Christmas is approaching, we will meet in Amsterdam at the end of this week. They cannot find it at first, but once they have arrived, they will thunder through the new house like a silent herd. My children will stare at my brother’s artificial eye again and ask if they can walk with his cane.
Last year, Leah van Roosmalen (7) said: “It’s really a shame for us that you don’t have an assistance dog.”
Everything now feels like a long time ago, the same stories are getting better and better, the gloom of the past has now been overtaken by reality. My father was twenty years ahead of Trump, he always warned about the Chinese after two wines, that was the absolute tax.
We’re not talking about politics.
The past is the only overlap there is.
My father was twenty years ahead of Trump, he always warned about the Chinese
We never come to Velp again, but when we do accidentally get there we send each other photos of Kosterijland, as if we can’t believe the house is still there. The front garden, in which I can still see my mother working – when I visualize her she is either in the kitchen or crouched in a light blue dress in the front garden – and with which she came third twice in the front garden competition, has now been replaced by a lawn with bedsores.
The petty bourgeoisie.
The massive car washing on Saturday, the silence on Sunday, the huge explosions on New Year’s Eve. Recently after a performance the old neighbors of number 8 were standing in the foyer, I was surprised that they were still alive.
They had babysat once in the early eighties, when my parents went on holiday to Drenthe independently for two days. Later they would go to Prague again, where my father used a cassette recorder to record everything the guide said on the bus. He then combined that with slides.
I believe that during that performance we shouted swearing and ranting that Christmas could be even more boring, and that we opened the curtains after ten minutes.
“It was also very long-winded, Wil,” said my mother, never shy about telling my father off.
I can already draw it out completely.
The quick, silent eating.
Exchanging memories that have come with it.
I found two more folders with photos from my mother’s fiftieth birthday, she is smoking in each photo, there was a doll in the garden, my father gave her a clothes rack.
Then another walk, just a little too long, too far and too cold.
Still looking forward to it.