What have you done with the Child?

                                                    

Aukje dropped a couple of oranges, a few chocolate bars, and two dried sausages in her daughter’s large weekend bag.  Each time when her girl took off again after her days off, there was a surprise from mom between the clothes.  Well, okay, they both played a part in the game.  In the evening, the telephone would be sure to ring with Femke’s thanks for the goodies.
Now she came rushing down the stairs.  “What time is it, do I still have time for a cup of tea?  De bus won’t wait, of course.” There was just enough time.
“How about Christmas, are you going to be able to come home?” her mom asked.
“I do have off; I have to work both old and New Year’s.  To be honest, I’ve told Aart and Bram that they’re invited to eat with Guy and me on Christmas Day.”  She followed up with a hesitant: “Otherwise they can come with us over here, if that’s okay with you.”
“Who are Aart and Bram?”
“Two of my students.  Bram has no family and Aart’s parents kind of abandoned him.  He’s 18, but he won’t advance beyond the age of twelve.  On top of that, he always wets himself at night.  I’m not sure you’re up to that, mom.”

Aukje thought about her nice, clean beds.  A big strange fellow like that and then wetting everything!  Her daughter always did something weird like that.  Still, at Christmas time one really should do something for another and that’s why she said mildly: “Your friends are welcome here and we’ll manage with the bedding.  We will celebrate in our own way, of course.  A tree and something extra with the coffee and the dinner.”

She remembered last year when Femke called and asked how they had spent the day.  She hardly took time to listen to her mom, because she was so full of her own experiences of the day.  A group of twenty, all colleagues and friends.  One had put twenty-five guilders on the table. The meal consisted of stamppot, sauerkraut, and for each a small slice of sausage, and with the coffee a small piece of coffee cake.
“We had a good time, mom.”  She could still hear her say it.  The money that was left they sent to a children’s home in Brazil.

“I have to go and I’ll let you know what we’re going to do.”

Aukje walked along to the bus stop and waved her daughter goodbye.

Full of thoughts she walked back to the house.  What would Folkert say when they’d sit in church with three total stangers?  Guy, Femke’s friend, had been over only once before.  They couldn’t understand him.  Femke translated and so they really didn’t have a conversation with him.  He did his best to learn Dutch.  That wasn’t easy when you only know Portuguese and a bit of English.  Fortunately he could play a little chess, with Folkert winning both games, so that helped some.

The girl had been in a good mood lately.  But she could come up with some strange reactions.  To mom’s suggestion that they spend an afternoon at Klaske’s, the other daughter, she had reacted mockingly: “Sure, let’s make the rounds of admiring Klaske’s house, garden, and kitchen.”

The two little girls of Jurjen and Klaske had had a lot of fun with aunt Fem.  She really knew how to give them a fun time.  To the other children she seemed different.  That was no doubt because she worked with the handicapped in the big city.  City life in Utrecht was a lot different from life in a small village.

Lately she took offense at nearly everything.  When dad said that the foreigners had landed in the butter here, she could retort sharply.  “Didn’t those poor wretches have a right to a better life?  To shelter and freedom?” 
Don’t say anything, Aukje thought, that’s how they could maintain a little peace.  She could easily put up with that for a couple of days.

She, Aukje, had made excerpts from books which Femke had to read for her exam.  Needlework was the most difficult course for the girl, but mom was always in the background and had managed to help Femke get a good mark.  And now, she had so much trouble to simply let the child go her own way.  Sometimes she would get one reproach after another flung at her.
“You want me to become a duplicate of you and Klaske.  Marry a nice boy from the town and a year later push a child in a stroller.  And you knitting socks and jumpers.  Yuk!  Yuk!!  I don’t think it’s responsible to bring children into this dirty, miserable, egotistical, racist, and whatever I can think of besides, kind of world.”
Aukje was thinking that it would get better with time.  When she’d meet her true love, who knows but that she would change.  That it had to be that Guy fellow, Aukje could not really take seriously.  She would just have to wait.

And indeed a telephone call came from Femke.  She and Guy would come in the afternoon before Christmas Day and would stay one night.  The other two boys declined and would be taken care of by colleagues.  Aukje didn’t mind that one bit.  Now they would be more or less with their own.

In the morning they went to church well in time.  The church towers sent their happy celebration sounds across the village.  The church filled up.  The choir was already seated in front of the pulpit and the grand Christmas tree beamed its light over the congregation.
It was a beautiful, joyous service.  The people that walked out with them afterwards were in complete agreement.  The choir had sung the Christmas cantata so beautifully.  And the soloists, they gave you the shivers.   Femke and Guy walked silently along with them, arms tightly around each other.

But once they were home, she exploded: “So, you found it beautiful!  Not I!  I asked myself: what have the people done with the Child who was born two thousand years ago.  Who for three years showed the people how to treat their neighbor.  You can read it every day in your Bible.  And what do they do here in church?  They’re turning it into a big sweet chocolate truffle, that’s what I thought of it!  Nice singing, some nice poems, and a sermon about peace and love.  Where do we find that today?  Peace?  Do you know what’s happening in the world today?  All those refugees without shelter, warmth, or food?  No, they don’t know about that in this little hamlet.  Dad told us yesterday at least three times that he painted aunt Aal’s kitchen.  Isn’t that great!  My, my, what you don’t do here for another.”
Aukje looked anxiously at Folkert.  His face turned red, the veins stretched taut, and yes, there it came.  “You and your big mouth!  Are you going to read us the riot act here?  Shouldn’t it be up to us what we like?  This is where we live and relate to the people around us.  You….”
 “Oh sure, stay comfortable in your little corner and let others starve.”

Then Guy pulled her with him out of the room.

“Couldn’t you bite your tongue for once, you just spoiled our holidays.”
“Oh of course, you always want to keep the peace, but I’m not going to let me be told off in my own house.  Glad they didn’t take a couple of dim-witted bed wetters along.  That’s all we needed.”
“Quiet, they’ll be able to hear it!”
“So?”  Folkert grabbed the paper and Aukje got busy in the kitchen.  The beautiful church service was now entirely forgotten.  They drank their coffee silently.

Close to twelve the door opened quietly and there stood Femke on the threshold with a tear streaked face.  “Guy tells me I have to apologize.  He says…you live here, it’s different than by us…you lived through the war…had a business, the household, I don’t have the right to…. Each has to take care of the place where he’s settled, Guy says.”
Ït’s okay, dear,”Aukje says warmly, “come in, your stomach must be growling by this time.”

At first, dad doesn’t say much, but in the late afternoon Guy won the chess games.  Or…uh…did Folkert let him win?

Together they brought the young folk to the bus around seven o’clock.  The goodbyes were good, but at the same time a relief.  Aukje didn’t like to have it this way, wasn’t it after all your own child?  But on the inside she felt that the girl was becoming estranged.
They still took a walk through the quiet neighborhood.  In corners and in gardens, also on people’s yards and in almost all the homes lights burned in the Christmas trees.  Light, peaceful light.  In their house it had stormed seriously for a while.  They would not soon forget it.
When they entered their own street again, Folkert said: “Not such a bad boy, really, that Guy, though he’s a foreigner.  I’m thinking all the time what the girl threw at us: What have you done with the Child in those two thousand years?  She is right, we have done nothing with it.”     

                       -Wytske Bakker; my translation from the Frisian