What do I have in common with the great impressionist artist Vincent Van Gogh? Besides Dutch heritage and a love of color? Something very essential to human existence: needing people.

Last month, I took a trip with my entire family to the Netherlands, the country where my father grew up. We stayed in my father’s hometown, lovely little Heemstede, 21 miles west of Amsterdam. For nearly a week, we marveled at flowers and biked like the locals to the beach at Zandvoort, the ruins of Brederode Castle, and the grocery store. We practiced our Dutch, with varying success, and gathered around the dining room table of our rental home to share meals together.

I knew the trip would be important for our family. As the kids get older, it will be harder and harder to pull our entire gang, plus significant others, together. I relished the opportunity to spend time together and learn new things as a group. And while one of my trip “must dos” was a visit to The Van Gogh Museum in nearby Amsterdam, I could not predict how relevant and meaningful the museum visit would be to our trip.

Vincent’s family

I’ve long held Van Gogh as my favorite artist. I love his use of color and his broad, chunky strokes. His floral still lifes and majestic landscapes interpret nature with a reverence and awe that always inspire my joy.

Colour expresses something in itself.

Vincent Van Gogh

We did NOT bike to Amsterdam – way too much traffic and chaos for that – but once we arrived and stored our snacks and water bottles in the free lockers, we explored a temporary exhibit on the first floor, “Choosing Vincent.”

The exhibition Choosing Vincent: Portrait of a Family History is telling a personal story of doubt, setbacks, pride, and triumph.

The Van Gogh Museum

How did Van Gogh become a world famous artist? Simply put, he could not have done it without his family. Vincent and his brother Theo were very close, and Theo supported Vincent financially and emotionally for years. As a young adult, Vincent struggled to find a vocation that was meaningful to him. Theo gave Vincent the money and physical and emotional space he needed to paint. Even when living with Vincent was hard, and he considered leaving, Theo ultimately chose to stay and support his brother.  After Vincent and Theo’s untimely deaths, they both died young, Theo’s widow Jo vowed to protect the collection of Vincent’s paintings and preserve his legacy. Later, when Jo died, her son Vincent (named after his artist uncle) carried on Van Gogh’s legacy.

Vincent the nephew pursued engineering as a profession and got some space from his uncle’s fame, but ultimately, he recognized the value of his uncle’s work. In the early 20th century, Vincent planned and oversaw the building of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Vincent Van Gogh became famous and continues to be admired today not just because of his artistic vision and talent, but also because of the efforts of his brother, sister in law, and nephew. He would not hold the space in our cultural narrative without the actions of those family members, and his family continues to protect his legacy with involvement in the museum.

Van Gogh’s story is an excellent example of how we need each other.

My family

My visit to my father’s hometown was all the more special because I got to meet a relative there. The day after visiting The Van Gogh Museum, we spent the day in Heemstede with my second cousin, Karel. His mother and my father were first cousins, and I’d heard my father mention him and his parents many times. When I knew I’d be visiting the Netherlands, I reached out to Karel because we are friends on Facebook. [Here is one way Facebook can do good things. Read my piece on another way… also about a cousin of mine, from my mom’s side of the family.]

Karel, a former teacher, has spent lots of time collecting information about our family. The morning of our visit, he pulled out a binder with notes neatly tucked in page protectors – making me think that my propensity for organization and thoroughness is a family trait! He had researched buildings, locations, and personal histories and put together an informative tour. We spent hours walking around Heemstede. Karel and his wife showed us the apartment where my father lived with his mother after the war, some of the buildings that our great grandfather built, including the Town Hall, and Groenendaal Park, where my father played as a child. Sometimes Karel would pause and point to the bricks of a walkway – “Wouter must have walked along this path many times.”

My father had another cousin, Tineke, who came to visit us in the US a few times. She passed away in 2006. Because she was no longer married and had no children, Karel and his wife Ellen took up the burden of settling her affairs and cleaning out her Amsterdam apartment. Because Karel had cleaned out the apartment, he was able to present me with two special gifts. One was a pendant featuring a picture of my grandmother and her twin on one side, and a pressed four leaf clover on the other. The other treasure was a gold medallion, presented by the Dutch government to my paternal great grandfather for his service to as a vet for army horses during the war. Such special mementos of our family history brought tears to my eyes.

At the end of the day, Karel solemnly said, “I’m so glad we got to meet, and I don’t know if we will ever again, but sharing this information about our family is important. I am an only child, your father was an only child, our only other living cousin is an only child. We need to remember our history.” Cue the water works!

My children and I hung on every word Karel shared, and a few of us have already decided to go back to the Netherlands to visit him again. Some of us plan to continue studying Dutch. We don’t want our family history to fade.

Our time with Karel and the stories he shared reinforced the lesson from the day before.

We need each other.

How have you made time to connect with people lately? I’d love to hear about it!

Thanks for getting nerdy with me!