Dear Friends and Family,
The Pox! The Chicken Pox!
A rite of passage that I remember myself, and ye of the older generation will as well. But apparently all American kids are spared nowadays thanks to a vaccine.
Not so in Holland.
Zephyr was the first young soldier to fall. He was green around the gills for a couple of days, no appetite, running a fever, throwing up at night, etc. Hinke and I had just been having a conversation about how maybe he's one of those kids that's just perennially sickly. Then, over the course of a couple of hours, he broke out in a beautiful, unmistakable dappled rash.
His recovery was almost instant from there, and (here's Dutch for you) all the parents at our nursery school just said he should come to school and they weren't worried about their kids catching it.
Now, I had heard here and there that the second child in the same family to catch Chicken Pox usually has a worse case, but I found that confusing. I mean, either you get infected by a virus or you don't, right? But I knew there probably must be some truth to it, or it never would have found its way onto the parental information sheets, not in this era, when every medical issue related to children is hyper-sensitive and usually politicized in bizarre ways.
But nobody I asked _ and no where on the Internet could I find _ any explanation of why a second child would suffer more.
As a parent, you can always find out what "they" want you to know about any given medical issue, but good luck trying to find out why. So you have your choice between blindly accepting what the health authorities decree, or listening to hysterical, anti-science know-nothings (See also: Vaccination debate; or Tamiflu for kids with Swine Flu, yes or no?).
Anyhow, I eventually used AP access to various magazine databases to find a medical study on Chicken Pox outbreaks in India and Africa. It found that, indeed, the longer and more intense a child's exposure to the virus is, the worse the case generally is. Their hypothesis was that heavy exposure leads to a greater percentage of nerve cells being invaded during the incubation phase.
So the first kid is exposed briefly on the playground, but his/her siblings then breath in large amounts as they sleep in the same room, take baths together, etc.
Anyhow, 2.5 weeks after Zephyr's rash, Zola finally broke out, and woah baby, this was another disease entirely.
In contrast with Zeph, Zola is a hardy creature, as evidenced by her stoicism during her leg-infection episode. She is rarely sick or even out of sorts. And in fact, she didn't throw up or run much of a fever with the Pox. However, there was no part of her body left unaffected by the sores, including unfortunate areas such as the inside of her mouth and _ well, let your imagination run wild.
At the peak of her distress, she howled through one entire night without stopping, leading to (for me) the first night since _ well, since Zephyr's birth, actually, that I got less than one full hour of sleep.
I took the above photo just before she got sick, thinking I wanted to be able to remember her as she was. That turned out to be a smart move, since she's also had an eventful haircut from Hinke and _ well, let's just say she's in something of an awkward phase at the moment, appearance-wise.
The other big news of course is that I have received my Dutch citizenship. It was a long, hard road, but it had a happy ending.
You may recall that I got a Dutch passport once before, but had it revoked again when I refused to renounce my U.S. citizenship.
This time I applied as Hinke's husband, jumped through all the hoops, and eventually was approved. It cost me around $1100 (again) but just days after I finished, they announced that the annual immigrant visa fees are being increased (again) to $750 from $250 (from $35 when I arrived in Oct. 1998).
So I look at it as an investment that will pay for itself.
This time, in order to win final approval, I had to go to a ceremony in which I swore allegiance to the Dutch state.
This procedure has been introduced as a byproduct of the Netherlands' ongoing crackdown on Muslim immigrants, if anybody is wondering.
Anyhow, I had to do it if I wanted the passport, so I figured I might as well make the best of it, and got dressed up for the occassion.
I also threw a small party with traditional Dutch snacks at a nearby pub.
I got a lot of good presents: Dutch flags, shoes, pickled herring, jenever (gin), a family heirloom commemorative coin of the queen and queen mother. But maybe the best was a 5 kilogram (that's 11 pounds but I've gone metric now) block of fine cheese.
And then my Dutch friends finally told me all the secret truths of Dutchness, which, I'm sad to say, I cannot reveal.
But what with this overdose of Oranje, I missed being home during Halloween.
(Papa Tobe's Jack o Lantern creations _ they are something of a draw around here since kids don't celebrate Halloween).
And I'll miss all you Americans friends and family at Thanksgiving and the holidays.
Hope all is well with you,
Love,
Toby and the Amsterlings
Oh, here's a typical dinner at our house:
Okay, it's plastic food aboard a reconstructed Dutch schooner
