Katje and her Kids

When my oldest son was a toddler I used to take him to a woman who watched children instead of a random but licensed daycare center. This was in the late 1980s. The woman was named Katje, about 50 years old, and she'd originally come from the Netherlands. She and her husband, Derek, were two of the sweetest and kindest people I had ever known, and my wife and I never worried that our son and later our twins were not safe in their care.

I remember a large play area with a TV, and outside an enclosed deck where the kids played during warmer weather. The TV normally would be tuned to Sesame Street for the kids each morning when I dropped my son off. Toys and games were carefully scattered about among half a dozen toddlers, some completely engrossed in their toy, one or two staring at the TV or alternately staring at the TV and playing with their toy. It was a bright colorful but not especially noisy scene for a group of very small kids. Katje's mother Ooma was usually at the house to help, and the entire atmosphere for a daycare place felt easy and relaxed. I often lingered for five or ten minutes in the morning to talk with the two of them. Sometimes I would join them for a cup of coffee.

You might be thinking that under such circumstances nothing could go wrong, and you'd be right at least as far as the children were concerned. No accidents or mistakes, no arguments between parents and Katje, at least to my knowledge. I knew that Katje was a grandmother, and occasionally I would see her daughter in the morning when she dropped off the grandchild.

I normally entered the house through a side door that opened onto the kitchen which adjoined the playroom where Katje watched the babies and toddlers. To my right was a short hallway with family pictures hanging on its wall. I recognized high school pictures and college pictures. I had seen one of the sons because he was living at home and attended Drexel, but there was another son, about age 18, whom I hadn't seen, probably at high school. My gaze would often linger on his face.

One morning, I'd been preparing to leave but paused a moment to stare at the family portraits because Katje had been telling me about her daughter.

"You have three children," I remarked.

Katje looked shocked. "Two," she said.

"Really. I thought you had three for some reason."

"No, just two---Marie and Geoffrey."

"Then who is this?" I asked, pointing.

Katje stepped out of the kitchen and into the hallway. She immediately caught my faux pas.

"Oh, that was James," she told me. "He was killed in a car accident when he was 18 years old."

I was stunned and embarrassed, ashamed of my curiosity, of my being nosy. In all the mornings I'd taken my son to her house, I had never once seen this young man, this son, and Katje had never mentioned him. I felt as if I hadn't been paying close enough attention. I said I was sorry, maybe profoundly sorry. An awkward moment.

"Was it his fault?"

The question instantly struck me as stupid and irrelevant as soon at it escaped my lips, but Katje didn't appear angry with me or hurt.

"It was his fault," she said with a stern nod of her head. "He drove 100 miles an hour on Townsend Boulevard where the speed limit is 35. He was alone. He drove the car into a tree, and a telephone pole, and part of someone's fence. Thank God no one else was hurt . . . only him. . . ."

Who knows what may have happened that evening causing James to drive so crazily fast that he ended his short life? Had he been drinking? Did he often race his car at such high speeds? Did he have emotional problems or problems at school? Had there been an argument with his parents beforehand? Or a fight with his girlfriend? The information would not be forthcoming for such a private matter. Previously there had been an unconscious riddle or puzzle whenever I'd looked at James's face, but now all I could do was note the face, the expression, and be keenly aware of the loss, the son's and brother's life cut short within the same year as his high school portrait.

*

Each year in early December Katje and Derek would have a Christmas party for the kids she took care of and their parents---a near perfect holiday mood for several reasons, one of them being that the parents had a chance to talk and interact and possibly make friends outside of the routine of passing one another when dropping off or picking up their kids. Katje's daughter and grandchild were also at the party and there was a lovely sense of family. Katje had Christmas presents for all her infants and toddlers arranged neatly beneath the Christmas tree, and she also had small gifts for the parents. She and Derek had a table spread with an ample amount and variety of holiday food and beer and wine. Christmas music played on the stereo and a fire blazed and crackled in the fireplace.