by Carol Weston
Matt sat down but he peeked up at us and Cecily winked and I had to bite my lip to stop laughing.
Dad looked really annoyed (hee hee), so, probably to get back on his good side, Matt picked up a sign on our table and asked, “What's this?” The sign had a yin-yang with a cigarette and a rambling paragraph in English and Dutch about “harmony and mutual respect” and how it's quite all right to smoke, just not right here.
Personally, I do NOT think it's quite all right to smoke and I do NOT think yin-yangs and cigarettes belong together! I even said so. Dad agreed, but he said the Dutch pride themselves on being tolerant. They actually have coffee shops just for smokers!
“What's tolerant?” Matt asked.
“Tolerant is having respect for other people and accepting their differences. You know about the Pilgrims, right?”
Cecily and I both nodded, but I was thinking that I might have forgotten whatever I was supposed to know. Matt said, “What about them?”
“Long ago in England, everyone was forced to join the Church of England. Some people said, ‘No way!’ and left. They were the Pilgrims. Guess where they went?”
“Where???” Matt asked, as though nothing could be more fascinating.
“Here! To Holland—the little country with the big history.”
“Why???” He glanced at me and I had to keep biting my lip.
“Because they knew no one would boss them around or discriminate just because their religion was different. They would be welcomed and accepted.” I could feel a full-fledged Dad lecture coming on. Once, Dad went on and on about politics on the walk to school, and I was about to fall asleep standing up, but then that very day, Miss Sands asked if anyone could name both our state's U.S. senators and I raised my hand and everybody looked at me like I was this amazing genius (even Norbert, who was new in school).
“Follow me,” Dad said. “I'm going to show you a place that's frozen in time.” I think he and Mom mostly wanted us to be outside before we got disruptive again.
We followed Dad down a few streets, being careful not to get run over by bicyclists. Matt was walking extra slowly so the t.p. on his shoe wouldn't fall off, but it fell off anyway. When we reached an old arched doorway, Dad said, “Close your eyes.”
“This is like No Peeking!” Matt said.
“When you open your eyes,” Dad said, “you will
walk through this door and feel like you're stepping into another world. Ready? Open your eyes!”
Well, we walked into a courtyard and it was green and pretty and tranquil (as Mom put it) and had old houses with fancy gabled roofs. But it did not look “frozen in time.” It was hundreds of years old, not millions. And it's not as if there were cavemen running around in loincloths or anything.
“See that church?” Dad asked. “The Pilgrims prayed in peace right there—before sailing across the ocean.”
Matt was wiggling his tooth all around, but I could tell that now he was listening for real. “Did they make it across?”
Even I knew the answer to that one!
“It took two months and it was very rough. One person died and another was born,” Dad said. “But in 1620, a hundred and two Pilgrims landed in what is now Massachusetts.”
“On the Mayflower,” Mom added. “You've heard of the Mayflower,” she said, and squeezed Matt's angelic little hand.
Matt took that as his cue to tell his second-favorite joke (after the pea soup joke). He asked Cecily, “If April showers bring May flowers, what do Mayflowers bring?” “June bugs?” Cecily said just to be nice. “Pilgrims!” Matt said, all proud of himself. Dad and Mom exchanged a Matt-is-precious smile. Cecily and I exchanged a Matt-is-dorky smile. “The Pilgrims started the Plimoth Plantation,”
Dad said. “My dad took me,” Cecily said. “It's where they had
the first Thanksgiving. They ate with spoons, not forks.” “Cool,” Matt said. “Meanwhile, to the south,” Dad droned, “a
Dutchman named Peter Minuit was tying up a little real-estate deal—he bought the island of Manhattan for twenty-four bucks! Some say he paid more; some say the Native Americans never thought of it as selling Mother Earth—”
Matt yawned. “Can I run around?” Mom said, “Sure,” and Matt scampered off like an American squirrel. Cecily and I wandered off too. Mom said that nuns used to live around here, so Cecily and I tried to pretend we were nuns. We walked along with our eyes cast down and our hearts full of goodness. But then one of us would look at the other and we'd both burst out giggling.
After a while, Matt said, “Cecily, let's play Pencil Portraits.” So now I'm writing and they're drawing. Cecily's picture of Matt is about a bazillion times better than Matt's of Cecily. (If I were Cecily, I'd be insulted.)
Dad's telling Mom about an opera called The Flying Dutchman. It's about a doomed ship's captain who gets stuck far out at sea. It sounds like he'll never ever get to go home. Ever.
“Does it have a happy ending?” I asked.
“No,” Dad said. “But some operas do. One of these days, I'll take you to the Met.”
“And I'll take you to the Frick,” Mom said, “so you can see my favorite Rembrandt.”
I considered saying “Goody goody gumdrops,” but didn't.
Mom said, “How about if right now I take all of you to a wax museum?”
“Wax?” Matt said. “Who cares about wax? We already learned about cheese.”
I was about to agree that we couldn't care less about candles, but Mom said it's not a museum about wax, it's a museum of people made of wax.
“You're going to love it,” Mom said.
“I went to the one in New York,” Cecily said. “It has George Washington and Helen Keller and Whoopi Goldberg. It was fun but sort of scary too.”
“Like how?” Matt asked.
“Like Marie Antoinette's head gets chopped off over and over and over again.”
“Awesome!” Matt said.
Well, we are going to the wax museum. I have no idea what to expect. But I'll tell you this: If it stinks, I'm going to be mad.
Dear Diary,
Madame Tussaud's is the funnest museum I've ever ever ever been to! In fact, I think all museums should be wax museums!
You pronounce it Mad Am To Sew. Everyone in it (except the tourists) is made of wax. You know how Michelangelo sculptures are made of marble? Well, these sculptures are made of wax! And some of them look totally alive! There's a wax Oprah, wax Einstein, wax Gandhi, wax Winston Churchill, wax Martin Luther King, and a wax Pope. Matt loved a spooky scene of two upside-down dead guys with wax blood dribbling out of them. (He kept saying “Awesome!” but also kept clinging on to Mom for dear life.)
The museum takes you on a history tour, starting from when Spain ruled Holland through the Golden Age, when Rembrandt and Vermeer were painting like crazy and Amsterdam was the world's richest and most free city. (Is “freest” a word? “Freeest” can't be.)
Anyway, it was pretty cool to be walking among so many famous people. Dad took a picture of Mom blowing kisses to Vincent van Gogh and of me curtsying before Beatrix, Queen of the Netherlands.
Matt tried an experiment. He tried to stand perfectly still to see if anyone would think he was a famous wax boy and take a picture of him. Well, Matt can't freeze for even two seconds, so—big surprise— nobody even paused. He did not fool a single solitary person!
Cecily said she liked this museum more than the one in New York.
At the gift shop, I bought a postcard of Anne Frank. Cecily bought a postcard of Mel Gibson for her mom, and my mom gave her shoulder a squeeze and smiled at her in a serious sort of way. I saw a postcard of Tina Turner in fishnet stockings and a leather bathing suit, so I said half jokingly, “We should send this to Christopher and sign it ‘Your secret admirers.’”
Cecily laughed. “We should. Let's.”
“It would have a Dutch stamp on it. He'd know it was from us.”
“Then forget it—no way!”
I hav
e to say: It's way more fun to laugh with Cecily than to watch her laugh with everyone else! (But I wonder if deep down she's feeling extra worried right now. When I think about it, she was a little quiet at the museum.)
I showed her my latest poem:
Outside Madame Tussaud's is a big square called the Dam (pronounced Dom, not you-know-how). We saw a statue of a knight in shining armor. You couldn't tell if it was made of wax or metal or what, so Matt marched up to the knight statue, and it… moved! It was alive!! It patted Matt on the head!!!
Matt jumped about a foot (hee hee) and Dad snapped a picture and Mom gave the man a few coins. That's what we do in New York when someone on the street plays music or does something artistic.
Suddenly, it started drizzling, so we had to find a restaurant.
On the way, though, I almost lost my appetite because we saw a little boy eat raw fish. Right in the street! His dad held a fish by the tail and lowered it right into the little boy's mouth and the boy ate it!
Gross! Yuck! Ewww!
Dad said it's a Dutch tradition and he'd be happy to buy us some herring.
I said, “In your dreams.”
Matt said, “No way, José.”
Cecily said, “No, thank you.” (Even she is not thaaaat good at trying new foods!)
Dad said the Dutch say: “A herring a day keeps the doctor away.”
I said, “Forget it.”
Matt said, “We're not Dutch.”
Cecily said, “No, thank you,” again.
We did end up eating a fast lunch of pancakes or pannekoeken (Panna Coook Ahn). Yum yum yum. And now it has stopped raining, so we're finally going back to the canal house, where our luggage should be by now.
Hang in there, Hedgehog. I'm on my way!
afternoon at the canal house
Dear Diary,
Hendrik, the check-in man, who is chubby if I may be perfectly honest, has been acting like Mr. Busy whenever he sees us. I think he's been trying to avoid us because we always ask about our luggage when it's not his fault it got so lost.
Well guess what? This time he said, “I have good news for you,” only it sounded like “I hof gooood noose.”
Mom said, “Did our luggage come?”
“Yes,” he said, and pointed to a pile of stuff—all ours!
Matt started jumping up and down and I went right up to my duffle and unzipped it and reached in and pulled out Hedgehog.
I looked into her brown eyes and kissed her pink snout and petted her soft stick-uppy fur. She is even sweeeeter and cuuuuter than I'd been picturing. She was probably as happy to see me as I was to see her. I could almost swear she licked my nose (even though I know that's impossible).
I also yanked out DogDog and tossed him to Matt and he started dancing around in a half-cute, halfdorky way.
Now we are all upstairs and our animals are on our pillows and our clothes are put away except for the clean ones we changed into. I put on my blue jeans and my soft pink sweater.
We would probably be celebrating except that the chubby check-in man handed Mom and Dad a note. It said that Cecily's dad had called from the hospital. But there was no message. The note just said that he called—not that her mom is okay.
Poor Cecily! She read the piece of paper over and over and tears started shining in her eyes. She really wants to talk to her parents! And I don't blame her.
Even though her parents are divorced, they act like friends. I once asked Cecily if she thought there was a chance they'd ever get remarried and she said, “Zero.” Still, it's good her dad is taking care of her mom while we're taking care of Cecily.
The operation was this morning and Cecily said that when her mom leaves the hospital, she'll have to rest a lot. She won't be allowed to drive or carry things or exercise or shower or anything. Cecily also told me something that is hard to imagine. She said the doctors are supposed to take off one of her mom's breasts and build on a new one.
Cecily and I used to pull out our Barbies' arms and legs and even pop out their heads before putting them all back together again. But it's hard to picture doctors taking off and putting on parts of real people.
Right this second, Cecily is trying to call America. Unfortunately the hospital-room phone number is busy busy busy. Mom said her mom must have taken the phone off the hook so she could get some rest. Cecily tried the hospital's main number, but the lady couldn't give out any information. Cecily left a message that said, “I love you. Please call back.”
Mom said she was sure Cecily's mom was going to be fine.
Cecily said she has a stomach ache.
Yours—
P.S. If I were Cecily, I'd have a stomach ache too. What if her dad was calling with bad news???
Dear Diary,
It's rainy out, so we're staying in. (I think we're really staying in so we'll be here if Cecily's parents call.)
I'm glad we're inside, but I don't mind rain because I like twirling my umbrella and making the raindrops go flying and I also like how clean it smells after a rain, like Mother Nature has given the world a shower.
Mom just showed us a very cool book of a Dutch artist named M. C. Escher who was born in 1898. When you look at his illustrations, first you see one thing, then you see something completely different. He drew one picture of white birds flying right, but it's also a picture of black birds flying left! He also drew staircases that seem to be leading you up—but also leading you down. Mom said that there are many ways of seeing things and that the more you look, the more you see.
When I'm reading Anne Frank's diary, I see the world the way she saw it. And when I look at a painting, I see the world the way the painter saw it. It's almost like trying on someone else's glasses or point of view.
Here is what I've been thinking: If Cecily kept a diary of this very same vacation, it would be really different from my diary.
I was also thinking it was pretty dumb of me not to realize that one reason Cecily has been telling us “Don't worry” every two seconds is probably because she is worried out of her mind.
When we get back home, I wonder if she'll be able to give her mom a big bear hug. Maybe it will have to be a gentle little snuggle.
Dear Diary,
While Cecily was in the bathroom, Matt the Brat asked me what everyone is tense about and if Cecily was my “bosom buddy” and if her mom has “a boo-boo on her booby.” (For a little kid, he has big ears!)
I said, “Matt, that is not funny. Don't be childish.”
“But I'm a child.”
“Then don't be babyish.”
“But I'm a baby.”
“Just be more sensitive.”
“What's sensitive?” he asked.
I said, “Sensitive is when you think about other people's feelings, not just your own.”
He said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “Just be nice to Cecily, okay?”
He said, “I'm always nice to Cecily,” which, I have to admit, is true.
Dear Diary,
YAY! Cecily got to talk to her dad! Mom talked to him too. Cecily's mom was still too “out of it” to get on the phone. I don't know if that means she was groggy from pain pills or from anesthesia. (It makes you go into a deep fake sleep.)
When Cecily got to talk to her dad, she had tears in her eyes again. But they were the happy kind. She seems really relieved.
I am too.
Dad and Matt went out to get Dutch sandwiches and raisin rolls, so Mom invited Cecily and me into her room. She patted the bed, and Cecily and I sat down. I thought Mom was going to deal out a game of Concentration, but she said that since it was just us girls, it was a good opportunity to talk. “Cecily, your mom's doing great,” Mom said. “And your dad asked me to help answer any questions you have. Okay?”
Cecily said she doesn't completely understand what's going on, and it would help if Mom explained everything from the start.
So Mom began. She said that after Cecily's mom found that little lump in her brea
st, she made a doctor's appointment and an x-ray appointment, and then a doctor used a needle to take out a tiny piece of the lump and test it. Unfortunately, the test showed that she had cancer. Fortunately, the cancer had not spread. The doctors even checked her armpits (P.U.!) and all around but the cancer seemed to be contained in one place. (Mom didn't say P.U., of course—I threw that in.)
What Mom did say was that many women who have breast cancer ask the doctors to cut out just the lump. Then the women usually have treatments (like radiation, which is light beams, or chemotherapy, which is chemicals) to make sure no cancer gets left behind.
Since Cecily's mom's mom had also had breast cancer, Cecily's mom and the different doctors decided that in her case, the best way to get rid of the cancer would be to take away the breast once and for all. That's called a mastectomy, and it's not what everybody decides to do, but it's what Cecily's mom decided to do.
Cecily winced like she'd been pinched and Mom said, “I know this is hard to hear, but your mom is a strong woman, and the surgery was successful.”
Mom also said that Cecily's mom wanted to get the whole thing over with. “She'll still get check-ups—all women do—but chances are excellent that the cancer is completely gone. She got rid of it. Your dad said the surgery went very well and it looks like she won't even need any extra treatments. Just bed rest.”
“Can kids get breast cancer?” I asked.
“No,” Mom said.
“What about the new breast?” Cecily asked. I was glad she could talk to my mom. I even felt proud of my mom for being the easy-to-talk-to kind.
“Different doctors built a matching new breast right on her,” Mom said. “Once she's all healed up, no one will even know what she went through.”
Cecily asked, “Do you think it hurt?” Tears spilled out of her eyes.
Mom hugged her and said, “The doctors gave your mom painkillers.”
Then Cecily asked, “Where did they get the extra skin for the new breast?”
“From your mother's own tummy,” Mom said. “So she didn't just have breast surgery—she had a tummy tuck too!”
