The Odd Comfort of The Comfort Bird

Island of Terschelling, the Netherlands

I've been to Terschelling, a North Sea island just off the Dutch coast--well, the Frisian coast. I've biked down roads my Schaap ancestors must have traveled themselves, walked on beaches they may must have known. I have a picture of a house that family lore claims was once upon a time theirs.

But I don't know how they lived before they came to America in 1868. I know they weren't rich. I know they held exacting definitions of what the Christian faith required of themselves and others. I understand those definitions put them to the right of many of their neighbors. I'm quite sure they left "the old country" for reasons they would have noted to be, first of all, religious. But I know the were poor, and they'd lost three children.

What I know and what I don't may explain why I'm finding The Comfort Bird, by Hylke Speerstra, so fascinating--more than that, so enlightening, so moving. I'm not finished, but the outline of the story is clear: two families, one of which immigrates to America, are, strangely enough, brought together by war, the Second World War, when their children as fighting men meet somewhere, somehow, on opposite sides.

Dutch immigrants

I could, this morning, bike up the road to the township cemetery and find most of the characters' names. In a profound and even a little unsettling way, The Comfort Bird is my story. My Schaap ancestors went to South Dakota too, believing it to be the promised land . My Schaap ancestors left there too, when once again grinding poverty left them no choice. In the last twenty years, I've read a half dozen library shelves of books about 19th century life in the Upper Midwest, Giants in the Earth to Black Elk Speaks, but The Comfort Bird is something new. 

And yet it isn't. 

In Friesland, when prices drop beneath the costs of production, Ytske bakes bread and takes to the streets to sell it. But she's not alone. "In one year, the number of bread peddlers has doubled. Besides, it seems as if there are only Dutch Reformed bakery goods in her basket. Her honey bread may be the best, but the Secessionists, the Mennonites, the Catholics stick to their own tastes."

Her husband sees no way out if their economic place, but Ytske is struck with the possibilities of America. When he tells her joyously that the cow will calve, Ytske tells him it's the "the golden calf" because she won't believe God wants them to stay. God wants them to go. She wakes her husband in the middle of the night with a dream:

Through Him, I was shown a moment ago the path to a world without troubles. I have to take Sibbele aside again and present my vision of this night; this time I'll get him to go as our pioneer to America, like the oldest son of King Hezekiah who was sent ahead to the other side of the ocean.

Her husband won't hear of immigration. He says he has a horrible fear of the ocean voyage. She says, "You have to trust me and Lord, Hizkia."

It's Ytske's burning desire to reach a place that offers unending possibilities that eventually wins, and the family moves to America, to South Dakota, where, once again, grinding poverty greets them. 

Just about every last newscast today will feature a version of that same story, that very same story. 

It's easy to forget--and easier not to know--that the story is my story too.
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The Comfort Bird was translated from the Frisian language into English by Henry Baron.