Melanie Martin Goes Dutch

by Carol Weston

  Vondelpark is big and green with wide bike paths and no cars. It's full of couples, dogs, and old people. Not too many kids, though. And no colorful tulips because it's summertime. Holland must be extra beautiful in the spring—the postcard racks all show giant tulip fields filled with bright blooming flowers.

  I loved loved loved not having to watch out for traffic. I also loved speeding up and making circles and doing wheelies and biking one-handed and going side by side with Cecily.

  We got off our bikes to rest in a rose garden, and Matt made up a game that was like an outside version of No Peeking. He told Cecily to close her eyes, then he led her to a rose and told her to smell it and guess the color—red, yellow, pink, orange, or white. She kept guessing wrong and Matt kept cracking up.

  I overheard Mom and Dad whispering about Cecily's mom's operation, which must be coming up pretty soon. Mom said, “I can't imagine what she's going through.” I realized that I haven't been thinking at all about Mrs. Hausner. Maybe kids hardly ever think about grown-ups' problems? Or maybe some do? Or should?

  Just then Mom called out, “Hey kids, who can spot a squirrel?”

  That sounded easy, so Cecily, Matt, and I started looking. But we couldn't find any! Not one! In Central Park, we would have found bunches.

  “Squirrels are rare in Europe,” Mom said. She said that in New York, foreign tourists sometimes stop to take photos of squirrels.

  Imagine thinking that a bushy-tailed squirrel is a big deal. Then again, Dutch people think biking in a busy city is not a big deal and it totally is!

  We had dinner early. It was cheese fondu.

  Cheese fondu is a bubbling hot pot of cheese melted with a lot of wine plunked in front of you right at your table. You put a piece of bread or apple at the end of a metal poker thing and stir it all around until it's covered with gloopy cheese. Then you blow on it and eat it.

  Cecily loved it and Matt said he was glad the bread was soft since his tooth is so loose.

  Mom said fondu means “melted” in French. “Do you like it, Melanie?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “It's a little winy.”

  “Sometimes you're a little whiny and we like you,” Dad said, smiling.

  I could not believe Dad said that! Matt started laughing like a hyena. Even Cecily laughed a little.

  I looked down at my empty plate and my eyes were stinging and I couldn't get the bread in my mouth to go past the lump in my throat and it was all I could do not to cry.

  “Come on, cupcake,” Dad said, putting his hand on my arm. “I'm just teasing.”

  “You're jet-lagged, pumpkin,” Mom said. “Hang in there. We'll be going to bed soon.”

  “I'm not tired!” I said even though I probably was. After that I didn't say another word because I was afraid that if I looked up, the tears in my eyes would spill out. It also did not help that, right in front of Cecily, Dad had called me cupcake, Mom had called me pumpkin, and they both had been singing Beatles songs.

  Mom got the check and said, “Well, I'm tired. Let's go.”

  I was hoping our luggage had arrived while we were out, but Hendrik, the check-in man, said nothing had been delivered.

  I was about to complain, but Cecily said, “Oh well, at least it won't be hard to figure out what to wear tomorrow!”

  Mom and Dad laughed and Dad said, “You're right about that!”

  I bet they think Cecily has a great attitude.

  Especially compared to you-know-who.

  P.S. Matt's asleep and Dad helped Cecily try to call her parents. She had to dial special numbers just to connect to America. Neither of her parents was home, though, so she left messages.

  P.P.S. It turns out that Cecily packed her teddy, Snow Bear, right in her backpack. She's lucky. I'm about to go to bed holding a little balled-up washcloth. Talk about pitiful!

  on a bus to Alkmaar (Ahlk Mar)

  Dear Diary,

  Even though I didn't have Hedgehog or my pajamas, and even though it was only early afternoon in New York, I fell right asleep last night. Our sofa bed is big and comfortable and neither of us snores, kicks, rolls, steals covers, grinds our teeth, or is a bed hog, so Cecily and I both slept slept slept like Rip Van Winkle.

  He was Dutch. Last week, Mom read Matt and me Washington Irving's story about how Rip Van Winkle went up a mountain and drank a yucky brew with some Dutchmen who were playing ninepins. But the men were actually the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew, and the drink was a magic potion that made him fall asleep. When he woke up, he was stiff and sore and he had a long white beard. He had slept for twenty years!

  Well, we slept for twelve hours—from 8:00 P.M.to 8:00 A.M.

  I think we might be almost on Holland time now, meaning that morning feels like morning (not the middle of the night) and evening feels like evening (not the middle of the day). I hope so—I'm tired of being tired!

  The first thing I asked Mom this morning was “Has our lost luggage arrived?” She said, “No, darling.”

  It should have come by now! I want Hedgehog!!

  Matt asked, “We're never never ever ever going to get our luggage, are we?”

  Mom said we would.

  I asked if we had to wear the same clothes AGAIN, and Mom said we had no choice, but if we wanted to take a shower and flip our underwear inside out, that might be a good idea.

  I can't believe Mom said that. And in front of Cecily! It was soooo embarrassing, not to mention

  “If our stuff doesn't arrive today, we should sue,” I said. “Or at least buy new underwear.”

  Mom called the baggage people, but their number was busy. She asked the check-in man to call them while we are out.

  I wrote two poems.

  The first is:

  The second is the kind Miss Sands once made us do. Each line begins with a letter that helps spell a word— in this case, Holland.

  Well, we are now on our way to Alkmaar, a town known for its cheese market and cheese museum.

  We are on a bus. Matt is sitting on Cecily's lap.

  Cecily just said, “Matt, you have a bony butt,” and Matt laughed like that was the greatest compliment you could ever hear. If I'd called Matt's butt bony, he would have hit me. Then I'd have hit him and we'd have gotten in a big fight and ended up in big trouble. But since it was Cecily calling his butt bony, Matt acted charmed.

  I don't get it. And Matt doesn't even have a bony butt. He has a squooshy tushy. Or a plump rump.

  The guide on our bus is young and cute. He has blond hair and grayish eyes. He gave me a brochure. He says “Hello” like “Hollow.” He is explaining everything in Dutch, English, Spanish, and French. Mom said many Europeans speak several languages. She said that if people in Connecticut had their own language and people in New Jersey had their own language, maybe New Yorkers would learn Connecticutese and New Jerseyese, but since most Americans speak English, most don't try very hard to learn other languages.

  “I speak pig latin,” Cecily said. “Ig-pay atin-lay.”

  Mom smiled and said, “E-may oo-tay,” which means “Me too.” Mom told me that to speak pig latin, you take the first consonant of a word and move it to the end and add ay. So I said, “Ello-hay!” to Cecily, and she said, “Ello-hay, Elanie-may!” back to me.

  Mom speaks Spanish, French, pretty good Italian, and okay pig latin. But even Mom says Dutch is difficult.

  It sounds difficult.

  For example, if you want to say “please,” it's which you pronounce Ahl Stoo Bleeft. (Sorry for the cross-outs. I had to ask Mom how to spell it because it is as impossible to spell as it is to say.)

  It sounds sort of like “All stew is blecchh!” but last night when I was thirsty, I pointed to my empty water glass and said, “All stew is blecchh!” and the waitress looked at me as though I'd flown in from Pluto.

  “Thank you” is easier. It's dank u wel (Don Coo Well).

  “Yes” is ja (Ya) and “no” is nee (Nay).

  Here's the po
int: I'm glad our guide speaks English! (I'm glad he's cute too!)

  He asked me my name, and I said Melanie, and he said, “That's a pretty name,” so I asked him his name, and he said Hans, and I said, “That's a handsome name.” I couldn't believe I said that! I started to blush, and he just smiled (really cutely). Then Matt and Cecily introduced themselves and he ruffled Matt's hair and asked Cecily where she's from and said her name was pretty too!

  Hans stood up at the front of the bus and told everyone to look out their windows. “You see that lovely green countryside? It used to be covered with water. We are driving along the bottom of an old dried-up lake.” Then he said, “Cecily?”

  She glanced at me and half giggling, answered, “Yes?”

  “Cecily, what do you call my country?”

  “Holland?” she answered.

  “Ja, you call it Holland,” he agreed. “But to us, North and South Holland are just two of twelve provinces. You see the bumper stickers on those cars? They say NL. We are the Netherlands. We are part of the Low Countries. Much of our land is low—below sea level!”

  “Below the sea?” Matt asked.

  “Ja, Matt,” Hans said, and Matt sat up tall and proud. “Hundreds of years ago, we took the land back from the sea by building dikes and dams and using windmills to pump water out of the lakes. Who remembers my name?”

  I raised my hand, but Cecily blurted out, “Hans.”

  “Ja. And who knows the book Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates?”

  “I do,” Mom said. “It's written by an American woman.”

  “Ja. It's not Dutch at all,” Hans smiled. “In the book, there's a story of a boy who sees water trickling through a hole in a dike—which is a low wall built to prevent floods. Come here, Matt.” Matt stepped up and Hans got him to stick out his pointer finger. “That boy poked his finger in the hole to stop the leak,” Hans continued, “and stayed that way all night and until the next morning, when a man saw him and helped him. He was a hero!” You could tell that Matt felt like a hero too, but then Hans told him to go sit down. “That story is make-believe. Today, we have modern ways to prevent floods.”

  I tried to picture myself saving the day and being a hero.

  In front of me, Dad whispered, “I hope this excursion isn't a tourist trap.”

  Matt said, “What's an excursion?”

  Dad said, “A field trip.”

  Matt said, “I love field trips. Especially the bus rides.”

  Cecily said, “What's a tourist trap?”

  Dad said, “It's when tourists get lured to the same crowded place and the place isn't all that interesting.”

  “And they trap you?” Matt asked. His eyes got big and round and he stopped fiddling with his stupid baby tooth.

  “No,” Dad laughed. “They just take some of your money.”

  “If Alkmaar is a little touristy,” Mom said, “that's fine because Matt here is a little tourist.”

  “I'm sure it'll be fun,” Cecily said, all cheerful.

  “I bet it will be cheesy,” I piped in. I meant it as a joke. Cecily laughed but I could feel Mom and Dad just wishing I had a better attitude. Sometimes even I wish I had a better attitude.

  I also wish Cecily would stop acting so cheerful. She's like a teacher's pet, only in this case, a family's pet. I thought it would be great being on vacation with her. But when we got on the bus and Matt said, “Sit next to me!” instead of saying, “Dream on, you little twerp,” she looked right at me, then said, “Okay,” and plopped next to him like she was his friend, not mine.

  I can't believe Matt the Brat is taking over my best friend. I can't believe she's letting him. And I can't believe Hans called on Cecily and made Matt the star of his show when he knew me first.

  Right now Cecily is letting Matt color all over her magazine. He is sitting on his bony-squooshy-plump butt-tushy-rump uglying up all the celebrities. He's giving them antlers and bloodshot eyes and drawing Band-Aids and Frankenstein stitches on their faces and putting cotton balls in some of their nostrils and making boogers ooze out of other of their nostrils. And Cecily is laughing.

  Mom and Dad are sitting side by side reading a book of van Gogh's letters.

  That leaves me, myself, and I in my slept-in clothes and inside-out underwear.

  At least I've got you and a pencil. And Anne Frank's diary.

  I'm up to the part where she says that she knows it does no good to be “gloomy” but says, “Still, I can't refrain from telling you that lately I have begun to feel deserted…. But why do I bother you with such foolish things? I'm very ungrateful, Kitty; I know that.”

  I feel a little deserted too. But, I know that I should be very grateful.

  It's just hard sometimes.

  (Zon Za HHHunse)

  Dear Diary,

  I guess I'm just not as into cheese as some people.

  I mean, cheese is okay. I like American cheese, and cream cheese on bagels, and mozzarella on pizza, and sometimes I don't mind a sprinkle of parmesan on spaghetti.

  But I'm not a cheese person.

  Well, around here, they take cheese very seriously— too seriously.

  Hans took us to a cheese museum—a kaasmuseum (Cahs Moo Zay Um). Cecily walked on one side of Hans and I walked on the other.

  We went to a cheese market that's been going on every Friday morning pretty much forever. Cheese sellers in straw hats were auctioning off tons of huge yellow cheeses. Imagine if you put your arms out in a big circle and touched your fingertips. Each wheel of cheese is that big—maybe bigger. Hans looked at me and asked, “You know what these cheeses are covered with?”

  I wanted to say “Ja,” but shook my head. I wished he'd given me an easy question.

  “Wax,” Hans said. We watched the men stack the waxy cheeses onto wooden sleds and rush to get them weighed and sent all over the world. Probably even to New York.

  “Holland was the first country to export cheese,” Hans said. “Holland still exports more cheese than any other country.”

  “Sports?” Matt said. “What's x-sports?”

  “Exports,” Dad explained, “are things one country sells to another country.”

  Cecily asked Hans to take a picture of all five of us in front of the giant cheeses. He gave her a big smile, and to make sure we smiled, guess what he told us to say?

  Speaking of, Mom and Dad bought a plate of cheese

  for us to sample. I didn't want any. Matt said, “Pretend you're a mouse. Now do you want some?”

  I glared at him and said, “Pretend you're a human. Now will you mind your own beeswax?”

  Matt swung his arm out, to punch me, I think, and he banged his elbow on a gate and ripped his shirt. (Served him right.) He started hopping around and moaning, “Ow ow ow ow ow!” and Cecily hugged him and said, “Matt, you poor thing. There's nothing funny about funny bones, is there?”

  I swear, I felt like puking.

  At lunch, I practically did puke. We had pumpernickel bread with pea soup, or erwtensoep, which Mom pronounces Air Tin Soup.

  I thought it was gross. Cecily loved it. (Naturally.)

  Matt told Cecily his favorite joke. He told her to say “pea green soup” after everything he said.

  Matt said, “What did you have for breakfast?”

  Cecily said, “Pea green soup.”

  “What did you have for lunch?”

  “Pea green soup.”

  “What are you having for dinner?”

  “Pea green soup.”

  “What are you going to do before you go to bed?”

  “Pea green soup!”

  Everybody laughed.

  Except me.

  1. That joke is immature.

  2. I've heard it about a billion times.

  3. I don't like pea soup for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

  P.S. I signed my name backwards because everything feels sort of wrong right now.

  early afternoon on the bus back to

  Dear Diary,
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  I feel as if I'm getting smaller and smaller. Like Alice in Wonderland or something.

  Hans isn't paying attention to any of us. He's talking different languages to a bunch of adults. He's probably telling all the ladies that they have pretty names.

  He led us to a cheese shop where a blond lady in a puffy white costume talked in Dutch and English about how cheese is made. Matt whispered, “It stinks in here.” Mom said, “Shhhh,” and the lady explained that cheesemakers boil milk, then add “lactic acid” and “rennet” so the milk curdles and separates into curds and whey.

  “Curds and whey?” Matt said. “That's what Little Miss Muffet eats!”

  Dad laughed and Mom beamed at her little Angel Boy, and the lady kept talking about smelly cheeses. She said cheese can be eaten “young” or ripened in salt water and eaten months or years later. She said aging cheese makes it more flavorful.

  Petrified cheese? Flavorful?

  Yuck!

  All this curds-and-whey talk wasn't making me hungry; it was making me want to hold my nose.

  Dad must have seen me squinch up my face because he announced, “Melanie likes her cheese bright orange, square, processed, individually wrapped, and made in the good ol' U.S. of A.”

  First of all, since when is that a crime? Second, since when does everyone else care about young versus old cheese, and sheep versus goat cheese?

  I thought Cecily might defend me because she likes golden brown grilled American cheese sand wiches as much as I do. But she giggled along with Dad. She was giving Matt a piggyback ride and they were sampling bites of Gouda. The Dutch lady pronounced it Howda, or HHHGHHHowda, as if she were gargling and the word got stuck in her throat and she finally had to spit it out.

  When the lady walked away, Dad said, “Howdy, kids! Howda like the Howda?” Matt made a thumbsup sign and he and Cecily started saying “HHHGH-HHowda HHHGHHHowda HHHGHHHowda.”

  Then Matt whispered, “Who cut the cheese?”