Chapter 1. A big step
It seemed to be so simple, but it wasn't. Margreet had decided to pack everything she thought she would need in a month into two suitcases. But what should she take with her, and what not?
Yesterday she had received an email from Pension Bloemenhof, informing her that she had been hired for a trial month. Margreet had been as happy as a child. Not so much because of the kind of work, it was yet to be seen if she would like it, but because she could get away, away from her parental home where she'd always felt she somehow didn't fit in. She had walked on tiptoe, figuratively, to not stand out. She had tried terribly hard to do everything perfectly so that she might fit in after all. But apparently it had never been good enough.
At primary school, learning was still going well, but at secondary school it went wrong. She did more than she could, but it felt like she was missing out on everything. She felt rushed, and a failure. It wasn't about her mind, she was smart enough, but about the pressure from her parents to perform way beyond her capabilities, which had killed her.
And she had known intuitively: I have to get out of here, away from my parental home, away from… well, of what? It was still hard to describe, and especially hard to accept that her childhood hadn't been what it should have been, to accept that she hadn't gotten what she needed to be herself, to develop herself into who she really was.
The therapist she'd been with, had called it the burden of intimidation and manipulation, the burden of control. Margreet had recognized it, nodded vigorously as the therapist explained it, but she couldn't turn the tide, couldn't stand it she wasn't able to live the way she wanted to live.
Wasn't that another problem? The problem that she didn't really know how she wanted to live, that she didn't know what life was? That she didn't know who she really was and what she really liked? It had upset her for a long time. She'd been torn between possibilities, but whatever she'd come up with, for and about herself, she couldn't figure it out. In the end she had come to only one conclusion: she wasn’t able to see herself through her own eyes. She looked, as she always had done, through her parents' eyes, and felt that whatever came to her mind would be disapproved by them. How on earth was she supposed to get off this treadmill?
It felt like a first, big step to leave home. She had scoured the internet for a job, applied for all kinds of things without success, until she discovered the advertisement from Pension Bloemenhof in a quiet area on the edge of a Limburg village. She'd sensed something that made her feel sure she had to be there, and immediately sent her application email, and there had been a conviction in her that she would be successful this time. She had no idea why, actually had thought it was quite bizarre, but her feeling turned out to be correct. It had been only a few hours before she got an answer back that she could come in for a trial run in November, asking if she was able to come a few days before to explore the guest house and get settled in. It was already the end of October, so that would be very soon, just about right away, she thought. Ha, nothing better than that! The sooner she could go, the better! And it was so ideal, she had already understood from the advertisement, she could live internally, on her own within the guest house. A place of your own, within safe walls. She didn't know how it was possible, but it already felt that way in advance, like a safe place of her own.
She had immediately emailed back that she would pack her bags the next day and come the day after, that is, the day after tomorrow. She had received a short message back with a warm welcome!
Tomorrow she would be going to make the two-hour drive, so now she was in a battle over what to take and what not to take in her bag. She didn't know how big the room would be, what she would need. She assumed there would at least be a bed and a closet. For now, she would bring some clothes for the fall season, and a cardigan for colder days. And of course toiletries…. She had no idea what would be available in the guesthouse, but that didn't matter, she loved the smell of her own stuff, the taste of her own toothpaste. Own stuff, own taste, not only when it came to toiletries. She would give her room in the guest house its own design, her own atmosphere as soon as possible. It would really be her own place for at least a month. Nobody would come in there uninvited, criticize with all kinds of ifs and buts. Out of sheer joy, Margreet made a round dance among the piles she had already made.
“So, are you so glad you can leave us? That looks good on you, as ungrateful as you are!” Unbeknownst to Margreet, her mother had come in, silent, secretly as always. “I've given you all the damn thing you could wish for, but no, you're barely nineteen years old and you've got to run. It's like you're fleeing away!" her mother complained.
The reproaches, of the kind Margreet had heard so many times before, put a damper on her joy. But at the same time she knew that this was the reason she would go her own way. Yes, her mother could call it fleeing, and though it sounded bad again, she was right, Margreet thought: I flee, because the atmosphere here is suffocating me more and more!
But she didn't say anything about that, she didn't respond to the lament. She replied in delight, "I'm excited, yes, I'm really excited to give this a try!" And she was astonished that her mother did not reply, but went off…
The next morning Margaret was up early. During breakfast, sitting silently with both her parents at the table, she thought back to all those years growing up as an only child in this sterile, perfect-looking environment. Her mother had raised her to be the young woman she believed she should be, her father had supported her in this without too many words. Yes, that's how Margreet had experienced it, he had supported her mother. They had formed a front against her together. She had always felt she had to be the girl and now the woman her parents had imagined. She had never been able to really understand it, until the therapist had defined it for her. Now she knew it was this: I am not who I am, but I am their model, their copy, something like that…
With a sigh, she drank her last coffee. That sigh awakened her mother from her own gloomy thoughts: “Do you really feel like it? You’re sighing like that…”
Yesterday it was reproach, thought Margreet, now her mother tried in an apparently compassionate way. And she was no match for all those tactics day in and day out. But for this moment, so close to her departure, it was almost easy to explain her sigh not as a sigh about her past, but as a sigh of longing for the month ahead, for the opportunity to spread her wings.
“Yes, I'm really looking forward to it! I wonder what it will be like there. And I'm glad it's a dry day today, a great day to take that ride!”
“Will you call us Margreet?”
Margreet actually managed leaving room for the unknown: “Sure, but I don't know when yet.”
She got up and carried her plate and mug to the kitchen. She put on her coat, gave her parents a kiss as she had been obliged to do from a young age.
“Well, then I'll go. See you in a month, when things go well at the guest house, I'll come to pick up more of my stuff."
She tried not to care about the tears in her mother's eyes and the gloomy look on her father's face. In fact, she could understand that her parents found it difficult. She was their only child… But she also was disappointed that they weren't able to be happy for her.
Margreet put her bags in her small car, which she had called "my hum" since she bought it, because it had such a pleasant hum while driving. She waved to her parents one more time and drove down the street, right into her future!
The end of this book:
A moment later Margreet went into the bedroom in her pajamas, where Huib had just laid Gloria dressed in the middle of the bed under the comforter.
"She's waiting for you!" reported Rosalie cheerfully. "How sweet she is huh, I think she's so sweet!"
"Incredibly sweet, just like you," replied Margreet. "You really helped me very nicely with Gloria's birth, thank you!"
Rosalie looked at her in surprise: "Helped? How?"
"Just because you were there, because you were sitting next to me. You helped me with that. You were so caring and so happy when you saw Gloria. Really nice!"
Huib sat down next to Margreet on the edge of the bed, kissed her, kissed Gloria. He expressed his joy and gratitude, praised Margreet for her strength and calmness during the delivery. "I am so happy, so incredibly happy, I really have no words for it. Happy with you, with our sweet girl. How beautiful she is huh?"
Huib sighed, pulling Margreet close to him for a moment. "Darling, I'm just a little upset. Shall I call Annerieke and Simon? And Sjaak and Lisa? Or would you rather wait with that?"
Margreet looked at him happily: "Just call them, and maybe Rosalie want to call Patrick and Bea after that."
Huib briefly told Annerieke and then Lisa that everything had gone well and that Gloria had been born. He asked if they felt like coming over already, Margreet felt well enough for a visit!
Then Rosalie told Bea what she had experienced, and that Gloria was already there. "Are you coming to visit us?" She listened for a while and looked up questioningly at Margreet. "Yes, Margreet likes it, come on!"
Huib got to work in the bathroom, cleaning and drying everything. What to do with the placenta, he didn't know. He would ask his mother in a moment. When he had put the laundry in the washing machine downstairs, he heard the first visitors coming in. The estate people came in at the same time, and almost immediately after that came Rosalie's parents. They congratulated Huib, shared his joy and followed him upstairs. The image they saw there, would always remain in their memories:
In the middle of the bed Rosalie was sitting
with Gloria on her lap
very quietly
Both girls looked at each other
And everyone saw it:
They are seeing each other!
Not just a little bit
No, deep, really deep
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