Sieb de Boer (92) makes no sense to sit alone at home. That is why he sits at the roundabout next to his flat every day for fun. “That way I feel less alone.”
Hidden between the orchids, Sieb overlooks the roundabout where he sits on his walker between 4 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. At least, if the weather is nice. “I love being outside,” he says. “That is because of the past, I think. Then I always worked outside, as a farmer, on the land.”
Even today he walks with the walker to the roundabout. The sun is shining, so he is looking forward to it. Once at the roundabout the cosiness starts. “Greetings to your husband,” Sieb calls for a passer -by. “Hello Sieb”, shouts a passing gentleman. “Well, a bit,” he says triumphantly and satisfied.
Sieb, born in Roodeschool, came to live in Assen with his wife a few years ago. “One of our children also lives here, she had a bakery here,” he says. He was well with his wife, with whom he was married for 61 years, but unfortunately fate struck five years ago. She turned out to have cancer, which she died of within a week. “I still miss her every day,” he says with a soft voice.
But Sieb is not a man who is sitting down. “You come home and you have nothing to talk to anymore. It is twice quiet there. But I can live with it. My wife has reached a good age. And it is just the case that one of the two will die earlier.”
Sieb also enjoys the place where he lives. “I am sitting here wonderfully among the orchids, a common hobby of my wife and I. She had discovered them, when they were just in the store for sale. She asked if I also liked them. I think that is so beautiful and colorful.”
He grabs one of the orchids from the windowsill. A pink. “This is my favorite,” he says. Then his gaze wanders outside. “And look, I also have a beautiful view here.”
His other hobby, the roundabout, has Sieb for a year. In this way he is known in the neighborhood as ‘De Rotondeman’. “I sometimes walked by to do groceries, and then I thought: how cozy it is here for a city. That surprised me. In Groningen they are a bit stiffer. But here everyone greets so kindly.”
Sieb decided to put his walker pontifically next to the roundabout, exactly at that point where everyone shaves past him. Here he feels less alone. “It is my entertainment. All kinds of people come by. One greeting, the other does not. But that doesn’t matter. I Koekeloer a little in all directions. And sometimes beautiful vehicles come by.” He points to a strikingly colored car. “Look those old ice creams there!”
Sieb does have a tip for people who sometimes feel lonely. “Look for distraction, in any way, because there is no one right,” he says wise. “Don’t sit still. You can just rest for a moment or close your eyes, but don’t sit down to chagrines of ‘What should I do, I do not know where to search’. Then you are musing from loneliness. And that is not fun for anyone.”
He is aware that his new hobby might be a bit unusual. “But I have peace with it, because I enjoy this,” he says. When he goes home again? “So right. I will go with my face in the sun. And then I go home. Looking Journal and cooking. Potatoes. And chicory.” Tomorrow a new day. Hopefully the sun shines.
View here how Sieb entertains every day during a visit to the roundabout: