Tomorrow at 11.45 am I shall arrive in NYC. Oh me ! Oh my ! Big cities and I don’t get along too well and I’m a nervous wreck. I just keep trying to concentrate on ‘corned beef sandwich’. On Tuesday I shall return to the comforts of small town life. I hope that I don’t make too massive of a fool of myself, or start yelling ‘ Up yours’ to natives. This strikes me as being a rather foolhardy thing to do, wouldn’t you agree ?

Oh me ! Oh my !

The Father can’t deal with heat very well, in fact, he is one of those people who begins to stream sweat when simply eating chili. Once the temperature goes up over 30 he begins to experience extreme discomfort – you know , turns white, gets light headed, all of that sort of thing. Once we went on a day trip to Rome where it turned out to be about 34 degrees of mugginess and we periodically had to take breaks in our tour to dunk him in an ice cold bath at Dad’s hotel. He was a sad, sad sight and I felt very , very sorry for him.

So The Father had a very hard time of it in Florida, where the temperature wavered between 37 and 40 degrees the whole time we where there. After flash frying himself the first day on the beach, The Father was only seen sprinting from one air-conditioned area to another for the rest of the trip. During the Happy Hour at the hotel, bathed in cool air, Dad began talking about next summer’s trip. He would love for us to go to Hawaii with him for a week. He explained to The Father that the weather there was nothing like this, it was pleasant in fact, around 80 during the day. Sounded fine to us.

Last night The Father, Mary Ann and Dad were sitting around talking while I was doing some totally forgettable type of mommy thing- maybe I was changing a diaper or nagging a small child. Whatever it was is lost to to posterity. As I was doing whatever it was I was doing, I was listening in on their conversation.

The Father was telling Mary Ann how unbearable he found the weather down in Florida and that maybe next year we would go to Hawaii, where Dad had assured us the weather was more tolerable. Mary Ann looked at Dad and then at The Father and proceeded to tell The Father that when the Trade Winds weren’t blowing, Hawaii made Florida seem cool. Rather sheepishly ( this is a very Dad thing to have done : all during our swims in Florida he assured me that there was no danger from sharks, only to tell me a lurid shark story , complete with a small boy, his uncle, a chomped off arm and a lump of ice at this very area the moment we had finished our last swim) Dad suggested we think of other places in the States that might be interesting to see in the Summer months.

And then The Fathersuggested, in a very casual way ‘ Perhaps Death Valley ?’

One might seriously reconsider the wisdom of spending 5 days in Destin, Florida ( near Pensacola) during a heat wave. It was 40 degrees when we left there this morning. 40 degrees. In the Netherlands, we start complaining about the hot weather after about three days above 22 degrees.

How hot was it Mummy Dearest ? Well, it was almost – but not quite- too hot to smoke. I struggled on, valiantly.

I enjoyed today’s activity very much : the kids , The Father, Dad and I went down to the wash in search of arrowheads. Dad tells me this used to be Cherokee country and while some women may covet diamonds or pearls, I would love to have a Cherokee arrowhead in just about the worst way.

We got up at a decent time as the weather here, in short, is similar to hell at noon. We are talking 90 degrees in the shade and tree dripping humid. Dad had actually found my old Marshalltown hidden away in some dusty corner of his basement and enough garden trowels for the kids to use. Off we went, down the street to the wash. Of course, the minute we got there, The Baby wet her pants and began complaining about having to wear dirty pants ( ‘It’s not funny, Mama’) and every time a car went by, it slowed down to chat a bit with Dad. But we did find two of arrowheads, of a light grey rather cherty-looking stone and one has very fine notching.

I would have been very pleased if the kids had found the arrowheads but at least I was saved the ‘oh, the money I wasted on your education ‘ razzing, as I found them both. It’s been raining all day, and if there are a few more rainy days here, I will probably head out to the wash again – I’m just a greedy woman and they are just so lovely.

One thing that rather bewilders some Europeans about Americans is the way we talk about being part this and part that. Here, I’ll show you what I mean : in the short version, I’m half Irish and half Polish. Of course, it’s not really as simple as that, but we tend to overlook that Alsatian Grandparent of my Dad’s unless one of us is behaving in a very miserly fashion, then we are told that those Kilbert genes are showing.

The Father has come to accept this as one of those American idiosyncrasies. He doesn’t really understand it, but I can see why it’s troublesome for him. Given the nature and habits of his family through the generations, The Father is probably 100 % Taxandrian. I kid you not. If you want to see what a member of the Taxandrian tribe looked like, those inhabitants of the Netherlands that the Romans ran into on their journey North, come see The Father.

Whenever I see my Dad, the Irish stuff comes up again. He’s been to Ireland a number of times, he even found the utterly charming hovel that his Grandfather left behind in Clifden. The last time he went to Ireland, he traveled even further, to Limavady, where he tells me the Kanes are originally from.

Considering the confusion of identity that being from neither here nor there is causing me, I never quite know what to do with this information.

Never having had a piece of chicken with bones in it, The Boy decides that the most logical way to eat his piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken is to pull out all of the bones first, rather than simply pulling the meat off of the bones.

When The Father and I were married I received Dutch citizenship. I did not have to renounce anything, fill out any long forms or promise to deliver my first born son in return. Nope, I just got it, just like that. Before I ever applied for a Dutch passport, I made very sure that this would in no way jeopardize my US passport.

After I became hopelessly lost in Gatwick airport – separated from Han when I went into the long line for non- EC passports while he breezed through the EC line- I started traveling with the same passport as The Father. Now that I have three children traveling with Dutch passports, of course I travel with my Dutch one, not wanting to become separated from my family.

So I was quite surprised when the dapper young official at passport control in Atlanta told me in no uncertain terms that the United States of America did not care what other countries recognized and did not recognize, the United States of America did not, he repeated, did not recognize my Dutch passport or dual nationality of any kind. Fortunately, I just happened to have my US passport with me, for perhaps he might have sent me back to where I came from. Fortunately, I did not mention that The Girl has two passports as well. Nope, I did my best Gomer Pyle imitation and got us out of there.

I haven’t been lectured to in years.

Doperidon does not work for everyone in the prevention of motion sickness.

Should an airline, in all of it’s wisdom, decide to separate your family of five into three groups ( 2, 2 and 1) and spread far them and wide across an aircraft , may I suggest the following : be accidentally overheard saying to your partner that this now resolves the problem of which adult has to sit next to the child who gets airsick. You would be surprised at how quickly five seats together can be found.

The NIOD (The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation ) announces a follow- up inquiry into the betrayal of the Frank family :

… two books have been published in Dutch which put forward a new theory on the betrayal: Melissa Mueller’s Anne Frank. The Biography (1998), and Carol Anne Lee’s The Secret Life of Otto Frank (2002). The latter also puts forward a blackmail theory connected with Otto Frank’s business activities.

b) opportunities for blackmail during and after the war, including an investigation of the role of Otto Frank in the running of the Opekta, Pectacon & Gies company during and after the war.

View a CAD map of the Achterhuis (‘ Annex’).

Listen to a two part interview of Miep Gies or to audio files of Holocaust survivors.