Excerpt from Wings of Change  Part of the first chapter      The road to the airport was laid with bricks that made the tires on my father’s car sing. Gijs was at the wheel and my father, too emotional to drive, was in the passenger seat. Gijs and I were on our way to America. I dreaded it. Emigration was not a move I had ever imagined for myself.      When we bumped over a railroad crossing, I felt a sudden movement inside, as if my baby were making a somersault, knocking its feet against the walls that contained it. I tried not to show how this jerking unnerved me, but my mother was alert and her hand took hold of mine. I would recognize that hand, its shape, its lines, and its energy anywhere in the world without seeing it. I knew the touch and the unspoken words. It had seen me through bombardments, near-fatal blood poisoning, and childhood fears.      I leaned back into the plush upholstery and looked out over the meadows with the outlines of villages on the horizon. The familiar voices in the car, the sight of people in woolen overcoats pushing hard on the pedals of their bikes against the ever-present wind, these sounds and sights I would have taken for granted any other day. A sense of loss and emptiness pervaded my mood. Would I remember, once we’d made it to the other side, the everyday details of the life I’d known as a child, like the taste of a shiny raw herring; or the smell of a fertilized pasture on a damp winter morning, or the boisterous sounds of the farmers’ market down the street; or the flat landscape under inky clouds that restlessly moved from horizon to horizon, letting the sun through only in patches? Close Window