Echoes Without End

Prologue

I recently moved to Santa Cruz from the North Bay in California. Instead of a three-and-a-half-hour drive, I now live eight minutes from my grandchildren and a five-minute walk from the ocean.

My youngest granddaughter, Remy, was eager to spend the night at my place. After exploring every nook and cranny of my tiny studio—drawers, closets, baskets—we sat down for brunch.

She looks around at the blue-and-white vases and the other objects arranged on shelves and surfaces and says, matter-of-factly, “You have a lot of stuff in here. Where did you get all of it?”

I chuckle. “It is a bit full, isn’t it?”

She nods, accepting this.

“Most of the blue and white things are from my mother and grandmother. It’s called Delfts Blauw—traditional porcelain made in Holland. The puppet over there”—I point to the bookcase, where I’ve left one shelf for décor rather than books—“is from Indonesia, where my father is from.” I gesture toward the top of the Murphy bed. “And those wooden carvings are Javanese. They’re also from Indonesia.”

Remy takes this in quietly, her eyes moving where I point.

My grandchildren have never been there, but they are very aware of the Netherlands, since I’ve been visiting for four to eight weeks almost every year to be with my mother, friends, and extended family. My mother has since passed, but because the country feels like a second home, I intend to keep returning.

Remy looks around once more and then asks, “What about all that Beatles stuff?”

“Well,” I say, “because I’m such a Beatle fan, people started giving me Beatles things as gifts.” I pause. “Even your brother gave me a Yellow Submarine Lego set that we built together.”

That seems to satisfy her. We return to our breakfast of poffertjes—small, fluffy Dutch pancakes made from a yeast-leavened batter. I serve them with whipped cream, fresh berries, and powdered sugar. It’s one of the few things my grandchildren reliably like to eat, and over time poffertjes, along with Dutch pancakes, have become a tradition. All three of them have made them with me.

A month or so later, Remy is over again. We’re making wind chimes from clam shells we collected on the beach. She works carefully, fully absorbed, but every so often she pauses to talk.

“My art teacher taught us about Delfts Blauw,” she says, then explains how it’s made.

“Did your teacher also mention,” I ask, “that when the Dutch traveled to China about four hundred years ago, they were so taken with the blue porcelain there that they began copying it? And that four hundred years later, they’re still making it?”

She thinks about this, her hands stilling for a moment before returning to the shells.

My grandchildren are half Chinese. Blue and white did not begin in Holland.

The objects around us—porcelain, carvings, puppets, shells—have traveled across centuries and oceans, passed from hand to hand, generation to generation. Some arrived by choice, others by force. Some carry beauty; others carry what was silenced. Not all of their stories are visible, but they are here nonetheless, quietly shaping what is remembered, what is inherited, what is carried forward, and what waits to be understood.

©2026 Astrid Berg