The messengers of doom have won against me after all. A short telephone conversation with an old friend who told me that he too had changed tack after yet another drone threat over Volkel was the invisible hand that was needed to drive me towards the supermarket. I may have been skeptical, but that didn’t mean I could harm those close to me. Suddenly I had the idea in my head that I would have to ring the doorbell of neighbors for water, bread and sanitary towels during the first days of the war. If only the government had achieved that much with its emergency brochure and commercials about power outages and other inconveniences. On Saturday afternoon I put together an emergency package with the eldest daughter (10) in the Vomar. In addition to lots of water, we mainly chose tasty things that have a long shelf life. And chunks, dry food and cat litter for our cats Jozef and Olga.
Why didn’t we just sit in the living room when there was a threat of war? Or just behind the bookcase like other people do in war situations?
Then we wheeled the full shopping cart to the front door where we took the items to our basement. She asked what I actually expected from our stay in the basement, because why didn’t we just sit in the living room when there was a threat of war? Or just behind the bookcase like other people do in war situations? (She is working on the stripped down version of it Diary of Anne Frank which we bought in the museum shop after a visit to the Resistance Museum). Well, I knew a lot. I grew up with the idea that war is simply uncomfortable and that the danger comes from above, but at the same time this was refuted by the war experiences of my mother who, in her dementia, started to say that it was very smart of her not to be in the basement when her parental home was burned down during the liberation.
“Just in the cupboard,” she said to the housekeeper, which also happened to be where she kept the cleaning products.
While clearing the shelves, the eldest daughter announced loudly that in the event of a threat of war, she would simply remain in her room with an iPad. “You don’t have to look forward to it, I’m not participating. It will be unpleasant.”
In the coming war, the first 72 hours will be the hardest.
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