Alison & David Matsen

Marijke and Evert van Buchem
40th Anniversary Memories
by Alison and David Matsen
August 2006

When we first met Marijke and Evert in the early 1970’s, we were amazed that Marijke at least, thought of their marriage as a “mixed marriage”, even though they were both white, Catholic, and Dutch. The difference was that he was from the north (Nijmegen) and she from the south (Hertzogenbosch) of the diminutive Netherlands! More interestingly for me, they also represented the two theaters of World War II, and I told my students often about Evert being in Holland during the Nazi occupation and Marijke being in a Japanese prisoner of war camp as a girl.

The playgroup sessions we had when Victor, Susan and Daniel Robb were little were a joy, and a darned good idea for all concerned, giving the kids lots of fun time and two of the mothers some free time.

We went skating on Noxontown Pond when the children were small (and the winters were often still cold enough to get a good deep layer of ice). What fun! Evert was known to his students at Saint Andrew’s as the Skating Professor!

In the 1980’s, the five of us visited the three of them in Vermont during the summer. I remember making ice cream outside one evening. We went to a former barn one day, which was being used to house gigantic puppets (Bread and Cheese Theater?). We went one day to the nearby village to hear a concert in a bandstand on the green. We took several hikes also.

I remember going with Marijke food shopping, having coffee in a café, and hearing her talk Dutch to her neighbors in Santpoort during the year’s exchange with the Kramers, and realizing how this was a totally different side of her that I hadn’t seen in America. We were amazed that year to see that Victor had gone over to talking only Dutch, even though he could still understand our English. We especially enjoyed the rijstafel we had at the Djakarta restaurant in Amsterdam, and then looking in at the kind of library place on the other corner afterwards.

After David went back to the States, Marijke and I had a great time during our week in Germany together after we visited her mom in den Bosch. I especially remember enjoying a great trout lunch at a nice country restaurant, where they deep-fried the whole trout in a round basket, so that he came to the table looking as though he were biting his tail. We enjoyed making our way to a Carolingian building in Lorsch, but were disappointed to find that the poem (Lorscher Bienensegen) we had been seeking there had been moved to the Vatican! (It was the earliest example of German poetry, but written in the margins of a church book in Latin.)

On a hot day in August of 1979 David and I hosted quite an authentic Roman dinner by moving the furniture out of our living room and bringing in mattresses to stretch out on as we ate. We all came in Roman outfits, I had prepared several dishes from Apicius’ cookbook, and the girls did gymnastics routines as entertainment between courses, but the event which really made it all authentic was having Evert give an impromptu speech totally in Latin! The gods obliged by orchestrating a very dramatic thunderstorm later in the evening.

In 1992, very early on a Sunday morning in June, Marijke, Evert, David and I surreptitiously moved the little carriage shed from Middletown to our land outside Townsend by putting it on a borrowed farm wagon. We thus avoided any questioning by police about our (non-existent) permit. We had a nice breakfast in the barnyard afterwards.

We have enjoyed many dinners at the Van Buchems, both overlooking Noxontown Pond and in Glen Farms. We love the relaxing aperitifs and appetizers served on Marijke’s pottery, as we sit around the interesting, modern coffee table and are surrounded by antiques from Holland, including the wag-on-the-wall clock and the table with the rope carved stretchers. We have often celebrated David’s and Marijke’s birthdays together on August 10th, the day between July 10th(David’s) and September 10th (Marijke’s). On one birthday Marijke made David a mobile by weaving yellow, gold, and brown yarn loosely together and framing it by a honey box frame from David’s bee supplies. It looked like honey was dripping from the box.

Being Dutch, Marijke knows her tulips and is fussy about only having single tulips in her garden. I am always embarrassed by my several-stemmed ones that haven’t been separated in years.

When we had the attic fire in our house in late August 2003, Marijke and Evert came to help with the grunt work. Marijke took the remainders of a damaged quilt home, saved the good pieces of it, and made them into a usable pillow for us. They also took home and stored for ages many of the items that we didn’t want underfoot during the renovation. Unfortunately, one of the casualties of the fire was the neat pottery clock with Abraham’s face on it that Marijke had made for David’s fiftieth birthday.

After the fire, it was refreshing to go to Marijke’s fascinating art show at Saint Andrew’s and buy the darling ballerina putting on her shoe for our new art gallery upstairs. Life goes on!