21 - Betsy
Laura: Okay, we’re recording. Okay. Betsy was my first Jansma baby. Blonde, blue-eyed.
She had to take a lot of ribbing from her brothers and sisters who loved to remind her by asking in front of people, Mom, who was your biggest baby?
We moved to our Dunham house soon after she was born, and the timing couldn’t have been better. Grandpa Janssen lived just three houses over, and he really was delighted when we brought our Kleine Meische. I think that’s a Dutch word for a little girl.
We got hold of a little Dutch dress and a little lace cap. And Aunt Catherine gave us a Dutch lace apron and let Betsy hold a little antique change purse on a chain for a group of pictures that we took. And we took them in our tulip garden.
So we sent some to New Jersey. And of course, Betsy’s great-grandfather, who by now was almost 100 years old, show these pictures to everybody who came to his house.
I remember fondly a Christmas program at Baxter Christian when she was in kindergarten. I climbed her golden hair into a top knot and she wore a black velvet dress with a big lace collar. A lady came up to me and said, that must be Betsy. My son is nuts about her and I just had to see what she looked like.
I wish I knew now who that son was. Although Betsy looked very Dutch on the outside, I must confess she was not known for being Dutch clean.
I had to inspect her room often and always. I’d come up on a private load of socks, underwear, rotten apples, hard sandwiches under her bed. He tried to make amends by scouring a bathroom or sweeping the garage to please me.
I was on her case more than I want to remember. Betsy was always telling stories of friends in need. He was special friends with the flowers girls. And when she invited them out to stay overnight in Caledonia, her brothers played the part of wild bears and scared these girls half out of their wits as they tried to sleep in a tent camper.
Betsy won a game for Mr. Vanderkamp once. And so he drove her home and made no bones about the fact that he thought I should have been there to see it. I should have. One of my greatest regrets in all the mistakes in raising my kids was not to let Betsy play high school basketball when she made the team which was no small feat. It was a case of transportation issues and waiting till practice was over at six after school was just not practical with all the other kids in the car.
Betsy was the girl who loved catechism weekends. She always made new friends, especially among the adults. I remember being amazed that she had fun skating and snowballing with Phil Lucas. Betsy was giver right from the start. She’d loan her best clothes, share her lunch treats, offered to do other people’s household duties. She had a sweet singing voice and she often sang in bed when she was little.
I guess that’s why she was chosen for a big part in a musical when she was at Oakdale. However, the night before the show, while at a Calvinist party at church, a girl slammed a heavy door on her finger. So she and I spent most of that night at Blodgett Hospital. She needed a phone specialist to put the finger together and still has a deformed finger to remind her of that day. But the show had to go on and it did. So as Mr. Belsma stood in front of the curtain explaining that one of the lead players had spent most of the night before at the hospital, Betsy was waving a finger in traction at the audience right behind him. He didn’t know it.
Betsy was in Oakdale’s Madrigals, a group that made beautiful music, and she also sang in choirs at Christian High. And she loved Don Scott dearly. She always laughed and cried easily. I know she got that from me. Her blue eyes make me think of my father and his father, both unmistakably Friesian. Betsy will certainly carry on the Dutch tradition.
Jonathan: Now, having written all that about her memories, I have to look back now and think of how quickly and unexplainably we lost her.
Laura: I bought a condominium, and she moved in there. And it was right behind Christian High. was in a very nice, safe neighborhood. And her only son, Jonathan, by then was living in Traverse City and had his own family. So he and I were totally surprised when we could not reach Betsy for three days and sent Heidi over to see where she was. And they found her on the floor at the bottom of a the staircase.
The description medically of her death had something to do with respiratory issues, but I’m not sure the details of that.
Jonathan: However, the year before she died, Betsy became very committed to Shawnee Park Christian Reformed Church.
She made profession of faith for a second time there and she had a number of counseling sessions with the pastor.
She also, every Sunday, picked up a handicapped lady at the Holland home to bring her to church. So when we found Betsy was dead, I called the pastor. He cried on the phone and he said, you know, I have had so many intense discussions and visits with Betsy in the last year. She certainly made a commitment to her Lord and to our church and to the lady who she made sure got to church every week. So that’s the last memory I have of Betsy and it’s a precious one.
That’s it.