Leona moved from Rotterdam to a village and back again

“I grew up in a hamlet on the Lek: such a sleeping village that Tommy Wieringa describes so beautifully in his book Joe Speedboot. In the summer we picked cherries, in the winter we skated on the floodplains. The greengrocer wore clogs, the druggist gave you Kokindjes. There were no outdoor and indoor children yet: we were all outdoor children. In short: I had a wonderful childhood. A childhood that I also gave my daughter.

The world seemed to get smaller

Instead, we lived on three floors without a balcony on one of the busiest streets in Rotterdam. It went fine the first time. Mo and I took Zena everywhere with us: we had a subscription to Blijdorp, went to a terrace or to our allotment garden. But as our daughter grew, the world seemed to get smaller.

On the street we couldn’t leave her alone for a second. On hot days we looked jealously at the barbecuing neighbours, who did have a garden. We also increasingly wondered what to do in the city ourselves. How often did we spontaneously go to the movies? We had a top mortgage to live in a city whose joys we barely tasted.

Moving to a village

When Zena was two we decided to put our house up for sale. It was sold within two weeks with a profit of seventeen thousand euros. A few days later we had an option on a dike house in a village 45 minutes drive from Rotterdam. And only ten minutes from Mo’s work – he’s a controller at a healthcare facility. One hundred square meters more for the same price, with a view of the floodplains and a garden of sixty meters deep.

I can still see the bewilderment on my best friend’s face. “Do you realize that you are no longer a village girl but a real city person?” she asked. ‘And that your half-Moroccan daughter will hear in the next twenty years: gosh, how well do you speak Dutch?’ I found her view of the average villager rather narrow-minded and shrugged. And I didn’t want to hear about the other drawbacks either. Okay, we hadn’t included the traffic jam at that 45-minute distance. Okay, I would see my friends less often. We would all survive.

There was only one mother who also worked

A month and a half later we moved into our new house. We put the profits from our old house into a new kitchen. We enjoyed the last days of summer on our very own terrace, watched Zena play in her sandbox and were grateful every day that we never had to lug the Bugaboo up three flights of stairs again. But then autumn arrived and my three months of care leave came to an end.

On my very first working day, I immediately arrived one hour late in the afternoon at the childminder to pick up Zena. The traffic jam had been huge. Everyone in my daughter’s class had a stay-at-home mom. There was only one mom who also worked. I don’t mind if women choose to stay at home with the kids, but the other way around I could count on little understanding if I didn’t have time for the craft morning or the weekly coffee moment.

Read also
‘I can’t wait until we move to the Netherlands again’ >

Homesickness

The village rest also made me nervous. One fine day I lay down in the park with a magazine. Suddenly I realized I was the only one: they use the park here to feed ducks or to cycle from A to B, not to chill. Suddenly I got homesick for city life: for the Turk around the corner with whom I always had a chat, for the roti of our favorite Surinamese eatery, I even missed the annoying tram sounds.

One evening I shared my doubts with Mo who had found his niche. “Let’s look at it for another year,” he suggested. “But then you have to do your best to make something of it.” I did that. We invited the neighbors to dinner, I formed a running group with a few other mothers. Pretty fun, but the homesickness didn’t blow over. And then we saw a TV report about the Oude Westen, a neighborhood in Rotterdam that has been renovated enormously in recent years and where Mo’s parents still live. ‘You see, you can also curb there,’ I started, cautiously. “How happy your mother would be if we…”

Back to Rotterdam

In short: two years after our departure we were back in Rotterdam. We live in a rented house until our new house is finished. We sold the dike house with a loss of ten thousand euros – I don’t include the price of the new kitchen. We have not been on holiday this year, a floor made of concrete cast will not be in it any time soon. I think it’s all fine. We no longer have to pay for childcare because Zena visits grandparents two afternoons a week. We have sold our second car now that I can cycle to work again. And Zena missed her friends in the beginning, but is now completely used to it.

My girlfriend was right, I’m a city person. Happy parents have happy children, I now know. This weekend a friend of Zena’s from the village is coming to stay with us. I think we’re going to chill in the park.”

This article was previously published in Kek Mama.

More episodes from Bank Account? Every Sunday there is a new story on KekMama.nl. Read the previous episodes here.