Introduction

Let me just start to clarify that I want to write these things down as I want to remember them later as well. As time goes on, we start to forget items from the past and this blog is to avoid that feeling.

The blog will most likely be read by my wife and children, which is fine, all the more reason to be honest and straightforward. There may be times that I will probably hurt some feelings, but that just signifies that mine were hurt at the time and I reacted to that.

The events that I describe here are basically from an events xls sheet that I started preparing a number of years back (the earliest that I can see now is 2003) and which I kept more or less updated lest I forget what I wanted to share with this blog. The fact that I write in English is primarily so that my children will be able to understand the contents and I feel that I write better English than Flemish nowadays.

Birth

I guess that bad luck started already quite early, even before I was born.  My parents, who met during the war in Germany, got together "in sin" as my mother, Florentina Henrica Johanna Catharina Van Ginneken, was still married to her first husband Rene Geudens (Trader in farm animals) and she was pregnant.  My natural father Arnoldus Marinus Luijten was a Dutch national and staying illegally in Belgium.  From what I gathered from my mother, my father did everything possible to obtain legal papers for Belgium, so much so that he even went to work in the coalmines as it would speed up the paperwork.

Because of the ancient Napoleon legal code, any children born would automatically get the name of the husband, even if he was not the father.  So when my brother was born, he was named Albert Geudens.  He was born in 1949, and the family was excited with this newborn son.  He was a strong boy and weighted well over 4 kilogram (9 pounds).  My mother always boasted that he could stand still on top of the hand of my father and was walking when he was 10 months old, she would tell that with a lot of pride as if he was a genius from early on.  Alas, somewhere in 1950, Albert needed to go to hospital for some routine matters and he contracted some terrible disease that became fatal, he died of this disease.  My parents were devastated and decided that they would never want children again and gave away everything they had from Albert.  Little did they know that my mother was already pregnant again and was carrying me.  I have heard my mother talk about illegal abortions on several occasions, she did not specify how many but she nearly bled to death on one occasion and my father was sternly lectured by the Doctor not to get my mother pregnant again if they were just going to abort the child.  It appears that they tried to abort me, but they did not succeed.

On 23/10/1950 around 3 in the afternoon, I was born with the forceps,  My mother had been in labor for 24 hours and they finally decided to use the forceps to get me out.  I weighed a whopping 11 pounds at birth and after they cut my mother (to create a bigger opening) and using the forceps, I was dragged out of my mothers belly and immediately whisked away by the nurses.  This was long before fathers were allowed to assist during the birth. The reason was that the forceps had not only bruised my face but even tore the flesh away in certain spots.  My mother was not allowed to see me for a few days until they managed to heal my face somewhat.  I have one scar on my head from the forceps and one side of my face where the beard does not grow much hair, for the rest I was quite normal.  Even though my mother was well built, she did not have enough milk for me and I was handed to some other lady who had enough milk for several babies, so my first meals came from a complete stranger.  I wonder if that had an effect on the child, I suppose we will never find out.

As was the same with my brother, I was named Nicolaas (godfather) Sophia (godmother and my oma) Antoon (grandfather) GEUDENS.  That is what it still says on my birth certificate and I recently got some paperwork in relation to my mother passing and the name popped up again.  It was something I had to live with until I was 13 I believe, but more on that later.  The result of this was that my mother always talked about Nico and asked the schoolteachers to address me as Nico and not with my last name.  My birth announcements also just mentioned Nico.

Kindergarten

I do not remember much from my years in kindergarten.  Since I was born in October, I was always younger as the rest of the children in class as my mother arranged for me to go to kindergarten before I was officially entitled to it. This anomaly continued throughout my school years until one day I doubled my year and caught up with the other children.  The teachers in kindergarten were nuns and we were kept busy with all sorts of games, the idea of teaching at that young age was not born yet.  My one distinct memory I had was during pause one year when the bell rang to gather to go to class and I was at the other end of the courtyard and I ran as fast as I could towards the other children to go inside, and could not stop anymore.  I ended up running into the doorpost which was made from blue stone and I cracked my head.  There was lots of blood, ambulance to the hospital, stitches and I was then brought back to kindergarten to await my mother who would pick me up.  Those were the days when mothers were not called to let them know something happened in school, so my mother had a hefty shock when se saw me completely dazed and bloodied.  I don't remember much after that.

Primary school

I breezed through primary school, I was always making top efforts, my teachers were always very happy and content, even though they kept telling my parents (actually my mother as my father never even went to meetings) that I have still a lot more potential and I could do better.  I ended in the top 3 of the class, actually I was 3rd.  Charly De Wever was ALWAYS first and Pierre Verbocht always second.  I enjoyed school, was not a rebellious child and was well liked by most children.  The one issue that gave me a traumatic experience, even until today (I am still hurt and mad) was the matter of the laurel- and gold crown in the last class of primary school, we were all 12 or nearly 12 years old at the time.  As mentioned, Charly was always 1st so he always scored the laurel crown.  That was a pretty big deal at the time, and none of us had a chance to get that crown.  The golden crown was a different reward.  During the year, whenever special efforts were made, the teacher would give points as a reward.  The score of the points was kept by your neighbour in class, so we were pretty informed as to our total points.  As I was very active in class and did my homework always perfect, I did score a lot of points, and I knew it.  It was of course a race between the top pupils of the class to gather as many points as possible.  Well, that last year, I was wiping them out, scoring points left, right and centre.  I knew I had the biggest score because we could check our totals every week.  Well... since Charly always scored both crowns, they were not going to do anything different during that last year, so he got both again.  My world as a (nearly) 12 years old crumbled and fell apart, I knew the gold crown was mine and yet they did not give it to me but to Charly, I was devastated and right there and then, my disgust for the rulers was born, I never recuperated from that disappointment...  I cried my eyes out during the celebrations and only wanted to flee and go home.  My mother tried to console me, but she never understood the anticipation that I had for months in looking forward of getting that stupid crown, it was my ambition and I worked doubly hard to get there, and I was cheated out of the crown.  Even as I write these words, the hollow feeling in my stomach comes back, and I know now that it was one of the most important (negative) happenings in my life.  It all seems silly now, but it had an enormous impact that no one understood.

My young years, when I knew happiness

Mom got really sick in 1958, I was 8 years old and she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease.  There were precious few doctors that were handling Crohn's disease at that time, and everyone thought it was some sort of cancer in the intestines and people were dying of this.  Even today, there is little known about this disease.  What actually happens is that the intestines start blocking and getting infected, with the result that normal body functions get hampered and the patient will become insanely sick and has a lot of pain.  The treatment at the time (and as far as I know even today) is to remove the infected intestines (in fact shortening the intestines by the part that is infected).  This is what happened to my mother and she was in hospital for a long time after surgery.  I do not know how long it took, I forgot, but I know the numerous times I have went to the hospital to visit my mother.  I went along with my dad and I remember we had to take two trams to get to the hospital, which just about took all the time we had in the evening.  It was a difficult time because when my mother came home, she needed daily care.  The doctors left a hole in mom's belly so that the puss from the infection in her belly could be removed daily.  The doctor proposed for a nurse to come by every day to take care of this, but my mom refused and stated that I could take care of that.  So at 8 years old, I started to look after her wound on a daily basis.  I had to get special rinsing medication from the drugstore (not pharmacy) which was called hydrogen peroxide, which disinfected the wound.  Daily, I would take away the old bandage, clean around the wound, and together with my mom, push on her belly to get the puss out, I remember it clearly oozing out where I wiped it up with sterile cloth.  After taking the puss out, I would fill the hole again with the peroxide and put a new bandage.  Since mom was bedridden, she asked me to take care of the household, cleaning and cooking as well as doing the shopping.  Quite some responsibility for a boy my age.  I loved my mom so I was happy and proud doing it for her.  Her ordeal with this disease would go on during her lifetime, all the way to her death at the age of 90.  She was operated on for Crohn's at least 6 times and each time they took a piece away.  In the end, they removed about 5 meters from her 7.5 meters intestines, and because of the short intestines, she was forced to always be in the vicinity of a toilet, there was no room for storage.  Additionally, the short intestines could not absorb all the vitamins that her body needed, so she had all sorts of other conditions at an older age.  This was the time also of the Milk brigade, an organization that was set up by the Milk producers to entice children to drink more milk.  You would have a special calendar on the wall where you could mark all the glasses of milk that you drank, so you could be a "good brigadier".  Needless to say I was an excellent brigadier as I love milk (still do today) and was meticulous in ensuring I had more than my share of milk during those days.  Parents could also write in to nominate a family member who had done something special, so that that the Milk brigade could reward the brigadier.  My mother wrote to them about the things that I did during the time she was sick, and I was nominated "ere-brigadier" for what I did.  It consisted in a special diploma and a congratulatory note with the signatures of two famous Belgians.  I chose for Gaston Roelands and Roger Moens, both world famous runners during that time.  I am not sure if I still have the papers from this time, perhaps I will find them back at my mother’s house.

When I was about 10 years old, I used to play outside on the street as all kids did during those days.  I had a bicycle and went riding regularly around in the neighbourhood.  My mother always insisted that I stay in the street so she could see me if she looked out of the window.  But of course, the street where I lived was pretty boring so a few of the kids and I went biking way out of our street of course because we were already "grown up" enough to know our way.  We went to play on the Pijottenberg near het Rivierenhof Park in Deurne.  Probably 15 minutes by bike.  One day, we were playing and I was approached by an adult man, who started talking to me, and one thing lead to another and before I realized it, we were in one of those old bunkers left over from the war and he was pretending to be a Doctor and examined and took advantage of me in a most improper way.  I got really frightened and rushed home where I informed my parents about what had happened.  It must have been a Saturday, because my father was home and he became very angry, both at the man that abused me but even more with me.  He told me to hop on the back of his bicycle and we went looking for the guy.  Of course he was no longer around and we had to return home.  I remember very clearly that my father was so angry that he was hitting me in the head while he was riding the bike, picture him riding and smashing his hand behind his back where he could hit me.  Needless to say that was also a marking event in my life.  My mother was also angry, and I had a feeling that I was to blame for what had happened, just because I did not listen and stay in the street as I was told to.

Both my father and mother had loose hands.  My mother would hit first and ask questions later.  I remember a time when I was taking the trash out from the first floor down to the street.  It was a heavy trashcan and I was holding it in front of me when going down the stairs, and I don’t remember what happened, but I stumbled and fell down the stairs, trashcan first and my jaw on the edge of the trashcan second.  Needless to say I screamed my longs out, I must have been 10 or 11 years old.  As I lay on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, my mother came down screaming at me and started to hit me where she could, scolding me that I was not careful enough and that it was my own fault.  Only later did she realize that I had hurt myself seriously and I was taken to the hospital to see if my jaw was broken.  Another time, I came in the kitchen and did not shut the door.  She was stressed and started scolding me saying that she had repeated 1000 times to close the door, and at the same time she slapped me hard against the back of my head, quite forceful so I ended up with my head on the table, unfortunately there was a glass standing there and I hit my forehead on it, breaking the glass.  Instead of trying to comfort me with my injury (it was bleeding quite profusely), my mother then started hitting me more screaming at me that I was to blame for what just happened.  Anyway, I could go on with other incidents, but in time, my mother was hurting her hands more that she was hurting me so she stopped.  

My father, who for most of my youth, would give me the feeling he did not love me at all, but tolerated me.  I am not sure that it was the case, but that was the feeling I got.  His favourite punishment was to let me sit on my knees in a corner with my hand stretched above my head.  Try it, you will not last for 15 minutes, it was painful and humiliating, and served absolutely no purpose.  I have nearly no recollections about happy times with my father, he was that man that I did not see in the morning as he left before I got up, and did not see at night before I went to bed.  The times I saw him was mostly weekends, and even then he went playing billiards and out with friends.  One time on a Sunday (I was about 10 or 11 years old), I went to church as usual (last mass) and as I never liked it, I usually stayed standing in the back at the exit door until the service was finished so I could go home quickly.  That particular Sunday I was especially bored so I was going in and out of the church waiting for the service to end, and my father must have seen me outside during the service.  Mind you, neither my parents went to church at all except for weddings and communions (mine).  When I came home that day from church, my father was waiting for me at the stairs and told me to come into the back kitchen, I knew this meant bad news.  He started asking me why I was outside the church during service and I tried to tell him I just went out for a little while, I was following the service.  He then started hitting me from one end of the room to the next, even taking a small wooden footstool in his hand to hit me with, needless to say I was bruised and walked painfully for days after that.  That was the worst beating I had from my father and I remember it vividly to this day.  My mother was in the main kitchen preparing the food and was unaware that my father had trashed me until I came in crying from pain and humiliation.  I ended up going to my room so that my father could calm down.  I am not sure if my parents had arguments or discussions over this incident, all I know was that my father never touched me again afterwards.  He did not need to as I was terrified of him and a stern look sufficed to calm me down.  He sometimes mentioned also that his father was very strict and a look alone would calm my father down, even as an adult, funny how things repeat themselves.  Maybe I did the same to my children…

When was I happy during childhood?  When I would wake up in the morning and it would be freezing flowers on the inside of our windows and I would run down the stairs and enter the kitchen that was warm, full of light and with the smell of coffee.  My mother making breakfast for me and on rare occasions, my father just saying goodbye when he left for work.  Unfortunately, those moments were rather limited and very often, my father was already gone and my mother was also getting ready to go to her hairdresser work (she was a hairdresser that went to people’s homes).  The same thing at lunch time, the school was 200 meters in the same street so I came home for lunch.  Most of the time my mother was out working so I had lunch by myself.  My mother prepared my sandwiches and when I came I just ate them and went back to school.  Once my mother must have left the iron on when she went working, and when I came home, the ironing board was already in flames, I called the neighbors who could luckily put out the fire otherwise we would have lost everything.

Even though my father was not the most jovial of all people, I still looked up to him at the time.  So much so that I would rummage through his lunch bag on the weekend to see if there was anything left (my father was a notorious bad eater, probably because he drank a lot of beer then).  When there were sandwiches left, I would sit on the floor pretending I was having lunch with the other colleagues and talking the whole time as if they were there, funny but true.