Sjaak and Ineke had agreed to spend some time together in the garden the next morning. Sjaak had spent the summer and autumn building a couple of flowerbeds, for which he and Huib had made pergolas. He had thought he could walk through those with Ineke and discuss with her along the way what could be done. That way they could make a plan together that they could work on for a while.

Ineke had put on long trousers and old shoes and was waiting behind the window until she saw him coming from the guesthouse with a wheelbarrow. Immediately she grabbed her coat from the coat rack and walked out.

"Good morning Ineke!" Sjaak called to her, "are you looking forward to it?"

"Yes, quite a bit, but I also feel a bit tense about it," she answered honestly. "You know, I trust you hey, but you are a man. That's just a bit awkward."

"I can understand that very well. Would you rather have a woman there?"

"No, no, I really trust you, I just need to get over that threshold, I think, so let's just take that step!"

"Fine, brave of you! I had thought of stopping by the new perks and seeing what's needed."

"Don't you have a work plan then?" asked Ineke in surprise.

"No, according to my training, I should have, but Erik, Huib's father, helped me get rid of that very well. He always said things like, 'you have the knowledge, but follow your heart, look and feel, take that as a starting point'. So I started looking more, also waiting to see what plants would do if I let them go. I intervene more now to prevent things from going really wrong. In my first year, I would have taken off all the blown-out flowers, like of this climbing hydrangea. Not anymore, all I sometimes do is pick the fallen flowers off the ground and throw them between the bushes. The only reason for that is, we can walk quietly here without those blown-out flowers grabbing at our trousers and us taking them inside. When the kids start crawling later on, you don't want those things on your floor."

Sjaak picked one up and let her feel the tiny dried flowers.

"I didn't expect that, they are hard and feel prickly. That would indeed be unpleasant for a crawling toddler."

Here and there, they picked up one of those dried hydrangea flowers and threw them on the ground among the bushes.

"Spraying we rarely do, especially at this time of year. In summer, we only do it when we notice that shrubs are having a hard time, when they get a bit limp. Do you have any idea what time of day would be the best time to spray?"

Ineke chuckled: "Discovering by yourself, thinking for yourself... you're a good teacher! Just thinking, what would it matter? I really don't know anything about it, so it doesn't bother me. What I can imagine is that if you spray during the day, the sun immediately evaporates a lot of it again. I think I would do it in the late afternoon or early evening, when the sun is no longer shining brightly."

Wondering if he agreed with her, she looked at him. Sjaak laughed: "That's a clever plan! By the way, this is something I did learn in training too, just a piece of knowledge. But if you try to sense it, think about how it works, like you just did, you only have to do that once, and then it just sits in your memory as a logical fact. Then you don't forget that, unlike a lot of book knowledge."

Ineke nodded: "All the things I had to learn at primary school teacher training... so much was a waste of my effort, a waste of my time! I really don't remember it all! So we will make that clear to the education inspector. So one of the important points of the discovery centre is also: what you discover yourself, you almost always remember!"

"True," nodded Sjaak. "What do you think of this plant?"

"I think it was beautiful," responded Ineke, "but it's sprouting a bit strangely. I think plants grow slower in autumn than in summer. Could that be why now is a great time to cut off those crazy spikes?"

"Good idea, the way you describe it, you have looking and feeling as a basis. You saw that it no longer looked nice, then wondered if it would be wise to prune it at this time of year and figured that it probably was. That's a good mindset, you have it in you, discovering it yourself, it just needed to wake up."

Ineke chuckled, "Indeed, that self-discovery did get lulled to sleep at school and in training, and in many cases smacked on the head with a hammer so it wouldn't wake up."

She took the pruning shears he handed her, looked at it for a moment and discovered the little latch that kept them closed was slightly locked. She gave the little latch a push, and a firm spring made the pruning shears jump open. She saw that Sjaak had followed her and raised his thumb. She followed his example, grabbed an over-long branch and cut it off just below her hand. She threw the loose branches into the wheelbarrow.

"Where will you put these branches later? Do you have anything like a compost heap?"

Sjaak pointed to the forest edge. "There, that bin, that's where we'll throw the branches in later."

"Will that work? Aren't the branches too thick and stiff to become compost?"

"Good question, Ineke, they are indeed just a bit too thick, so it will take a bit longer to become compost. That's why we'll throw them in the back of that big bin. When I need compost in spring, I'll mainly use the front part. I'll show you."

So they went quietly through a few flowerbeds.

"You know Sjaak, I always thought gardening was enormously hard work. And sometimes it will be, but like this, it's just wonderfully relaxing. I enjoy the peace and..."

She stopped, as Sjaak held his finger in front of his mouth and stopped her. Without moving too much, he pointed her towards a squirrel that was busy near the forest edge.

"I think he is collecting acorns and beechnuts for his winter supply," Sjaak whispered. Even the sound of his whispering carried across the quiet open field. The squirrel pricked his little ears and looked around nervously. He looked in their direction as they remained dead still. He kept looking at them for a while, with his head tilted, and then jumped up against a tree, ran up and a moment later glided from tree to tree.

"Wonderful, if you can float through the air like that anyway..." sighed Ineke. "What freedom!"

"Did you see how he was observing us?" asked Sjaak.

"Yes, with his head tilted. It felt very special, as if we were looking beyond each other's eyes, as if we were looking inside each other. Rosalie talked about her contact with animals, and how she writes about it. I think she really has soul-to-soul contact with those animals. And I just imagined I had that too."

Sjaak put his hand on her shoulder and shook his head: "You don't imagine something like that, you feel something like that, and then deep down you know it was real. If you still doubt it a little, it's because very few people believe it. We have learned to think differently, have, through that strict learning of education and upbringing, lost our original, feeling way of looking and listening, a little or even completely. I think you are far from losing it completely, but that educational way still gets in your way a bit, especially in your thinking. Don't worry about it, it will disappear by itself, and then everything will go more and more from the inside, you will start to feel fully again."

Ineke nodded: "Yes, I believe that too. By the way, I notice that I'm getting quite tired already. Do you mind if we take the branches to the compost bin and then I go home?"

"Just feel very honest: do you still want to come along to the compost bin or would you rather go straight home?"

Ineke was silent for a moment, troubled by all kinds of thoughts fighting for precedence. "I'll just say out loud what's going through my mind. All sorts of things. 'Stopping now is childish', 'I want to see that compost heap, understand how it works', 'we can do that another time', 'don't be silly'.

Sjaak nodded: "Like a bunch of clucking chickens in your head... are you getting to the bottom of what you really want? Just take the time to figure it out, that's more important than gardening."

Ineke sighed deeply. She found it difficult. She did not want to disappoint Sjaak or herself, but wondered why there should be disappointment. She verbalised this again to Sjaak. She saw that he nodded and made a circular motion with his hand, like 'go ahead'.

Suddenly she realised, which made her most want to go home. "I suddenly understand. Things were going really well until you put your hand on my shoulder. You didn't do anything wrong, you know, I know that with my mind, but a part of me froze, and it made me feel like I had to flee. My body indicated that I was tired, that I needed to go home, but actually that's not what's going on at all. I don't think I'm physically tired, but just emotionally affected, a bit upset."

"I think you're right, and I know it's good that it happened, even though it feels grim for you and a bit awkward for me because I was the instigator of it. But it's really good, and you're actually handling it quite nicely. You listen to all these voices, voices of your wounds, and in between them you suddenly recognise the voice of your soul showing you what is really going on. Truly extraordinary! But how to proceed now? What do you want?"

"Just a moment more, it's already fading away," Ineke whispered, staring at the forest. A while later, she took a few very deep breaths. "So, for now I'm through! And I feel like going to that compost heap for a while. Okay?"

"Will do!"

"Can I drive the wheelbarrow? I've never done that before!" Ineke immediately grabbed both handles and started walking. She did not expect him to be so unstable on his one wheel, and was surprised to see him tip over. "What will we get up to now?!" she exclaimed.

Sjaak slapped his thighs with laughter. "Great way of discovering how things don't work! That too is discovery, Ineke, in the future you will do it differently, you will feel how to keep balance first."

"I like to believe you," muttered Ineke as she set the wheelbarrow upright and picked up the branches from the ground and put them back in. She grabbed the handles again, felt how the wheelbarrow reacted, chuckled as she felt that Sjaak was right, and started walking carefully. The further she got, the more confidently she walked on. At the compost bin, a large rectangular, open bin lined with sleepers, she set it down and looked into the bin.

"Aha, I see, here in the front the compost is already almost as it should be, like dark earth. And back there is the mess that still needs some work. Surely our branches should go there?" Not waiting for an answer, she picked up the wheelbarrow, set it in motion, quietly feeling, and brought it to the side of the compost bin, closer to where the newer branches lay. She threw in the branches from the wheelbarrow and looked at Sjaak.

"Is it right, that every now and then you slide some of that back pile forward, and then throw new branches back there behind?"

"It's that simple Ineke, it's a simple sliding system. That's why Erik and I made that bin rectangular, so we can reach it from the side with a shovel or a rake to push things forward every now and then. It's the simplest way to make compost, I think. We could also have thrown everything between the bushes, then it would have become compost, but then it would look very messy for the guests who come here. Now I regularly hear that they enjoy that it's not so grimly neat, that it looks natural. But I think if we threw everything on the ground between the bushes, it would get really messy."

"I think so too. I think it also takes quite a long time for those branches to compost, so then there would be branches lying around for a very long time. Now you have a bit more work from it, but the result does indeed seem nicer."

She picked up the wheelbarrow again and, now that it was empty, casually walked away with it. "It's easier already, my hands seem to have a better sense of how to hold it!"

Talking cheerfully, they walked together to the shed near the guesthouse, put the wheelbarrow in its place there.

"For me, it's almost coffee time at the guesthouse. And you, what are you going to do?"

Ineke took a deep breath. "I'm going home, but I want to ask you one more thing. Will you keep watching until I'm safely inside?"

"Good of you to ask, Ineke, I will."

They said goodbye and as Ineke walked towards The Shelter, Sjaak watched her. The pain, the fear, the uncertainty he had seen so many times with Lisa was so palpable with this woman too, and with the other women who lived there. He felt sorry for them, but on the other hand he was glad that they were bravely carrying on, going right through pain and fear, making strides in between, trying new things, recapturing the world bit by bit.

He waved to Ineke when she was inside and looked back from behind the window. It was good, it was good the way things were going. 

To chapter 31. Another step forward

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