Ode to Hendrina Rudolphina (Henny) Cheu Choi | She expressed her love in worries and cares

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When I think of my mother, many images and words come to mind

We lived on Verlengde Weidestraat in Paramaribo, Suriname.
I was 10 months old when we moved into the house my parents had built.
We lived near swimming pool Parima, where I learned to swim. 
Ten lessons and then I was literally thrown into the deep end by my brothers saying, ‘Swim!’ And I swam and also passed two diplomas.
My mother had allowed me to take ten more lessons....

A memory in those days is my mother standing in front of the cooker at five in the morning, stirring in pots and pans, to prepare the food that my father takes with him to Paranam, where he works, after his retirement as a policeman.
At seven, she sits at our big dining table where she spreads and packs sandwiches for her youngest three children, including me.
Always busy for the sake of husband and children.

Henny was born in 1910, married in 1933 to Lothar Henri de Vries and mother of eight children, the eldest and youngest of whom were girls.
The age difference between the girls is 16 years.
We had a busy household, of which my mother was the hub.
I don't know other than that everything ran like clockwork.
My brothers all had chores and I was occasionally shouted at; just wait! When you are twelve, you can take over all our tasks, because then we will be grown up and out of the house.

What I enjoyed immensely were stories from the past.
Stories from when my older brothers and sister were growing up and I was not yet born.
I liked to sit with her when she played solitaire, or puzzled, with country & western music playing softly on the radio in the background.
Those were the quiet hours, before I went to bed.
Then I would ask and she would tell.

Sometimes she didn't go to bed until midnight because she couldn't stop reading, but the alarm went off again at five the next day.

My grandparents, and later my grandmother alone, lived on Dr Nassylaan, with their children.
The stories from those days were also told to me, when I was asking again.
Those stories were about the family she was born into as the eldest girl, with an older brother.
That older brother went to America young to work and live there.
He later, emigrated from America to Venezuela, got married and started a family there.

My mother and two sisters younger than her, were the brunt. 
They remitted all their wages to my grandmother for the benefit of the younger children.
In fact, my grandfather was a dreamer. Procreated nine children with my grandmother and then, still married, four children with a friend of one of his younger daughters.
My mother was not bitter about this.
On the contrary, she loved her father. He was always considerate and kind, she said.

My mother worked in nursing.
Until her fourth child, she worked at Lands Hospital. 
Made all the crosses and when she stopped working, she was head nurse.

We continued to live on Verlengde Weidestraat, but by now the house was too big, for the three of us.
My father sold the house and bought a smaller house on Elisabethshof. 

What my mother never learned, from her mother is hugging, touching and expressing her love in words.
In the Netherlands, I had a period when I could only focus on the missed hugs and the missed words.
I distanced myself from home and had to learn to find my own way.
Then there came a time, when I realised how important my mother has been in my life.
I realised that we did not know abundance, but that when Mum went to town, I knew there would be a book, or a piece of cloth, or new underwear on my bed.
By this she was saying, I later understood, I love you and I am thinking of you.
She expressed her love in worries and cares.
It took me time to let this knowledge sink in.

My mother died at 90, almost 91 years old.
Two months before her death, I spent 10 days with her in Suriname and had her to myself for a while again.
My sister was visiting her children in the Netherlands and my brothers had their families.
We talked, I hugged and was cuddled.
And it was good.

I can remember everything. Every reaction, everything she ever told, said or did.
I repeat passing everything on to husband, son and grandson....
It always starts with: ‘Do you know what my mother would have said/done?’