Going Nomad |
Ellen doing a Marilyn Monroe in the surf This is my friend Ellen at a beach somewhere in The Netherlands some 30 years ago. Neither one of us can remember which beach this is nor why we were there (unlike me, Ellen has a good reason for this; early onset Alzheimer's is a bitch), but what I do remember is posing in silly poses and silly faces, and lots of laughter. Always laughter with Ellen, then and now. Not entirely what I was trying to pose at. Super woman? The Hulk? When I met Ellen we were teenagers. She was tall, lanky, and gorgeous. She wore a funky hairstyle, short and modern. I wanted that hairstyle too but was never able to pull it off the way she did. She had a wicked sense of humour and still does. We used to laugh till our bellies hurt, and some 30 year later we still do. We went to high-school together and I remember long bike rides, stifled laughter in class, heaps of sandwiches for lunch. I have an old school photo in which I now only recognize Ellen and myself. In the front row, Ellen in black (right), donning a hairstyle that was really funky at the time and me (middle) in dungarees I remember visits to Ellen's family house in the country, her mom as beautiful as Ellen. And the music! Rob de Nijs, Ellen's mom's fave. Malle Babbe, which I thought was a very sexy song. De eenzame fietser by Boudewijn de Groot. Singing our lungs out. I still listen to those old songs when I feel melancholic.
Later on, Ellen ran a hair/art business in the heart of the city of Nijmegen where she combined the display of art with a modern hair salon. I looked up to her. She was an independent owner of a really unique business. Then we lost each other somehow. Her life went one way, mine the other. Then we met again on social media, oddly enough when I had already left The Netherlands behind many years earlier. This was in 2013. In 2014 we met in the flesh and picked up where we had left off, we talked and laughed the whole afternoon. Since then we are tight, the distance is no barrier. She was also my support person when I ran the Marathon of Rotterdam, cycling around town to deliver coffee and sandwiches and wine on the deck afterwards. Happy memories. I have been in Canada long enough that most of my friendships that I had in The Netherlands and that were once close have eroded or simply dissolved with time. Not Ellen. In the 30 years we have known each other there have been good times and sad times, but regardless we make each other laugh. And American writer Madeleine L’Engle said it best: "A good laugh heals a lot of hurts.”
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