A right royal idea

The much loved Queen of the Kingdom of the Netherlands has announced that she will hand over the reins to the reign on April 30th. That is Queen's Day, already the biggest, most anticipated annual celebration in the Lowlands.  Hold on to your hat - or your crown - it is going to be one serious national party this year.

In the meantime, Queen Beatrix has given me an idea. I'm thinking I might abdicate too. I don't want to be in charge anymore. Someone else can do it.

Imagine; no more debating the merits of financial aid to struggling child nations as they battle to fund another electronic game. Someone else could deal with it.

No more smiling and waving through tumultuous family battles about the nation's education policies. Homework and academic grades would no longer be my concern.

No more protracted diplomatic missions to negotiate anything from an overdue hair cut for one of the princes, to a washing up roster, now that the royal dishwasher is on the blink. My successor would have to sort it all out without me.

No more defending the realm against foreign invaders. Actually, come to think about it, we've really enjoyed our foreign invaders this past year, so we might allow that influx to continue.

No need to put up with the destabilising political antics of young wannabe usurpers to the family crown. They can have it.

But who to abdicate to? Grote Jongen would appear to have a hereditary entitlement to the position but I fear he is not yet up to the job. When his father, Ned Nederlander, ventured the suggestion this evening that we might do some right royal family camping in spring, Grote Jongen looked disdainfully at him and said "Nah, you and Mum go. Just leave us a big packet of pasta. We'll be right". However he regained some of my confidence this evening when, on bidding him goodnight, I shared the idea of my possible abdication with him.  He immediately sat up and said excitedly, "Well when I'm King of the family, I will immediately ban housework Mum". I was momentarily thrilled until I realised he was referring to "huiswerk", the Dutch word for school homework. His hastily added "No, no, listen: housework AND huiswerk will both be banned, and punishable by death" did little to reassure me.



Kleine Jongen making an earlier claim for sovereignty

Kleine Jongen, on hearing my plans, simply said "Yeah, well I'm already the boss of this family." Typical youngest child.

Meanwhile, in the House of Orange, Prince Willem-Alexander, soon to be King Will-Al will be the first bloke to be in charge here in the Lowlands for over a century.  His mother, grandmother and great grandmother have all added a highly successful feminine regal touch during the past century. Even his great-great grandmother had a go at the job for a while, holding the royal fort for a couple of years following the death of her husband King William, and prior to the coming of age of their daughter. Will-Al will have his work cut out for him following such a string of compassionate, intelligent, strong-willed women. Fortunately he has a fabulously compassionate, intelligent, strong-willed partner, not to mention three daughters, to help him adjust to his new role.

The same gender blip would apply in my family should either of De Jongens take over after decades of female rule.  Heaven knows my maternal grandmother, Queen Kathleen, was undeniably the ruler of her Mossman Street palace, wielding a wooden sceptre like nobody's business. Come to think of it, I believe it was a wooden spoon, but then again I also recall her wielding plates of scones with lashings of cream and homemade jam too. And hugs.

Kathleen's daughter, my own mother, was also not one for letting her prince tell her how things should be done, although she was known to call on him when she felt that some form of king-sized discipline needed to be dispatched. Threats of "Wait til thy royal father gets home" generally restored order to our familial palace fairly quickly during times of unrest. But through it she taught me the importance of ruling with your heart as well as your head. And on the whole, my father expertly played the good-humoured, supportive royal consort, winning the hearts and minds of all in the realm at the same time.

I cannot possibly comment on my own approach to managing my kingdom. But I will admit that as the eldest daughter, and with some formidable maternal forebears, it's possible that I am living proof that apples don't fall far from the tree.  Or if I might be so bold, jewels don't drop far from the crown . . . ?

Strong women rule!

Queen Beatrix's abdication has surprised few. It's Dutch pragmatism, palace style. In her speech this evening announcing her decision to down the crown, she reassured the nation that her son had undergone intense preparation for the role, and that he was more than ready to take it on.  Interestingly, she also pointed out that she thought his wife was good to go too.

That's more than you can say for me and my likely successors, so ever the control freak, I have decided that my loyal subjects need me in charge for a little longer. This Dutchess is unceremoniously withdrawing her notice of intention to abdicate.

Disaster averted

One of the great and unexpected joys of moving to the Lowlands has been watching De Jongens make new friends and settle into their new school "home". My happiness has been amplified because I know that a little over a year ago, their greatest fear about leaving the safety of the only house and schoolyard they had ever known was that they would be friendless loners for years to come. 

In their minds, they were certain to be banished to the bleakest corner of the new school's badlands by the sinister playground incumbents.  For De Jongens, the potential for rejection was terrifyingly and understandably real.  Of course, I knew that would never happen ...it wouldn't ....would it?? I willed away the self-doubt, that despised and destructive companion of the inexperienced ex-pat, which never discriminates between adult and child. Our children will make new friends; we are making the right decision; they will benefit from this experience. They will. Our whole family will. Won't they? Won't we? Maybe. I think so. I'm pretty sure. Yes, of course they will. Wait . . . maybe not . . . no . . . possibly . . . probably. Yes . . . yes . . .  yes . . . YES. 

Yes.

De Jongens didn't always share the breezy confidence that Ned and I pretended we felt.

Indeed in the lead up to our arrival in the Lowlands, De Jongens saw the threat of ostracisation in a foreign land as adequate justification for parental torture.  To achieve this they employed a sanity-defying combination of histrionics, verbal abuse, paranoia and the recently-recognised (by me) Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Grote Jongen in particular gave new meaning to the term "Dutch Resistance" by insisting with boring (albeit heartbreaking) regularity that he faced certain social ruin, and therefore would simply not be getting on the plane to "damAmsterdam".

In comparison, Kleine Jongen said nothing as we prepared for the move, stoically internalising his own disaster scenario in a way that his busy and preoccupied parents completely failed to notice at the time. Only months later, from a position of steady self-assuredness did he confess to having been terrified. He learned the hard way that the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the grease. We learned that a hitherto unrecognised level of retrospective parental guilt was possible.

Yet, after only one day at their new school, they both came home with a long list of neo-mates, some of whom were instantly nominated as potential "best friends", while others were simply noted as candidates for future birthday party invitations. During subsequent weeks, the title of New Best Friend was freely awarded and regularly modified, in a delightful display of flexi-camaraderie. New names were bandied about the dinner table each night, with the primary selection criteria appearing to be a willingness to kick a ball during break times and wield a game controller after school. Shared linguistic abilities appeared irrelevant, proving the old adage that all people smile in the same language.

Sometime around the end of week 2, Grote Jongen casually announced that he would quite like to stay until the end of Grade 12, so June 2017, and furthermore he might stay here by himself if we returned to Australia before he was ready to join us.  At that point, Ned Nederlander and I exchanged an incredulous glance, each knowing that the other was weighing up the pros and cons of either running away from home or mounting a legal action against our own children. Both seemed perfectly reasonable and justifiable options.

During the year that has followed, both boys have experienced bouts of excitement, invincibility and exhilaration. In between times they have also endured the usual emotional bumps and stumbles and the ongoing realignment of the playground and sporting arena politics that mark any journey through adolescence. I'm guessing it's the same in any country in the world; resilience training at its best. 

At the same time, and somewhat unexpectedly, Ned and I have endured some resilience training and realignments of our own; some truly tectonic adjustments of our domestic arena as De Jongens have insisted on growing up and becoming the independent souls that we always claimed we wanted them to be. It's been an unexpected challenge, this task of producing grounded young men whilst living on the opposite side of the world to those who know us all best. Emotional bumps and stumbles indeed!

Like De Jongens, Ned and I have relied on friends to help us adjust to our strange new world. Old friends who know us well, and new friends who are quickly learning, have imparted encouragement, advice, sympathy, ridicule, dismissiveness, diversions and wine in just about the right proportions. Thank you all.

Next week, several new families will walk into the foyer at our  school, just as our family did a year ago. No doubt their collective hearts will be thumping, just as ours were. I will be encouraging our boys to seek them out and still their thumping hearts.  

Paying it forward has never seemed so apt.