On the way Margreet chatted all the time. Huib understood, she was nervous for this big step. He let her chat, listened and reacted every now and then. When they approached her former hometown she became more and more quiet. And in front of the house, she heaved a deep sigh. "You can still go back now, Gretel," Huib said, putting his hand on her leg and looking at her.

"No way! I'm not going back! Never again in that cramp of this prison camp! Ha! Funny, that rhymes too..."

"You're great!" Huib laughed. "Come on, let's go pick up your stuff."

Huib got out and grabbed some of the stack of folded moving boxes from the cargo box. Margreet followed his example and looked for her house key at the door.

"I'll throw those through the mailbox later, the keys of the house and barn. When we're sure we have everything..."

"Good idea, but first show me your room!"

"Hold on, I have to get rid of that rotten note first, before I forget."

She went to the kitchen and put it on the counter there. Then she preceded Huib to the second floor, to her room. They put their boxes on the landing.

"Up in the attic is another box with all kinds of scrapbooks and stuff about my childhood. I don't think I want to keep most of it, but maybe there are some important things in there that I do want to keep."

"Can you carry it by yourself? Or is it a heavy rascal?"

"I think I can," Margreet said, walking up the attic stairs. Huib meanwhile unfolded a few moving boxes. Margreet soon came down with the box in question. It wasn't big, but it was overflowing. Huib took it from her. "I'll bring it down, you go ahead and grab together what you want to take with you."

When he came back to her, she was unpacking her wardrobe. "I'll take all my clothes, I don't allow myself the time to sort out now, I'll do that at home."

Huib smiled at her 'home'. Yes, she had really come home to him. It already felt so familiar, like they had been together for years. He would never want it any other way!

While Margreet continued to pack, Huib brought each filled box downstairs. When they were done up, they would load all the boxes and her bike into the pickup.

"So, here I'm done," Margreet reported a moment later, looking back one last time at the room that had been hers for so long. "The rest of what's left here...they'll have to see what they want with it."

She walked to the bathroom one last time, but there were no more of her things there. In the small guest room, she found another pair of her shoes. She gave the last box to Huib, and took the remaining still-flat boxes downstairs. She was sure there was nothing of hers in the kitchen. The only thing she had ever been involved in in the kitchen was the meals and the doing the dishes.

She told Huib how she experienced it, "I've never done anything in this kitchen but the dishes. And now I have my own kitchen, our kitchen, and it's so much nicer than this one! And Annerieke is teaching me to cook, little by little, so sweet of her! It's less difficult than I thought."

Huib smiled, "Really nice for you, you can't have a better teacher than my mother. Are you going to continue here? Then I'll start loading up." While he was busy putting the boxes in the bin of the pickup, Margreet walked through the living room, opened all the cabinet doors and drawers. She found her passport and put it in her backpack. Other than that, there was nothing in that room that belonged to her either.

"There is nothing of mine here. There has never been anything of mine here, as if I did not exist... painful conclusion!" she said to herself. She was silent for a moment to let it sink in.

"Well, now the barn, at least my bike is there."

Huib, finished with the boxes, brought the bike she pointed to the pickup, laid it flat in it, and went back to Margreet. "Just my raincoat and boots. Also here in the barn I don't see anything else to indicate that they ever had a daughter! You know Huib, I was born to them, but I never had anything with them, and they didn't have anything with me. The difference between them on the one hand, and you on the other hand, is unbelievably great, like black and white, like darkness and light. But until I came to you, I didn't know any better. I was glad that I could leave, but I had no idea that with you and Annerieke I could have a so much better life. That I would find myself with you. I know, I'm not there yet, but I already feel much more Margreet than I ever experienced!"

"So you don't regret making this decision in any way?"

"Oh no, I only regret one thing, which is that I was once born to them. I would have been better off choosing your parents."

"No way! Then I should have started a relationship with my sister!"

Margreet shot up in laughter, "That does sound very strange, but who cares? Okay, then let's just leave my past behind, and start living wonderfully together!"

"Do you keep in mind, though, that you'll still have to go through some painful stuff?" Huib asked, as Margreet locked up the house and threw her keys through the mailbox.

"Yes, but I refuse to live in fear that there will be lions and bears still around the corner. I will see them when they are in front of me, then it will be early enough. Of all the moments in between I want to enjoy to the fullest. And get to know you much better. Although," she thought before she got in, "I feel like I already know you inside out. That must be the soul connection. And of course I'll still discover things about you, and you about me, but those are more informational things, facts or something. That feels more like head work, whereas that soul connection is a floor deeper and has everything to do with what we feel. Do you think that’s right?"

Huib was stretching the tarp over the pickup and was just fastening the last of the rubber bands. He nodded, "I don't know if it's exactly like that, but I think you're at least very close with that discovery. What we are yet to discover from each other is not insignificant, but it is not the core that matters. Our relationship started with that very core."

"Exactly! As Lisa so beautifully called it, that two strong magnets are drawn to each other in such a way that they can't be detached from each other anymore." Margreet thought it was a very nice description of what she herself had experienced.

They got into the cab, Huib started the engine and drove down the street.

"I'm hungry for that hamburger now, or something else. Do you know of a good snack bar around here?"

Margreet didn't have to think about that. "No way, I've always lived here, but I don't know a snack bar, that wasn't a place I was supposed to go to."

"So as an adolescent, did you never have the inclination to figure things out for yourself? To step outside their rules?"

"No, I guess I didn't dare, or the idea didn't even occur to me. Yes, that latter especially, I was so indoctrinated, knew so exactly what I should and shouldn't do. Fear has played a very big role in my life, but not in going out by myself, I think. I regularly went to the city center on my bicycle, and then I felt wonderfully free. I loved discovering for myself how the center was put together, where the different stores were. But I would never buy all kinds of things there that I didn't strictly need, no stuff just because I liked it. That was something I just wasn't supposed to do, and so I didn't. Oppressive, isn't it? So disturbed in retrospect! When I think of the first time I went to the thrift store with you... I enjoyed it so much that I could choose what I liked. Did I need vases for that attic room? Well no, nonsense, I could have done without, but I liked it, vases with Hydrangea branches! And a rocking chair? That dining room chair that was in the attic, that I had put next to my bed as a clothes rack, I could have sat on that too. But it was that rocking chair I had a click with, I liked it and it was so wonderfully sitting in it!"

"Oh yes, I can still see how you rushed to it, with enthusiastic cries! All those people around us laughing at you, and you didn't even realize it, so happy you were with that chair, with your own discovery. Gretel, what a great moment that was!"

"Yeah..." Margreet became silent, with a happy smile on her face.

To chapter 99. Special encounters in a restaurant

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