The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #66116 Message #1996616
Posted By: Joe Offer
14-Mar-07 - 01:46 PM
Thread Name: origins: The Dutchman (Michael Smith): meanings?
Subject: RE: origins: The Dutchman (Michael Smith): meanings?
I come from an old Detroit family - part of the family goes back to the founding of Detroit by Cadillac in 1701. We moved to Wisconsin in 1958, after my dad was laid off from his auto-industry job, and my folks lived in Wisconsin for 21 years until they moved to Florida. They always kept their ties to Detroit, and we went back to Detroit every year for vacation.
My mom died of dementia in December, 2004, at the age of 82. When she got dementia, she went back in her mind to the Detroit of the 1940's and 1950's, and that's where she lived for the last years of her life - in a fantasy world of Detroit, with her parents still alive and real for her. The only way for me to talk with her, was for me to enter that fantasy, and I found out a lot about my own early life by entering that fantasy with her.
I don't think "The Dutchman" physically lived in the Netherlands any more. Maybe he lived in Florida, like my mom did - but in his mind, he was in the Netherlands, and Margaret was wise enough to enter that memory with him.
-Joe-