Jenna Nienhuis

“I’m going to charge you for making photos of my restaurant,” smirks a Dutchman as he pushes the service door open and walks onto the sidewalk. A waft of coffee beans and the sound of clanking dishes escape narrowly with him. He is outfitted in all black except for the colorful sleeve tattoo running up his left arm. 

My sister, Michelle (Meesh), and I stand in front of this dubious man after our now embarrassing photo shoot under this cafe sign, a bit stunned by his blunt demeanor. She has just returned from a run, beautifully dewy faced and then down-right sweaty in other parts from the humid summer heat. And I am returning from a walk; jet lagged with curly hair abandoning all structure against the moisture in the air. We had planned to meet in the middle of town, and this cafe stopped us both in our tracks. 

Just Jeff read the sign in tall black lettering. 

“Jeff was our dad’s name,” I blurt out, diving into a desperate attempt at overexplaining myself, the American-ness also dripping off both of us.  Bikes whir past us in an organized blur. Even after 6 years, it still stings using my dad’s name in past tense. 

He lights a cigarette and brings it discreetly up to his pursed lips, like I’m sure he’d done thousands of times before. He brushes his other hand through loose strands of sandy-colored hair that had missed his ponytail and exhales the smoke away from our direction.  

“Are you Jeff?” Meesh asks, even though we already know the answer.  He nods, taking another drag from his cigarette as my eyes traveled to the tiny sterling silver knife studs in his ears. 

Forested stretches of land and wild dunes surround Soest, outside the province of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Pronounced “soost,” not “soast”, like toast, as I had been saying. A charming street of shops and restaurants runs through its center. 

Meesh had come to join my husband and our three kids for a brief portion of our European family vacation. She is the youngest out of my three sisters and I am the upper middle. While traveling together as sisters is familiar and nostalgic, it is strange to be on a trip without having first excitedly run through every detail of the itinerary with my dad’s travel-loving curiosity and interest.

In our young adult years, my dad took Meesh and I to Prague on a business incentive trip, where we ate dinners in caves and my dad had to stop us from inappropriate laughter in a museum like we were kids again (he was laughing with us on the inside). I am thoroughly enjoying this moment of the three of us traveling “together” again. 

“It’s just Jeff, you know? Humble and not showy,” he explains. “We open in an hour.” Meesh and I glance at each other and smile. 

At my dad’s funeral, the priest made a comment that my dad “lived life out loud”. He wasn’t a life of the party guy and certainly not one for extra attention. But when the priest looked out into the absolute packed church (joking that he wished he could draw this kind of crowd for mass), my dad’s impact over his 60 years of life radiated. 

“The font of my logo is inspired by Led Zeppelin,” Jeff divulges without prompting. Meesh and I laugh in unison—remembering the British band rocking intermittently on the car radio as kids. My dad would reminisce about high school dances and how he prayed to not get stuck dancing with someone he didn’t like through all eight minutes of “Stairway to Heaven”.  

We leave to change at our Airbnb and then arrive back around 10 am, walking up to the register. “We’re back!” We smile brightly as he greets us. “I can see that,” he laughs with an air of endearing sarcasm. 

Inside, there are green seating nooks near the window with golden light fixtures and floral wallpaper.  Jeff makes me a golden milk with half a cup of cloud-like cream, and Meesh a frothy cappuccino. He later delivers us homemade bread on the house.  

We leave on a high with a sign from dad, followed by the subsequent sadness that it implies. 

“Thank you, Jeff,” I say aloud. Thank you, Dad.