I am five years old. In the morning early before school we wake up in the dark, walk a short distance over the bridge to the cafe where our Volkswagen Beetle is stalled. My father, my two brothers, and me. My mother stays at home. We drive to the swimming pool on the Haarlemmerstraat in town. It’s quite odd that it used to be a church, and that the children’s pool (‘kikkerbadje’) is exactly where the altar once was.

Now I am in it. I have to learn to swim, and so my father puts me in a safety belt that is attached to the ceiling. There I lie flat in the water. What am I supposed to do? I nearly drown or so it feels. I am the only one in the small pool. Then I step out of the water, and watch the large pool where all the others are having fun. They can swim, of course. They play tag, dive from the high platform, and have fun. I feel cold and shiver whilst looking at them.

It’s not a big surprise then that I did not learn to swim, and actually became more afraid of water. I remember going to the sea often, a cycle of ten kilometers, and feeling frightened by the grey water and the high waves. I hardly ever went in deeper than my knees.

On holidays I had to try with my mother, who had never learned to swim. We managed to do a few strokes in the undeep part of the lake. Once my father urged my mother to swim to the other side of a small Italian lake. Both shores were shallow, but it was deep in the middle. My mum obliged and began to swim. In the middle, however, she stopped to feel the bottom, and when she couldn’t stand, she sank. My father jumped in and pulled her out of the water. Later she said: ‘I felt peaceful. My only thought was that you and the children had to go home alone.’

Finally, in the last year of primary school, when I was twelve years old, I suddenly had a break through. A kind swim instructor came to my rescue. He put a long hook under my belly and guided me through the water. I learned to swim very quickly. What a relief!

In highschool lessons continued and to my surprise I was asked if I would like to join the local swim team, called the ‘Golfbrekers’ (wave breakers) because I was such an elegant swimmer. I joined the team and my training programme began. Soon I took part in swimming contests as well as water polo matches. I found the long distance contests exhilarating, even though the water was usually very cold. It was fun to be part of it, but I also remember the tedious and endless exercises. My heart belonged to ballet and I loved giving performances. When I left the team at 16, I swore never to swim tracks again. I only wanted to swim for fun.

Do you know what it feels like to be the apple of your parent’s eye?

Well, I was my father’s favourite. It certainly had advantages, but sometimes it was a burden too: feeling obliged to be perfect for fear of losing that privileged position.

My father was very charming when everything went his way. When his anger was aroused, however, this would change. He had strong opinions and found it difficult to understand that not everyone shared them. When I was a child I tried to understand his anger, but I couldn’t apprehend his reaction to things I innocently said in front of him. And I could certainly never forget these incidents.

The first moment was as follows. One day I came home from school and I said to my father: “I love Jesus Christ more than I love you”. As we were a catholic family, I attended the Saint Barbara school. I was rather zealous in my religious convictions and I wanted to pronounce what I had learned. (Once, I even tried to convert the girl next door). It had struck me that what I was taught at school differed a lot from what we were thought at home and I wanted to express my devotion. My father was very angry and condemned my utterance, leaving me upset.

The second one was when I said how privileged I was to have three grandmothers. A rather strange thing to say, as I never had seen the third one. My father’s parents had divorced when he was 15 years old and he didn’t want to see his mother since. He was furious when he heard me say that.

Thirdly, my father was an autodidact and he loved to discuss philosophy with his friends. One time I listened in on their conversation. They were talking about solipsism. Out of the blue I said that I agreed that we were essentially solipsists. The reaction of my father shattered me, when he said: “Women cannot do philosophy. Period.” Had I not been a feminist before, I certainly became one there and then.

Lastly, I had been invited by a friend on a tandem bicycle tour through the countryside and we had had a lovely day. In the evening we went for a drink in the pub. I had never had been in one before. My father had been a teetotaler int the past and in his opinion pubs were bad. When we left the pub, we ran into my parents who were just leaving their friend’s house opposite the pub. What a coincidence! As a consequence, my friend was banned(!) from our house. For the first time, I defied my father’s wishes and kept seeing him. Eventually my recalcitrance won. By Christmas time he was allowed to come around and we married some time later. Have I told you that we have been married for 45 years now?

How uncomfortable is it to feel that one has to do well in an area in which one has no competence whatsoever? My answer is very.

When I was 17 years old, my brother had a friend named Jon. Me and Jon also became friends for a couple of a couple of years. He belonged to a family that played tennis almost every day, all year round. I was invited to join their tennis club (Roomburg), got lessons and played a lot in the afternoons. The club was situated in a nice part of town and it was very close to the home of my friend.

I was not good at tennis at all. I certainly liked being in the open air and I liked sports. But even though I had been participating in swimming and waterpolo competitions, my arms were not strong enough for the game and I also had difficulty with all the running from left to right and from front to back while anticipating where the ball would come from.

The club held tennis competitions in summertime and it was decided that, despite the abyss between Jon’s level and mine, we would pair up in the mixed doubles.

I find it difficult to admit how utterly nervous I was before it started! I was almost shaking when I arrived at Jon’s house. Jon’s mother, who disliked me a lot, came outside and noticing my nerves, handed me a pill that would calm me down. It was Valerian. My mother used it: as a liquid in a little bottle. She would sometimes take some drops when my father made her nervous with his demands and restfullness.

What I remember from the game is how Jon and I were able to gather some odd points, because of his competence and my mad play. Now and then our opponents were thrown off by it. We didn’t win, of course. It was the first and the last tennis competition I ever participated in.

I remember it all very well, even though it is many decades ago. I was 19 years old, a student. Me and my friend K. went to many cultural events together: we saw famous short movies during lunch time as well as performances by the LAK theater, that was housed in the stately building that stood on the most famous canal in town. There we saw The Man with the Flower in his Mouth, written by Pirandello, starring students Rob E. and Peter X. That was, I think, the first time that I heard about the Nobel Price Winner Pirandello, whose plays I would later read (all of them) and see on stage (several of them).

One day K. and I went to an audition that was held in the attic where the LAK theater resided. The floor was filled with young students,who were expectantly waiting for their turn. When I was called, I had to sit in front of all of them and read some sentences. Of course, I do not remember which text I had to read, perhaps I did not know it at that time either. What I do remember, however, is the magic that grabbed me as I started speaking and that cast a spell over the audience. A very strange experience.

I received the news that I was chosen to be part of the comedy De Verwarde Jalousy, written by W.G. Van Focquenbroch (1640-1670) who had been inspired by Moliere’s Sganarelle. As well as the character ( of the student) in Ionesco’s The Lesson, together with Rob E., who was at the time one of the the inspirators of the LAK theater.

I got the script of Focquenbroch’s play, read my part with awe and did not know exactly how to proceed. I had little experience with drama; ballet I was more familiar with. At the first rehearsal, I had a difficult time. Everybody seemed to know how to read their parts, but the intonation of the rhymed verse had to be explained to me line by line. Another thing that happened and that bothered me a lot was the attitude of a young woman, who was not in our play but had starred in other productions. She was nasty to me, f.e. she was always looking at me angrily. Because there were a lot of people around, I soon forgot about her.

The regular rehearsals were hard work, but at the same time I liked it very much. More and more, the part grew on me. My friend K. was involved in making the scenery: pretty 17th century style facades. They had openings in them through which the actors peeped her heads, when they were not performing. A very inventive idea.

The play was a huge success. We went to Wageningen to take part in the Stutofes contest, a nationwide event for amateur students, and won a prize. Later, in the summer, we also went to Zagreb (Yugoslavia) to perform at a festival.

I had heard some rumours that it was Rob who had chosen me, because he wanted to make a pass at me (or so it was said). This explained the nasty conduct of the girl, as she felt rejected by him. And indeed Rob and I did saw each for a while, but as I was a bit terrified of him (he was older than me) and also secretly in love with someone else, it soon ended. Not long after that he got engaged with the girl who had the leading part in Focqenbroch. A much better choice, I think. Hundreds of people came to their lavish engagement party that was held at outside of her father’s factory, which is famous for their household oils (and peanut butter). Later I found out that the engagement was called off.

One day Peter X. came to visit me in my father’s bookshop where I worked and after some small talk, he suddenly bluntly said: “You know, you can’t act at all”. I knew then that I wasn’t going to star in the Ionesco play.

Where are words located within our body? Or sentences, for that matter? They keep coming when we want to talk or write or even when we just want to be quiet. And if they are stored somewhere, how are they stored? Are they all sitting next to each other? Perhaps in the order in which you first heard or understood them? Can we know more about this questions by thinking about it?

What about the words of a foreign language? Are they kept in a different compartment or are they grouped together around a particular concept, for example love (‘liefde’, ‘Liebe’). But then what about ‘amour’, which is a completely different word? I know from experience that when I am speaking German, for some reason I have almost no access to my French vocabulary.

What about this case? As a child at school we had to learn the names of each train station on every railroad in the country. To do so, the teacher pointed at dots on a blind map with a stick and asked us to name the stations, as if we were travelling by train. The route we take frequently now, from Arnhem to Utrecht, has a station (Veenendaal-De Klomp) which name I can never remember. However hard I try. Why is this the case? Should I ask what Freud would make of this?

Then, I recall having a dream in which I was able to converse in a unknown foreign language. Of course, when I woke I wasn’t able to do this anymore. A mystery? Are there perhaps words that do not come up, because you have no use for them?

Another thing to consider is how the first words for objects in the prehistoric age arose and whether the first people were surprised to discover that they could understand each other.

The other day I walked past a front door with the name ‘Kikkert’ written on it in old fashioned lettering. I instantly remembered that this was the name of the pianist, who played at the balletschool I mentioned in my previous post. If you’d had asked me then, I would have said: “Not for the life of me!”