Tulips
By: susan peterson stamis
Tags: foreign service, pregnancy, state department, teacher, tulips
Category: Uncategorized
I’m 60 now, and I’ve finally decided to digitally scan the 1000’s of family slides and snapshots my dear shutterbug of a father left for posterity.
One picture taken in 1950 is of a tulip garden in Holland. When I was in grade school in Guatemala, a teacher asked the class if anyone had been to Holland, and I enthusiastically raised my hand and declared, “Yes! But I was still in my mother’s stomach.” The teacher laughed along with my classmates, but I had seen the picture of my pregnant mother standing among the tulips, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to say that I had been there also.
Maybe my earliest memory then, really is of tulip gardens in Holland. Who’s to say that as I bobbled snugly in that warm saline bath, I didn’t sense that glorious sea of color, retaining the memory in some primal and inexplicable way?
So, “Laugh all you want, Mr. Teacher-Whose-Name-I-Can’t-Remember. I’ve been to Holland.”
2 comments on “Tulips”
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About Me
My father was a Consular Officer in the United States Foreign Service. He was first stationed in post World War II Berlin, where I was born in 1950. Subsequently, we lived in the Philippines; Jamaica; Guatemala; Washington, DC; Greece; Ceylon and Mexico; visiting many places in between. I was reared by my parents and nurtured by the various amahs, nannies, and housemaids who, every two years or so, entered and exited my little life.
I was educated in American Schools in “foreign lands,” but the most fascinating classrooms were the exotic locales where we lived, and the most inspiring teachers were the colorful people of those exotic and ancient cultures.
The bi-annual “home leaves” which my family spent at my grandparents’ homes in Los Angeles, California provided a sense of constancy to our nomadic lifestyle. My many aunts, uncles and cousins lived there and I eagerly looked forward to those vacations. We were 1st and 2nd generation Greek Americans (all 4 of my grandparents had immigrated at the turn of the century), and thus had foreignness stamped onto us even though we were Americans.
Two of my father’s siblings were also in the diplomatic service, and we world-traveling cousins were a source of endless curiosity to our domestic counterparts when we came home speaking English with unusual accents, reducing the statesiders to hysterics.With his various cameras, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, 16 millimeter, Super 8 and Polaroid, my father rarely lost an opportunity to document the events unfolding around us. After years of waiting patiently in boxes under the stairs, these photographic records are now fulfilling their purpose as mnemonic retrievals of my little life.
Mnemonic Retrievals 
I am SO excited that you are creating a virtual journal filled with your beautiful memoirs of your sweet little life!
Hey cuz,
Will look forwards to the updates!
xoxo
jess