My mother’s story was still on my mind as we landed in St. John’s, NL. We had planted our vegetable garden before we left, the daffodils and tulips had been fading fast and there were dandelions everywhere. The leaves in the trees were not yet full size but they were  lush and green.  Not so when we left the airport. It was cold. And in the coming days we heard a common refrain. I can’t remember when we have had such a cold, late spring.

Is that what it was like when my mother arrived in New Brunswick in May of 1946? She had left the colour of her familiar Dutch spring and, in the optimism of a March  burst of false hope that spring was close, my father had written that the weather is nice all the time.  But, in reality, the Maritime spring that year was late and cold. 

As Selma had watched the fields and forest on that long train ride from Halifax to St. John, NB it could not live up to her expectations. Disappointment has a way of spreading so I can only imagine what my mother was thinking.  She was not in Canada for a weeks vacation like I was in Newfoundland; she had been looking at her future. If regrets had raced through her mind, she never spoke of them but that cold introduction was never forgotten. In 1990 she recalled it in an essay published in TREASURED MEMORIES Winning Essays From the Recollections Contest.  She wrote:

“Never saw such a bleak country. Had left Holland with trees fully in spring splendour, flowers everywhere. Here pastures barely showing green,mostly hrdwood trees and the birches and poplars barely showing mouse-ear leaves. Not very warm either.”

In St. John’s we were met by my husband’s brother and his family’s hospitality made all the difference. My mother was welcomed to St. Stephen by her husband and his parents. Family makes all the difference.