Jeanne EykingThe Globe and Mail
Jeanne Eyking: Mother. Farmer. Oma. Steady example. Born Feb. 19, 1933, in Alphen en Riel, the Netherlands; died July 8, 2017, in Millville, N.S.; of cancer; aged 84.
It was not my Oma's way to talk about the reason for things. "It is what it is" was one of her mottos; and thus my grandmother, Jeanne Eyking, forged forward as a new woman in a new world.
She was born Adrianna Jeanne Mertens in 1933, in a small laid-back Dutch town in the country far from the ports and mercantile bustle of North Holland. By the accounts of others, her youth – living through the war in European countryside – must have been the hardest of times. But she did not tell stories about the war or share any intimate reflections to help us understand why, as a woman of not yet 20, she left her home to find a new life in Canada, in Cape Breton, N.S. She met a good, hard-working Dutch man, John Eyking; they founded a farm and a family, and they all thrived.
As a child, every summer my sister and I were shuttled from our home in Calgary to our grandparents' farm in Cape Breton. I remember Oma's long breakfast table, which began serving every morning at 6 a.m. A gaggle of Eyking sons and daughters (sometimes with a grandchild in tow) would arrive in turn. And we became close with our Cape Breton family over Oma's eggs. Above the commotion, she was watchfully maternal, and quick to set anyone straight who deserved it.
When I was 16, Oma and Opa agreed to board me for the summer and put me to work on the farm. After a day's work in the barns and fields I would meet her at her farm store for a ride home, followed by a good meal and a hearty sleep. And the next morning, the breakfast table was again set mercilessly on time.
Some evenings, in the heat of a country July, I would share a bonfire and a few beers with my older cousins. Oma turned a blind eye. ("Boys will be boys" was her implicit, but not actually recited motto.) The girls of our clan never enjoyed this freedom, to their dismay. But the next day was beyond merciless: The rapping on your bedroom door at five past 6 was followed by another of her life mottos: "Big boy at night, big boy in the morning!"
Dragging through the workday that would follow, my mind would reel: Rather than permitting her boys the pleasures of youth, perhaps she was protecting her girls from the stupidity of the same. We would never know; it was not her way to talk about the reason for things. Like my cousins before and after me, the farm and our grandparents were at the centre of our coming of age.
We lost Jeanne last July. Her sons and daughters carried her from the family home under a sunlit summer rain. There are more than 60 of us to whom she is Oma. In her life she kept us strong. We are a family coming of age.
Jamison Young is one of Jeanne's grandsons.