Information About C. Peeterse

Memories

Memories are based on documents, family lore or personal experiences. They give more information about a person, but are not necessarilly complete or correct.

For photos: click on the photo for a larger format; email family@grivel.net for more information about the photo.

I have heard that Grandma was from the Jordaan, the historicly Jewish neighborhood in Amsterdam. I don't know if that’s true. I have also heard that her mother (Catharina Zevenstern) was originally Jewish, although I’ not sure if this is right. I have no idea if they had any problems with that during the war, you would think so, but I never heard anything about it.

Grandma once said that only when she had her fifth child did she get a washing machine. And that was not even a fully automatic washing machine as we have it today, but still a lot easier than washing with a tub. And a lot of other things were of course a lot more laborious in the household back then, in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

My memories of Oma Roos begin when she lived at Azaleastraat in Duivendrecht. I still remember that I stayed there once and got chicken pox. That is of course contagious and I was allowed to stay there. I felt terribly spoiled, I could lie on the couch all day. And they had what I found a very exciting stove in which they put coal. That was much more interesting for a child than an oil heater like we had at home. It was a kind of fire for adults.

Grandma had a bathroom with a “lavet” in Azaleastraat (the Dutch-language Wikipedia explains what this is) that she used to do the laundry, probably this was added to the house later on because lavets were from the 1950s.

In the late 1970s, when we lived in Bovenkarspel, we usuallly went to Duivendrecht two Sundays a month. All my mother’s brothers and sisters were there, everyone brought something to eat, and it was terribly fun. The adults were enjoying themselves and for us children there were enough cousins ​​to play with so that we didn’t have to get bored.

At a certain point my parents felt that they were setting a bad example for the children, and we went to Duivendrecht much less often. Not that they told us about that back then; I only heard that much later.

Grandma was always the life of the party. She was not very fussy with her household, having a the more the merrier attitude. She also had weird expressions, when she went for a drink she would say “quickly my five cents of other thoughts,” or if she havd lost something, she would call on Sint Anthonius: “Holy Anthonius, good friend, make me find so-and-so again.”