Hi TTRV - Thank you for reading and commenting. I'm delighted to know my story resonated so powerfully for you.

To answer your questions fully would take days and pages upon pages of text. The short answer is, my (now ex) wife was happy to return to the US. My son, now 28, talks about his Dutch experience with joy and longing in equal measure and realizes its value in his life. Me? I'm happy where I'm planted so I reintegrated easily. However, I wish I could have stayed living and working in AMS for far longer. Odd note - I'm in AMS at the moment staying at the house of one of my former trainees and visiting a bunch of the people I once worked alongside.