Independence

My aunt Lien, taking a break on our trip in 1979, sipping wine
from the boccalino we got in Lugano and I still have.

Independance is the theme for week 27 and immediately brought someone to mind, though not an ancestor.

My aunt Lien was fiercely independent. She grew up in the Dutch East Indies and when in 1945 the Indonesian Republic was proclaimed, declaring independence from the the Netherlands, she and the rest of her family were repatriated from Java back to "home". She would not see the land of her birth again until some fifty years later when she travelled back to Java visiting some of her favourite places from her childhood and reconciling to the modern Indonesia.

Her teenage years from the age of fourteen to seventeen she spent in one of the Japanese civilian concentration camp on Java. These were difficult years and her  defiance got her in trouble with camp authorities.

Lien had thick long ash blonde hair which she wore in a simple style of a low bun in the nape of the neck. It reached down to her waist and she would only have it trimmed from time to time. Washing and drying her hair was a big job, but she did not give in to the temptation of the ease of a short hair. Only in her last years when she was in aged care, was it cut short in a straight bob, not for style but convenience.

She called herself an autodidact, meaning that she was self taught. Nevertheless she obtained diplomas for school teaching and teaching ballet and dance and established a dance and movement school in Soest where she lived with her husband.

She loved to travel and would happily set off on her own in her little Renault car, more like a little van, which she affectionately called her cookie tin, tent and camping gear packed in the back. Spain was her favourite destination, for the culture and the warmth and the sense of space and freedom she felt there.

Lien had a deep interest in geology and this directed much of her travel around Europe. When she retired she could indulge this interest full-time, particularly around her beloved Spain and she self-published her travel notes and log.

She divorced after some thirteen years of marriage, leaving the marital home in Soest and starting again in the North, working and living in a caravan park. She refused to accept help and insisted on making her own way. Over the years she rebuilt her life as a single woman, establishing a dance school again.

In her later years she became deeply interested in natural health and started a new career in podiatry and reflexology.  She wrote several self-published self-help books in Dutch on natural health topics.

The 'cookie tin' and me feeling small in the Swiss Alps

I visited Holland in 1979 and she invited me along for one of her trips south to Varese, Italy, where she was going for a week-long seminar in modern dance.  I could stay with her at the seminar venue which was attached to a beautiful Italian villa and gardens that had been bequeathed to the Roman Catholic Church.

Thanks to her generosity I could enjoy a wonderful week in springtime Italy in the Northern Lakes district, sight seeing while she attended the seminar and then on the way back home, as we drove through Switzerland and Germany.  I would not have visited these places otherwise.

One memorable night we stayed in Lugano and in the evening went out to dinner by the lake. When we ordered our wine, it was presented in what we thought was a caraffe and so we asked for glasses. These are boccalinos, we were told, drink straight from that. Very generous serves, I might say. I still have my boccalino.

Dancer
from Lien Blomberg
Personal collection

She always wanted to retire in Spain and for a few months she did, living in Torromolinos, but then she had a stroke and had to return to the Netherlands to be near family and to get the care she needed.

When she passed away a few years later, I was given one of her favourites - a figure of a dancer, leaping forward - she loved it because as she once said, "it is not static, it moves, it has momentum"