Margreet had kept in touch over the past few months via email with the mother of Rosalie, the girl who had approached her in a restaurant about the baby she was expecting. This had created a friendly bond between the two women and made them long to see each other again.

After breakfast, Margreet quickly put her work at the guesthouse in order. Soon Rosalie and her parents would arrive. She had no idea how long they would want to stay, but in consultation with Annerieke, she had decided that they would not have coffee or lunch at the guest house today. Annerieke had offered to cook some extra for the evening, so they could all join them for dinner. Margreet had liked that idea, but she had bought some extra food for lunch, so they could eat at their home.

It was almost ten o'clock when she heard their car arrive. She saw that Rosalie, as soon as her father had parked the car, jumped out of the car and ran a little way into the garden. There she stopped, looked around with a beaming face and exclaimed, "This is where I want to live, this is sooooo nice!" She wrapped her arms around herself, as if to indicate that she felt completely at home here.

Margreet walked out to greet them. She hugged Rosalie's parents, Bea and Patrick, after which Rosalie, eager for her turn, jumped up against her. Margreet just managed to catch her.

Patrick shook his head, "Dear wildcat, will you leave Margreet in one piece?"

"Of course daddy, my girlfriend is still in her belly..."

"Aha," Margreet responded, "and are you only leaving me whole because of your girlfriend?"

Rosalie scoffed, "No way, I love you too, I'll leave you whole!"

Margreet shifted her toddler body to her hip, surprising herself with this, that this went so naturally, as if she had already done this with so many other children.

"Are you coming inside with me? Do you want coffee too, Rosalie?"

"Yes, nice! Do you have hot milk in it too?" responded Rosalie.

Margreet looked at Bea in surprise, saw her nod and asked Rosalie, "I was actually joking. Do you really ever drink coffee? With warm milk?"

"Yes, I really do! My teacher at school says I'm still too little for that, and then Dad told me to just tell her it was kids' coffee with lots of hot milk. The teacher is nice, but she really thinks she knows everything better. That does make me a little freaked out sometimes!"

Margreet laughed at the cocky story of the girl on her hip.

"Can I walk again?" asked Rosalie, already stretching her legs.

"Of course, for a moment I forgot that you are no longer a baby for a long time!"

Rosalie laughed, "No, long gone!"

From the work shed Huib came walking home. He greeted them warmly, was visibly happy to see them. "Margreet has been keeping me informed through the emails you sent, Bea, it makes it seem like we've been friends for years."

"That's how it feels to me too," Patrick laughed. "Bea has told me all kinds of things, too. And I think it's cool to come visit you, to get to know each other a little better. Rosalie is already having a great time here, she wants to come and live here."

"I heard it yes, while I was working in the barn. She has such a wonderfully clear voice, really beautiful. That child is alive!"

Patrick looked at him in surprise: "How cool that you say that. We experience it the same way, but have a lot of trouble with it, that the teacher at school can't stand it. We realize that it says more about the teacher than about Rosalie, but it is difficult. Some days we tend not to let her go to school anymore."

He spoke the last sentence in a deliberate whisper, near Huib's ear, so Rosalie wouldn't hear.

Huib understood him and promised, "We'll sneak out together later, go look in my work shed or something, then we can talk about it more calmly."

Patrick nodded gratefully, "Fine, let's do that!"

Margreet and Bea had already walked through to the kitchen to make coffee.

Rosalie came skipping to the kitchen with a cuddly toy from the playpen in her hand: "Mama, you should see, Margreet's baby has the same cuddly toy as me!"

"Really?" asked Margreet. "Do you have any idea what that silly animal is called?"

"No, I really don't, I don't think he even exists in real life. It's just a fantasy animal."

"Did you give him a name too?"

"No, I just call him cuddly. I've never played with stuffed animals, but I like this one. He's on a shelf at my place, for decoration."

She hopped back into the living room. Margreet looked at Bea and laughed, "What a wiseass she is, or is that normal at that age?"

Bea laughed along with her, "I have no comparison. She never takes children from school with her, prefers to play alone. She likes to draw, and fantasizes whole stories.

Last week I was at the library with her. I wanted to take some picture books for her, but she didn't want to anymore. She wanted reading books she could read herself. I took a stack of reading books from one of those teaching methods and was able to go back the next day and get the next six books. And so it went throughout the week. Every day to the library. I was already dreading today, because the library is closed. But then I figured we'd go here. Nice distraction for her."

"Four years old and she's teaching herself to read? Then she must have something to do with books..." thought Margreet.

"Patrick dreamed that she was a slightly older girl sitting writing a book. He thought she was about six or seven years old in that dream. We dismissed it as 'it's just a dream,' until last week, when she went through those books like crazy. I'm considering checking with the people at the library to see if she can take more booklets."

"Does she also consciously look at the pictures?" asked Margreet as she patted the milk for Rosalie.

"No, she has nothing to do with the pictures, she doesn't like them. And I can sympathize with her for that, they're not pretty either."

"Do you fancy writing some short stories for her yourself? With the letters she already knows?"

Bea grinned, "She already knows all the single letters and letter combinations. She just reads aloud from those booklets already, and not even very slowly." She thought for a moment, "Actually, that would be quite an idea. She is so extremely eager to learn when it comes to reading that she could handle it. If I type stories on the computer, I can transfer them to my tablet. Then she can read on my tablet. I just wonder, what kind of stories I could write."

"About herself? About things you've experienced with her?" suggested Margreet.

Bea nodded, "Good idea, I'm definitely going to work on this!"

With a tray full of mugs of coffee and a bowl of cookies, they went into the room. Rosalie snuggled up against Margreet on the couch. She put her hand on Margreet's belly and looked up happily at Margreet, "She is doing well hey, she is growing well. She's getting so pretty, soooo pretty! And I still like her. We are already girlfriends. And I'm happy about that, she's my first girlfriend!"

Margreet stroked her hair. "If you all want, come here often for a day. Then you can be with your girlfriend."

"That seems like a nice idea!" thought Patrick. "I feel perfectly at home here with you guys too. How special, just because of a brief meeting in a restaurant."

"Well, that was real timing!" said Huib.

The day became naturally full of cheerful and profound conversations. In the work shed, Huib and Patrick discussed the school problems.

"She doesn't like going there, Huib, she can't be herself there. She has to do work there, which she has nothing to do with. All she wants to do is read. But if we would keep her at home, she wouldn't have any contact with other children. That doesn't seem healthy for her." Patrick was quite bothered by this.

"I understand that, that you find that difficult," Huib said, "but at school she doesn't seem to make any real contacts either. Probably all the children are so different from her that she just doesn't click with them. If you come here regularly, she will have contact with us, soon also with our baby. And of course we can come to you."

Huib didn't let on, that he actually had other thoughts about that. He was curious what Patrick thought about it.

"You know what I think, Huib? I think, if you don't mind, we'd better come here regularly. Rosalie seems quite at home here. Just the surroundings felt like coming home to her."

"I'm glad you feel the same way," said Huib, "because while I suggested that we could come to you too, I felt that Rosalie would rather come here."

"I'll talk to Bea about it, maybe we'd even do well to move, live more in this neighborhood. We don't have a click with the area where we live either," Patrick confessed. "The house is fine, a terraced house with a reasonable garden, there is nothing wrong with that. But it feels better here. Yes, I have to talk to Bea about this."

Meanwhile Rosalie had started to wander through the house on her own. She had looked in all the rooms upstairs, had gone to the toilet in the bathroom for a moment, and had then sat down on the floor in the children's room, with the teddy bear that Annerieke had put a diaper on, on her lap. That's how Margreet and Bea found her a moment later, with her eyes closed.

"Is she asleep?" whispered Margreet.

"No, I don't think so. I suspect she's feeling it up. She does that quite often, then she gets completely relaxed. She feels all kinds of things around her. The other day at school a classmate had been very angry with the teacher, and in this way Rosalie has given that a place, processed it."

Rosalie opened her eyes. "No mom, I've been thinking about that girl, and about the teacher, and I've been radiating at them. The next day they were much nicer to each other."

"Yes dear," nodded Bea, "I know you told me that, but I don't really understand what you mean by it."

"Silly mama, then you should ask!" Rosalie laughed treasurefully. "I just radiated at Margreet's baby too. I felt something go from my belly to the baby. She's getting strong from that, I think. And my teacher and classmate were both so angry. I didn't understand why, but I felt that I was radiating to them, and I also felt that it made them feel better, I just knew it. And the next day things went really well between them. Margreet, do you find that strange? I don't dare to talk about it at school. I think they'll think I'm crazy."

Margreet sat down next to Rosalie on the floor. "No Rosalie, what you call radiating is not crazy at all. When you do that, a kind of power goes from your soul to the person you are thinking of at that moment. And it is true that it makes them stronger. All people are wounded in their emotions, in their feelings. And when your soul radiates to other people, the power from your soul helps them to heal a little further. That is what happened to your teacher and that classmate. So you are actually doing something very beautiful when you sit and think about someone so silently. Do you do that often?"

"No, not often, just when it comes into my mind."

"Wonderful... very natural..." Margreet became silent.

.

In the evening they had a nice dinner in the kitchen of the guesthouse. Annerieke had baked some extra pie and gave Bea a box with three pieces of pie when they were about to go home again.

Rosalie actually didn't want to go home at all. "Not even with a hundred pies!" she told them decisively. "I want to stay here, I belong here, this is my home."

Patrick took her on his lap and asked, "What about mom and dad? Won't you miss us?"

Rosalie looked at him with a tilted head. "Maybe we should move. Go and live near here. It's much better here than with us, I felt that when I got out of the car here."

She looked around the circle, wondering if these other people in the family didn't think it was weird. "Why do you all look like you're going to cry?" she asked in surprise.

Simon reached out with his hand to Rosalie. She put her hand in his large, calloused one. He squeezed it gently: "You are a beautiful child, really very special how you feel. I think you are going to help a lot of broken people."

Rosalie interrupted him light-heartedly, "I already do that, then I sit very still and think of someone who is broken, and then I radiate out of my soul. That's what it's called, isn't it, Margreet, a soul?"

And when Margreet nodded, she continued to Simon, "Margreet explained it to me. When I radiate from my soul, power goes to that boy or girl I'm thinking about, and that helps to heal a little further."

"Oh boy," Simon said with a sigh in his voice, "you see guys, just live together, and what's inside a child will come out naturally. You go on Rosalie, you're doing great!"

Without returning to the subject of moving, they said goodbye to each other and Bea promised that they would come again one day soon.

To chapter 234. Creative men

Or to the Table of contents