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Cees & Annerie van Gemerden — Life as a Work of Art
by David Forsee
This is what Cees and Annerie entered when they moved to Hamilton in 1984. But what of their lives before Hamilton? What was the trail that led them to this place that they began to think of as “home”? And if it’s true that excellence is arrived at through trial and error, then what can we learn from their experience? These are the questions that began to form in my mind as they told me their story.
Only a year separates the two of them; Cees was born in Holland in 1940 and Annerie 1941. Water or proximity to water seems to have been and still is an important element in their lives. Home was in a seaside town between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and it happens that the seashore was where they first met. It was May 5th, Liberation Day in Holland, and Annerie was in the park roller-skating when this guy happened to come along on his scooter and started up a conversation with her. Then he offered to buy her an ice-cream sandwich and a friendship began. He was 12 she was 11. Around them the holiday celebrations brought everybody together; it was a great day with a sweet beginning, and for the next year or so they hung out together whenever they could. They went to different schools, which meant they didn’t see each other all the time. But the friendship developed and looked like a good thing until the fateful bus trip.
From the beginning they had this understanding that when they went out together the costs of the date were split down the middle each paying their own way. And so it was when they got on the bus to go to the movies. Annerie gave Cees her share of the fare and off he went to buy the tickets. Trouble was, he came back to her insisting that she was a nickel short. “Well,” Annerie said to me, “I knew how to look after my money so that was the end of that. I didn’t want anything more to do with this cheap guy.” And she didn’t. The prospects for a future together appeared to dissolve in the sweet salt air and as it happened they didn’t see each other again for another 2 years.
[Distillate © HA&L + David Forsee {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]
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