“Soon two boys will call me daddy, I can fill up with that idea”

Image: Vannessa Timmermans and private

Bingo

“Around the age of forty I thought I had to let go of my desire to have children, until my sister-in-law introduced me to acquaintances of hers; Marjolein and Celine. They wanted children. “You need to go and chat,” my sister-in-law said. We did that, for a year and a half, to get to know each other. It continued to feel good from both sides, so we decided to go for it.

The process was special: I gave a jar with content, they set to work with it. As an actor and singer, I work all over the country, but we had to see each other on the fertile days. I was standing somewhere in the theater again and then they came to get the jar. It hit the sixth attempt.”

He’s there

“Ian’s birth is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced. The midwife said, “Where are his first clothes?” Then I realized that a person had really been born and that from now on there would be four of us.”

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Never thought

“Ian is eighty percent of the time with his mothers, twenty percent with me: he comes one day every week and every two weeks he spends a weekend with me. I never thought of becoming a single father, I always had the ‘perfect picture’ in my head of doing that with a partner, but this was thrown into my lap by the universe. That’s what it really feels like.”

“I hope they know and feel that they can really go to dad day and night.”

Belongs

“Before Ian was born, I sometimes had a panic moment: could I do this, would I be a nice dad? And now that Celine is pregnant and a second son is being added, I have those thoughts again: how am I going to do that with two little ones? But I hear from other fathers that this is part of it. Panic is healthy, apparently. Soon two boys will call me daddy. I can already fill up with that idea.”

Where are you

“I like going on an adventure with Ian. Then we go to the Vondelpark – the forest, he calls it – and we build a hut or a campfire. Recently we went swimming together, he also thought it was fantastic. And he’s in the hiding phase. Then he goes under his duvet and I have to pretend I really can’t find him, and then he makes crazy beeping noises. I can really enjoy that, such cosiness.”

rant

“Like all toddlers, Ian sometimes has a tantrum. I’ll let it be like this: ‘You’re in a bit of a pickle, okay. Be nice, I’ll stay here.’ Then I consciously choose not to go along with the angry energy but to remain calm. I am also a master of distraction: I sing a song or make up a story. Then it will be over in no time.”

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