Wednesday morning...tonight is dance night already. How quickly time went by and how much happened! Margreet had just woken up and stretched a lot. She felt that Huib was looking at her. She turned her head to him and saw a mischievous expression on his face.

"What are you lying around having such fun about?"

"About you, how you wake up, stretching all over like you want to be taller than me."

She rolled into his arms and snuggled against him.

"Hmm actually I like that we are about the same length. That was convenient yesterday in the shower to say the least!"

"You give me an idea Margreet, shall we shower together again?"

"No, not for a while, if you don't mind..."

"And if I do mind?"

"Then still not, but I would mind that, for I would like to make you happy."

"I am happy, for your sake, for the sake of our relationship, and you really don't have to do things against your will to please me. You're not my slave or my pleaser, you're my... search search... I want a word that spells it out exactly... ha, an old-fashioned word: you're my other half. No, even that word isn't quite right, the word soulmate might be even better. Anyway, you are not below me, we are equal, and we may just enjoy life together with each other. Don't you feel like showering at all?"

"No, anyway I'm used to showering only in the evening. In retrospect, it was quite something when we ended up under the shower yesterday afternoon. Schedule broken! I liked it, I have to admit. I'm used to doing a quick wash at the sink in the morning, and even that seems a bit too much at the moment. I am tired and not feeling very well. I'm sure it's because of my fun-loving parents... It would make you sick! Come on, kick my ass, let's get out of here, otherwise we'll be late for breakfast."

"Yes," Huib said in a threatening voice, as he continued to hold her tightly, "and then Annerieke will kick our ass!"

"No, don’t be stupid, she wouldn't do that at all! But I don't want to let her down. And after our breakfast I also need time to do the rooms. I like to be done with that when the guests come back upstairs. Huib, let go of me, youngster!" She gave him a kiss and tried to wriggle free.

Huib let go of her, she was just right of course, but he couldn't resist teasing her for a moment with her parents' style, sticking it on Annerieke. Her parents blamed her for everything, Annerieke wouldn’t even think about something like that. Just a few more days, then they would be free of those criticism stories!

He watched as Margreet got out of bed for a moment more, how she staggered for a while as if she were dizzy, regained herself and walked to the bathroom. He got up himself too, refreshed himself next to Margreet and got dressed. Coffee! Delicious!

Margreet called after him: "Don't make me any coffee yet. I'd rather have rooibos tea."

Huib, halfway up the stairs, frowned. She's really not well. Didn't she say yesterday how wonderfully she liked it to start with coffee together? He couldn't imagine her parents making her feel so lousy. Hopefully she didn't get the flu.

Strange, he thought as he worked in the kitchen, he had never worried about his own health: if he got sick, he got sick. And then he knew what to do about it. And now that Margreet seemed to be getting sick, he experienced unease. Not that he was seriously worried, but still... Questions arose, whether she shouldn't stay at home, go back to bed, what he could do for her...

Suddenly, totally unexpectedly and right through everything, he knew what was going on: she was pregnant! Really? Could that be it? It had entered his mind with such strong certainty. Great! They were going to be parents!

Would he buy her a pregnancy test? No, he decided to leave that up to her, so she could surprise him.

Margreet took deliberate ease in getting dressed, walking down the stairs. She felt wobbly, uncertain in her body, as if things were about to go haywire. She was glad she had chosen tea. Just the smell of Huibs coffee bothered her.

She tried to act as if nothing was wrong. She decided to do her work as usual, a little slower if necessary. What a pity, by the way, she loved to do it singing, humming, but now she had the feeling that only then she would get really nauseous. Well, that would pass, she just had to get through it, and then go to bed a little earlier tonight. Not go to the dance night? And maybe even call off Elly for the afternoon?

Huib observed her, but said nothing. He felt happy, happy for their baby announcing itself so early. A little later he dreamed away, staring outside past Margreet. In his mind he saw very clearly a swing in the garden, a swing with a girl on it. She was wearing a summer dress, and her long, wavy blond hair was swaying joyfully in the wind. She looked happy, but not exuberant, rather dreamy and content.

"Huib?" He was startled by Margreet's voice. "You were way off in your mind! What was that all about?"

Huib blinked his eyes and looked at her in surprise. "All sorts of things, all sorts of things came to mind. I want to try to finish those knobs for the drawers today, maybe I can take them to Danielle already this afternoon."

They leisurely walked to the other side, greeted Annerieke, Sjaak, and Lisa, and sat down at the breakfast table.

Annerieke noticed that Margreet wasn’t eating with pleasure. She could barely manage to eat a sandwich. She also noticed that she seemed to be a bit dizzy when she stood up... and she experienced the same impression as Huib: Margreet is pregnant! A broad smile crept across her face.

Huib, who had been observing her unnoticed, frowned. His mother, who was staring at Margreet and suddenly started smiling like that... Would she know too?

After the meal Margreet went upstairs and Sjaak in the garden to work. Huib walked to his mother and whispered next to her ear, "Do you think what I think? About Margreet?"

Annerieke looked at him in surprise: "If you think what I think yes..."

They shot up in laughter at their puzzling conversation.

"Next year at the end of summer approximately? Do you mean something like that?" Annerieke asked, her voice still muffled.

Huib did a quick calculation: "Yes, something like that, mid-August or so?"

"Then I'll think what you're thinking too," Annerieke replied with a grin. "Congratulations in advance daddy!"

"You too, granny! I wonder when she'll find out."

"Yeah, or when you can't keep it to yourself anymore!"

He gave her a playful poke and helped her clean up. Neither of them was aware that Lisa had still been sitting at the table, following their whispers. She hadn't understood much, but she had heard the word "August" and their mutual congratulations, and she had seen their joy.

August? Lisa wasn't stupid, she quickly calculated, nine months from now, yes, that would be August. So it looked like Margreet was pregnant. Anyway, she didn't look fit this morning.

Silently Lisa got up, and decided to go and help her. She wouldn't say anything about what she had overheard, she realized that it would be much nicer for Margreet if she could tell her happy news herself. Would she even be happy about it? She didn't really know her that well yet. They had never talked about motherhood, but honestly Huib and Margreet seemed like a great pair of parents to her. If they had that much love in them for each other, they would surely let their children share in it.

As she joined Margreet and helped her with the work, her thoughts turned to Sjaak. Would he be a good father? She could imagine how he would take his children into the garden. Maybe he would give them their own little garden, for flowers, or for vegetables. He would live with them, raise them naturally....

She called herself to order. The fact that yesterday she had already become convinced that Sjaak and she belonged together, seemed to be linked in their souls, did not mean that she was ready for it yet! Today she would start filling out the official divorce forms, the general data and then write down why she wanted a divorce. Later, when they were done here, she would start taking care of that right away. Maybe she could get it done before coffee, so that after coffee she could turn the forms in to Ellen. Only she had no car and no bicycle ... maybe she could borrow a bicycle from someone? Or walk there, it wasn't that far to the village center where Ellen had her office at home. It was chilly, but dry and a bit sunny... yes, she decided to make a nice walk of it!

.

Huib had gone to his work shed after his interlude with Annerieke. He saw a piece of furniture in front of him, and he just had to draw it. Under the paper he put a desk-mat on his worktable, so his pencil would not suffer from all the pits and grooves in the table, and started to draw. Exactly as he had envisioned it, he drew a low cabinet. He felt from his own body how high it should be approximately. If he were to change the baby’s diaper on this dresser, his back would not be bothering him. And Margreet was about the same height, so that was easy, this would also be the right height for her. He wrote down the measurements and stared at his sketch.

In his mind he already saw their little girl lying there, a beaming smile on her face, because Daddy was acting funny to her. For a moment he allowed himself to enjoy the scene, but then quickly went on, estimated the right width and depth and wrote the measurements in the sketch. Two drawers for small things, two cupboard compartments below for wipes, diapers and rompers and that sort of stuff. He wanted to keep the cupboard compartments open so that it looked nice and you could easily grab what you needed. Only... that little girl would turn into a toddler, start crawling... and then probably would have fun picking everything out. That wouldn't be convenient. Still, he decided not to make any doors, to keep the closet open. If the little one started to mess up later on, he could always make some doors in.

He looked at the sketch again at his leisure. He decided to put flattened balls under it at the front, instead of legs. You wouldn't see anything of that at the back; simple legs there were good enough. But those beautiful balls at the front, they would give the dresser something extra. He sketched them underneath. Then he calculated how much wood he would need. He looked at his stock of leftover wood. He liked light wood, always bought the same wood for himself and for the boarding house. That turned out to be handy now, because his stock of leftovers almost certainly seemed large enough to make the whole dresser out of. Super convenient! Only those wooden balls, he still had to go buy blocks of wood for that.

Another question came to mind. The room was papered with washable off-white wallpaper. Actually he wanted to talk to Margreet about this, decide together, but a strong idea came up for the window frames and the doorposts, and maybe even the door itself. Although he was sure that their child would be a girl, he did not want to step into the fixed pattern of 'girl, so pink'. The idea he had was to have a pot of white paint mixed with a little bit of pink and a little bit of blue. If he was right, you would then get a kind of white with a slight lilac glow. He thought of the Hydrangeas, and of those thick vases Margreet had bought. She loved those colors. He couldn't decide yet whether he would actually paint it himself, but in any case he would buy a few of those pots of mixed paint at the do-it-yourself store.

That was a nice job for this afternoon, now he would make the knobs for the desk drawers first. Then he could also go to Daniëlle this afternoon and drop them off there. That immediately gave him another idea. How would Margreet like it if he made the same knobs for the drawers of the chest of drawers and had light-lilac gemstones set in them? He chuckled to himself. He was so busy collecting ideas for the nursery that it seemed the baby would be born next month.

He stored the drawing of the commode in his large folder, where he kept all his sketches, and started sawing a supply of cubes for the knobs. With a coarse file he made a little thick leg and filed away the edges, transforming the end into a little ball. In the little ball he made the hollow in which Danielle would attach the gemstone

He would never manage to make the buttons exactly the same, but that was exactly what he liked about his work. It had to be and remain handwork! Machines were only there for the rough work, but the hand of the master, as his father had always seen and praised him for, and which he himself most enjoyed, had to remain visible!

To chapter 79. Margreet discovers she is pregnant

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