“Thank you, but no thank you,” my mother politely refuses, slightly embarrassed. “But we would be delighted to see the room.”
Our group crowds into the small, mirrored elevator. Everyone is constantly taking pictures with their phones. The manager opens the door to the suite and suddenly the breath is knocked out of me. I feel Pasje in this room! Odd. I have never met him. Then again, perhaps I have met him: through my mother’s descriptions, through the way my mother’s family and friends still talk about him, through the pictures I have seen. Through Turbulence. I look at my mother and see she feels the same presence.
She escapes out onto the balcony where she took the last-ever picture of Pasje. I watch her from inside, from the room where she spent her last night before the crash, the final night of her “old life.” I join her on the balcony, and she hugs me tightly.
I think of the question a journalist asked me: how did it make me feel to honor the life of the man who, had he not died, would have prevented the union of my parents? I do not think of Pasje that way. He is permanently on one side of the divide that the crash created in my mother’s life. I know how much she loved him, and from what I know of him, I think he was worthy of her love. But I also know the love my parents had for each other. For many years, they complemented each other perfectly, in work and in life. They were the most dynamic of all duos. Their love led to my existence, and that of the most important person in the world to me: my brother, the person who taught me how to see past limits.
My mother has had two big loves. On the surface, it looks like she has lost both of them, one through death, one through life (my parents are unfortunately now divorced). But I believe my mother never really lost them; love knows no labels or limits. Pasje has stayed with her. And Jaime is my father, my brother’s father. They are still united in their love for us.
Ripples
The accident happened more than twenty years ago, and it may have been a stone in the water, but stones create waves. The waves of the crash in 1992 have had an impact on Vietnamese families, the families of Willem, Jack Emmerson, the Swedes who cremated Pasje, and on both my mother and her family.
Eventually waves turn into ripples. The ripples of the crash now affect the next generation, daughters unborn at the time, daughters who would not be alive without the stone, daughters of Vietnam Airlines crew members, the granddaughter of Jack Emmerson, who reached out to my mother through e-mail. She was reading the book to her grandfather. This summer in Vietnam, I saw how Turbulence brings the ripple effect to its readers. It disseminates the message of one event, one stone. The ripples connect us.
Mr. Tan has linked me to his daughter on Facebook, and as he put it when I met him, “No more past; the future.” Life goes on; generations keep being born. Although the event, the stone, becomes a distant memory, its lessons keep living. We must take what we have learned and share it. Internalize the past and move forward with the ripples as they expand.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For me, creation is an exchange with other people. It is in the air, like a third entity. Like a tennis ball, hanging in the air between two players, as Joseph Campbell said. This is the 189th version of Turbulence, and I am happy to say that every single version has been an interactive and collective effort. Every word, idea, and clipped sentence has been discussed with or reviewed by others: my generous friends around the world in different time zones, who, in endless phone conversations and email exchanges, had the stamina to keep on chewing on its content and discussing life’s big questions. And when they woke up to the latest version in their mailbox, they read it, again. And again.
Without the daily presence of Julie Roelvink, Turbulence would not have existed at all. For a whole long year, I would write two pages in the very early morning, send them off to her in London, and get them back with cheer, red edits, and suggestions. I would work them out in the afternoon and send the result back at the end of my night. The next day, with comforting predictability, I would find an edited version in my mailbox. She virtually held my hand throughout the whole process.
As always, everything I do with more than a little help from my friends: the biggest direct efforts were made by Dorine Hermans and Caroline Noordhoek Hegt, but the endless philosophizing with Jane Bischoff, Rosario Conde, and Susan Le Picart also shaped the book’s content
Michiel Hupkes, Costas Michalopoulos, Caroline Binsbergen, Inge Jonckheer, Regina Monticone, and Greg Alessandro were the emergency editors. Many thanks to the interactive readers: Christina Heinl, Ian Fentan, Ray van Mourik, Reinout Albers, Connie Lippert, Eveline Herfkens, Laetitia Lindgren, Doug and Monica Taylor, Ann Keller, Noami Baeza, Titia Deurvorst, Annetine Gelijns, and the whole of Jackson Taylor’s writing group, from whom I have learned so much more than writing. Thanks to Sue Rosen for referring me to Jackson. Thanks to Michael Denneny not only for his edits, but also for believing in me as a writer and putting the publishing world in perspective. When publishers declined to include Maxi because “autism was a turn off,” I decided to self-publish with the help of Marc Corsey of Eclipse Publishing Services, Lisa Weinert, and Tyson Cornell, Archer.
Turbulence was published with success in Vietnam. Thanks to Meulenhoff /De Boekerij. Turbulence became a bestseller in The Netherlands, which in turn secured French, German, and Portuguese editions. I was delighted when Regan Arts acquired and produced this version with the tireless aid of Zainab Choudhry. I have admired Judith Regan ever since she interviewed Joosje and me on her radio show. Also thanks to Kathryn Huck and F. Mauricio Artavia.
I thank all the contributors who wrote their perspectives. And Jack, who guided me up the mountain with our many phone conversations and emails. When I visited him in Glasgow, he was waiting at the train station, holding a picture of me attached to a stick.
I also want to say thanks to and for Joosje Lupa: for being a sixteen-, seventeen-, and eighteen-year-old daughter who is willing and grown-up enough to edit her own mother’s life.
And thanks to all the other posses I could not live and love without, in any dimension. Both earthly and ethereal.
Author photograph by Christina Paige
Born in Venezuela to a Dutch family, ANNETTE HERFKENS was raised in the Netherlands and studied law at Leiden University. She became the first female executive to be sent abroad by a Dutch bank and has continued to make great strides in the male-dominated industry of banking throughout her career. After the plane crash, she returned to work and was soon appointed to Santander’s office in New York City as one of the few female bond traders on Wall Street. As an accidental expert in the field of loss, Annette writes and speaks about the experience of surviving the plane crash, losing her fiancé, and raising her autistic son. Just as in the jungle, she focuses on the beauty of what she has, not what she has lost. Annette lives a hopeful life in New York City with her family.
65 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10012
Copyright © 2016 by Annette Herfkens
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Regan Arts Subsidiary Rights Department, 65 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012.
First Regan Arts hardcover edition, October 2016
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016939706
ISBN 978-1-68245-042-0
ISBN 978-1-68245-043-7 (ebook)
Interior design by Nancy Singer
Cover design by Richard Ljoenes
Jacket design by Richard Ljoenes
Jacket artwork by Jim Darling
All photos courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.
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