Yesterday we joined the throngs of feest-beesten (party animals) along the grachtengordel of Amsterdam.  After a full morning and afternoon of roaming around the city with our friends, we said our final farewells to the Watkins family, gave our last hugs, and then rode off to the East waving our last waves over our shoulders.  We biked slowly along the Herengracht, picking our way through solid streams of party-goers on the Raadhuisstraat, the Leidsestraat/Koningsplein, the Vijzelstraat, the Thorbeckeplein, the Utrechtsestraat, along the Amstel, over the Magere Brug, and finally through to home.  The whole way, people were partying, orange-uninhibited, dancing with arms in the air, bumping, grinding, laughing, singing, yelling, and drinking (lots of drinking).  I've never experienced anything quite like it -- trying to push a bakfiets full of three children through all of that.  I think most of the orange masses felt happy -- exhuberant, even -- but to be honest, I felt mostly anxious and afraid.  It felt like just about anything could happen, turning "fun party" into "frantic, frenzied free-for-all."  Probably just the over-anxious projections of a protective papa...

But little did we all know the tragedy that was unfolding in our little country -- not so many kilometers off to the East, in Appeldoorn.  We had heard rumors of it earlier in the afternoon:  news about some accident or attempted bombing of the royal family.  We had even checked the mobile internet accounts (with what spotty access we had on the over-crowded cellular networks of the city), but we could gain little information outside of some story of an out-of-control automobile accident close to the scene of the royal convoy in which a dozen or so people had been injured.  It didn't make much of a dent in our -- or any of Amsterdam's -- Koninginnedag celebrations.  Later that evening, even, I had checked internet news reports and remarked to Marci how odd it was that entire cities (even large, geographicall-removed cities, like Rotterdam) were cutting their Koninginnedag festivities short because of the automobile incident in Appeldoorn.

But it was only this morning -- upon waking up to another beautiful spring day in Amsterdam -- that we really started to grasp what had taken place in our country yesterday, while Amsterdam partied.  Sitting in the Coffee Company here in our neighborhood, I read the newspaper accounts and saw the pictures for myself.  I saw my neighbors similarly absorbed by the newspapers, as they sipped their morning coffees and worked off their hang-overs from yesterday.  I saw it all starting to dawn on us.  The pictures and maps graphing out the whole chain of events seemd to communicate the most:  one picture showing a smashed black Suzuki hatchback cruising through the middle of a blockaded parade route, with human bodies scattered in mid-air yet evidently traveling so fast that none of the bystanders' faces had yet registered a reaction, not even the royal guard who was standing with his face in profile probably only a couple of meters from the carnage directly in front of him... another picture showing crown-prince Willem-Alexander and his wife, Princess Maxima, covering their mouths with a look of absolute horror in their eyes... and the maps showing what had clearly been a premeditated assasination attempt on the royal family which had very nearly "succeeded" in its objectives -- but even in its "failure" had cost the lives of at least five bystanders (and severely wounded a dozen others), as the car had plunged directly through a mass of happy, oblivious, orange-colored people -- much like those of us who had partied in Amsterdam from the Jordaan to the Amstel.  One minute, they had been happy, exhuberant, celebratory (though probably not as drunk as the Amsterdam crowd) -- the next minute, they were lying on the pavement in pools of their own blood.

It's hard to describe.  It's hard to imagine.  But it happened.

I'm not sure how everyone else here in the Netherlands has emotionally responded to the news.  For me, it's not so much about the royal family or the loss of societal "innocence" that comes with a narrowly-foiled assasination attempt (though the newspapers' treatment of the event would definitely make it seem like something akin to the Kennedy assasination, or maybe more like the attempted Reagan assasination in the U.S.A. -- though I can't personally testify to what either of these events would have felt like).  I could certainly understand how an event like this would affect feelings of national pride and concerns about national security.  But to me, the impact of the events in Appeldoorn have more to do with the assault on the average orange-apparelled street-level celebrants -- people like me and my family and friends.  It's scary.  It makes you wonder about the next Koninginnedag.  It makes you wonder if it really might be the "end of an era," as many of the newspapers are suggesting.

I don't know.  I'm hopeful that the Dutch sense of security-and-celebration can reboud and show itself resilient -- even if it takes a couple of years (like the American response to September 11, 2001).  But that all still remains to be seen.

For now, my heart goes out to the families of those who died in Appeldoorn yesterday.  I'm glad that our family ultimately made it home yesterday without incident -- but I realize that it could have just as easily been us... or anyone else celebrating Koninginnedag, for that matter.  Good Lord, what's the world coming to?  Marana tha.  O Lord, come quickly.