The three houseboats float low on the canal near Veenkade street in The Hague. You have to look close because they blend in with the moored sailing boats and covered speed boats and the old fishing boats that barely float with their hulls half-full of rain water. And it doesn’t help that the shadows reaching out from the left bank swallow most of the canal. But there they are. Three houseboats in a row. Catnip for my river-loving soul.

I sit at the table of Sylvia Satter, grandmother to Sharona Verhagen, and aunt to Sylvia Boutier. Three generations of Dutch women who invite an absolute stranger inside their houseboat and offer me tea and snacks.

“We are coming from a family that lives everywhere. They travel in a caravan. They were gypsies.” Sylvia Boutier, 47 years old, has dancing eyes and a face that switches from high comedy to dire tragedy in a glance.

“After a time, they tried to go into a house because my grandma was tired of it — all the traveling, and the kids were growing up. They tried to go into a house but it was not very her thing so she decided to go back in a caravan. But the place they were staying didn’t work. So they went into a houseboat.”

And that was good?

“I have been on the boat 47 years. We still have the gypsy feeling. We are proud of it. Still you are more free here than in a home.”

And how were your treated growing up living in this different way?

“I remember my school they were calling us ‘gypsy, gypsy, gypsy,’ in a bad way. There are some people who don’t accept it. It was not nice. It stopped because there was one guy always bothering me and I hit him. Then it stopped.” Sylvia Boutier says with a shrug.

But her niece, Sharona Verhagen, nearly 25 years younger, had a different experience.

“I don’t have that feeling. I was special in a good way. All the kids in my school wanted to be here. It was a different generation.”

And now?

“I’m a teacher at a preschool and when I tell the kids who are 4-6 years that I’m living on a boat they are like ‘I want to look at that.’ They really want to see it. They think I’m living on a little boat, a little thing.” Sharona Verhagen says this with a warm, kind smile — confirming her choice as a preschool teacher.

They both assured my seasick suspiciousness that there is very little movement on the boat except when there is a large wake from a tourist boat. That the boats are easy to maintain. That the City is a pain and constantly trying to push them out, but they get by. That they feel free and not bothered by people on the land. And that they support and love each other.

Not a bad life.

“We are part of the water.” Sylvia Boutier adds. “When you are on false land, it angers you, because you are on false land, It doesn’t feel so nice as the water.”

Grandma Sylvia Satter joins the conversation.

“I couldn’t breath in a house. I go mad, really. You don’t know how much of richdom that you have living here on a houseboat.”

Richdom? Really? Such as?

She pauses for a moment, laughter in her eyes, then says, “Every year we have a couple of little swans. They knock on the glass. They are telling us: ‘Look I’ve got babies.’”

And all three women smile with delight at the memories.

Where does this all end?

“I will live here until I die,” says Grandma without hesitation.

“But they must live long,” Sylvia Boutier quickly adds, to stop any bad thoughts from my question.

And what do you call houseboats in Dutch?

“Woonark.”

Mmmm . . . literally that means?

“Living on an ark.”

I eventually leave and walk up the dark canal to my landlocked apartment, missing already the up-close smell of the water and the warmth of the three women. Two white swans float quietly past in the shadows. Not a sound as they drift on the canal. Two by two. Looking for an ark made of gopher wood.

Joe