Actor and comedian Ruben van der Meer (55) was an au pair in America in his younger years. Van der Meer cared for a baby from an American family for a year. He built such a special bond that he still keeps in touch with the family.
The mother of the house, Evelyn, was born in the Netherlands. She lived in New York and worked for the cosmetics company Estée Lauder at the time. "During the day, I took care of her baby, who was a month old when I arrived," Van der Meer told Beau van Erven Dorens on Thursday evening at Casa di Beau .
Van der Meer spoke of a "quite bizarre time." "I was just with a baby for a year. That baby didn't know anything other than that I was always there. I was more than the mother or father. After a year, you leave. I was sad about that; I missed that feeling of having a baby on your hip. The contact, the fooling around. What must that have been like for that baby? You can't explain it."
Van der Meer was visibly moved when he saw photos from that time. In one of the photos, baby Christof looks smilingly into the camera and places his hand on his au pair's. Pure love, according to Van Erven Dorens.
Van der Meer still keeps in touch with the American family. "Evelyn later said, ' He got your smile .' The baby is now a father of two. She would say, 'He's so sweet to his children, he gets that from you.'"
Life in the United States for Van der Meer also included surfing and skating, especially when he was in Hawaii. Van Erven Dorens: "Yeah, just talk about it, it really does something to you."
Ruben van der Meer himself, together with his wife Sally Lodewijks, had two daughters: Leila and Ella-Mae.
