by Brendan Geary

Robert Govaerts’ autobiography, Along the side of the pond: Memoirs of a Belgian Contemplative is a book of two halves. In his introduction he writes that he had intended to write an account of his mother’s life, but that he then decided to write a personal autobiography which would incorporate what he had come to learn about the life of his mother and his family history. Regarding his mother, he wrote, ‘If I do not tell her story, who will tell it.

His mother, Carolijn Van Kesbeeck, was born in 1930. Her mother was not married, and this became a source of hurt in her life and shame for her brother, Eugene. Carolijn married Alfons Govaerts in 1950 and they had a son, Walter, and then a daughter, Jenny. Robert was born in 1966, but his father wanted no more than one child, and the arrival of a third child appears to have been one of the factors that led to Alfons leaving Carolijn. Robert never saw his father again. Carolijn entered a relationship with Franz Peeters, a retired policeman who was a neighbour, and they married in 1971. Sadly, this led to a rupture in Franz’s family and some of his adult children broke off contact with him. Some managed to repair the rift in the relationship in later years.