunk of its closing stole my attention. Oma stepped onto her porch, two halves of an orange in her hand. She put the fruit on the small railing and rubbed her hands together.
When she noticed me, she waved me over and I walked along the edge of her yard, breathing in the subtle sweetness of the flowers that grew in well-maintained beds, wishing the tulips would last more than just a few more weeks before they’d be done for the year.
“How are you, Annie?” Oma said, stepping off her porch and meeting me in the yard. “Did you have a good day?”
“I did,” I answered, bending to kiss her cheek. “How about you?”
“I can’t complain,” she said, smiling. “Did you hear that Mrs. Martinez had her baby?”
“I haven’t.”
“A little girl. They named her Donna,” she said, looping her hand through the bend of my elbow. “I haven’t seen her yet, of course. But Mr. Martinez told me she has a headful of black hair. Can you imagine? What do you have there?”
She nodded to the paper bag dangling from my hand.
“Some banket from Bernie’s.”
“I could have baked.”
“That’s all right,” I said. Then pointing at the oranges, “Are the orioles still visiting you?”
“Oh yes. I have to put out an orange almost every day.” She smiled. “They strip it perfectly clean.”
“Maybe they’ll stick around a little longer this year if you keep spoiling them.”
“I do hope so.”
A neighbor, Mrs. DeJong, walked by, a paper bag of groceries on her hip. Oma gave her the news about the Martinez baby and then the two of them exchanged pleasantries in Dutch. I caught bits and pieces of what they said. But my grasp of the language was embarrassingly bad, despite Oma’s efforts to teach me.
“I told Mr. Martinez I’d bring some saucijzebroodjes just as soon as they bring the babe home,” Oma told Mrs. DeJong. “But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what you call them.”
“Pigs in a blanket,” I answered.
“That’s it. Do you think they’ll like them?” she asked.
“I should think so,” Mrs. DeJong answered. “Whoever wouldn’t?”
“That, I don’t know.” Oma smiled at Mrs. DeJong. “And will you bring a meal to them too?”
“Of course.” Mrs. DeJong nodded and smiled. “I would love to.”
Oma had a brand of kindness that involved pure butter, almond paste, and hours of baking in the kitchen. Not a sickness overtook a family in Fort Colson that didn’t find its cure in a bowl of her chicken soup. No celebration met a family without a plateful of her cookies wrapped up on the porch. A funeral didn’t pass without her arriving in the church before anyone else to cook and leaving last to ensure that all the pans had been scrubbed and put away.
If there was to be crowned a queen of benevolence, it would be my Dutch grandmother, Tess Pipping.
The ladies said their good-byes and Mrs. DeJong asked me to give her love to my mother. Oma took my arm again and whispered to me.
“She has come around,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“I don’t like to be a gossip, but I will now,” she said. “When the Martinez family moved into the neighborhood, Mrs. DeJong was against it. I’ll let you guess why.”
“Because they’re Mexican?” I asked.
She opened her eyes wide and raised her eyebrows to let me know that I was right.
“But I told her that we would welcome them.” Oma nodded. “I was a stranger in this land once. It is not easy, being new in this country.”
My oma was a good woman. But I didn’t tell her that because I knew it would have embarrassed her. Besides, she would have turned it around, reminding me that she could do no good thing without God.
So, instead, I put my hand on top of her fingers that were curled around my arm.
“Should we go?” I asked. “Mom will be waiting for us.”
“Yes, I think that’s a good idea, dear.”
We made our way down the sidewalk, Oma holding on to me not because she needed the support but just because she liked to be near. I didn’t mind it at all.
“Now, what’s this I hear about you getting a letter?” she asked. “Don’t look so surprised. The mailman isn’t good at keeping secrets, is he?”
I sighed, conceding that she was right. “It was nothing, really.”
“Is it from a sweetheart of yours?”
“Oh, him?”
I nodded.
“When I was a girl in Amsterdam, I had a boy at school who wrote me letters. He’d put them in my coat pocket for me to find.” She shook her head and laughed softly. “I cannot seem to remember his name at the moment. Old age is the thief of certain memories.”
“That’s okay.”
“Do you know that I kept those silly notes tied in a red bow for years? I would take them out and read them sometimes when I was feeling down.” She sighed. “Of course, I threw them out when Ruben came along.”
“Didn’t Opa ever write you love letters?” I asked.
“He wasn’t one for such things.” She patted my arm. “Your opa was a practical man. He wasn’t much of a romantic.”
“Did you ever wish he was?” I asked.
“In the early years, perhaps. I wanted proof of his love, I suppose,” she said. “Over time I learned. All I needed was to open my eyes. He lived his love for me every day we were together.”
In quiet we walked past the flowers that grew wild against the white picket fence of the house at the corner. Stopping, she touched a sprig of spiky green with little purple blossoms among the nettles that grew up wild beside the whitewashed slats.
“Rosemary,” she told me.
“‘That’s for remembrance,’” I said.
“Shakespeare, eh?”
I leaned over to smell of the plant, its piney-mint aroma tickling my nose. My book toppled out of my purse, the envelope still peeking out from between the pages, the top edge ragged from where I’d torn it.
Oma noticed and gave me a smile that said she understood.