The flat landscape with nothing but cows that both I and Kairos’ mother grew up seeing

The farm that Kairos’ mother grew up on was not far from Oudekerk-aan-de-Amstel, a small community about 5 miles south of Amsterdam that dates back to the 11th century. Its name literally means “Old Church on the Amstel.” It is the same river to which the capital of Amsterdam owes its name; a dam or dike on the river Amstel.

Leaticia’s brand-new husband was a doctor of some prominence at the Wilhelmina Hospital on Helmer Street #1. Later, after Amsterdam citizens had angered the occupying Nazis by impromptu celebrations for Prince Bernhard’s birthday, the hospital was renamed “Hospital West” because names of Dutch royals were as forbidden as the names of Jews…

When in 1919, Lettie Keizer is pregnant with Kairos, her husband is eager to go to an exhibition at the Amsterdam Airport where the brand-new Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) would start operating. After Holland was invaded, the Nazis requisitioned the airport calling it “Fliegerhorst 561.” Since it was too close to the UK, the Allied forces started bombing the airport so that by the end of 1943, it had been all but annihilated. Thanks to among others the US Marshall Plan, Amsterdam International Airport grew in to the third largest airport in Europe.

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On November 9th and 10th in 1938 Kristallnacht (/Kree-stall-naghkt/) took place when Austrian and German Nazis terrorized the Jewish and destroyed their businesses. Initially, it seemed like Kairos’ mother, Leatitia Keizer was too worried about inconsequential things like fashion or how to behave in polite society to care about the headlines in her husband’s newspapers.

Much later, it turns out that she might have been so scared for what could happen to her husband that her way of pretending nothing was wrong now that she was well-off may have been a coping mechanism.