‘My daughter thinks it’s a bit cool that mom works in the navy’

“’Are you putting on your suit?’ Lisa asks when I go to pick her up from school. She thinks it’s a bit cool that mom works in the navy. Or better: ‘sailing on a boat’. I have been at the Zr.Ms. Tromp is responsible for all logistics. I do the personnel and financial administration, but I also check whether all stocks on board are in order, from the screws to the meals.

So far I have been at sea for five weeks, but next year it will be much more frequent: two hundred days, of which four months are continuous. Joost and I have reversed the roles. He also works in the Navy and has been away a lot in recent years, but now has an office position like the one I had. And so he is the one who now, together with my mother-in-law, takes care of the children.

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On adventure

I always cried when he left. Strangely enough, not when I left. It’s different when you go on an adventure yourself. Leaving the children was a bit of a squeeze. On the other hand, letting go of them started very early. Carel was one when Joost and I went on holiday for a week. I am not a mother who holds their hand day and night.

“It’s only four days, isn’t it?” said Carel when I left last year. “I’ll survive that.” He doesn’t have a sense of time yet, Lisa does. With her I put boat stamps on a calendar so she could mark off the days herself. Later Joost told me that I hadn’t even left the house yet when they were already shouting ‘Papa!’ It was reassuring that they switched so quickly. Curious how that will go when I’m away from home longer.

“Sometimes I don’t think until evening in my cabin: how would it be at home?”

Carel is like: if I have to miss Mom, I can enjoy Dad all the more. Lisa is a bit more sensitive, although she never lingers in her grief for long. I myself am so busy with working days of up to fifteen hours that I sometimes only think in the evening in my cabin: how would things go at home?

Apps and dreams

We Facetime every few days. Unplanned, so it’s never a disappointment when I don’t have the time or connection. I then have to show their drawings above my bed and – more importantly – where on the deck the cannon is located. Lisa also sends text messages. We agreed to meet in our dreams, so she recently typed, “Tonight we rode horses together!” Good, I thought, everything is fine there.”

This portrait is in Kek Mama 01-2022.

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