Dear Mies and Toon
I am writing this on the evening of your birthday, to send you my very best wishes together with the hope that you will be able to celebrate it for many more years to come in health and happiness, and in the company of your children and grandchildren. Let us hope that next year I will also be able to be there, I would so love to be able to do that, even if it should turn out to be the last time for me. At the moment I am drinking your health with a glass of Rum, and I have been with you in my thoughts all day.
This morning I took Communion and had a Mass said for the well being of you all. How wonderful it must have been for you to be able to celebrate surrounded by all those you hold dear. I hope you will all be spared for the rest of the war, and that we will be able to see one another before long.
With the butter coupons we get half butter and half margarine, that is if you can call it butter, and we have already been told that eventually it will be just lard. But most people here prefer to eat their bread dry rather than with that horrible stuff. Only on Sundays do we get meat (100 gms), that has to last us for the whole week, but Och! one can get used to anything in time. Fortunately I get a bottle of Yogurt every other day and also an orange, which I appreciate very much. I provide my own bread, because the bread here doesn't agree with me. Otherwise I have nothing to complain about, the Sisters here do everything they can to provide us with the best possible meals and also try and see we get a certain amount of variety. But then if things are not there, then they cannot give them to us.
I do have quite a few activities that I am involved in here, which help to take my mind off things. I play bridge at least three times a week, and then I spend an afternoon with Mrs v.d. Hielen and her daughter; very pleasant. For the rest I read a lot, I have never got through so many books as now.
We have to keep on wearing all our underclothes until they are old and worn out and literally threadbare, as mending materials are impossible to come by. I hope they will last until I can buy more when I visit you. Since the start of the war I have hardly bought anything, and I am now beginning to need things very badly. We cannot get anything, or buy anything of course, and never have I had to walk around with stockings that have so many mended holes, and that are odd.
Now dear Mies and Toon, I wish you all the best and good health, and hope that we will be able to see each other very soon, and find each other well and healthy.
Is Tonny a children's nurse now? and has Miesje finished her training? How fortunate that Robert is not old enough to be sent to the front. How are the others? Hans and his wife, Peggy and Ronny? I hope all well with all my heart.
With a treble birthday kiss and much love, also for Toon
from your loving Mother
