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I share my stories with everyone who wants to read them. I can only make sense of life and all that entails by writing. Stories are what set us apart as a species. Stories are passed on with a purpose. They help us all evolve. Support me by becoming a paid member.
It wasn’t something new. Maybe it was nostalgia. A longing for the days of my childhood. Where I would climb out of my bedroom window, seeking secret adventures. Spending hours wandering, quietly rejoicing in the knowing that no one else knew exactly where I was. Picking wildflowers on my way back, to appease my mother’s concerned anger on coming home. The days when my father’s volatile temper suffocated our house, and the only way was out. Out there somewhere. Anywhere. Where I would dig a hole between roots and fall asleep in the embrace of a tree.
My mother used to call me feral. Attempting to brush my hair was daily torment, probably even more for her than for me. Cutting my nails was a chore she eventually abandoned, letting me chew them off with my teeth. From the moment I embraced the word “No” she knew it was better for all of us to just let me run wild. Accept I would come home with twigs in my hair and holes in my trousers, from climbing trees and building huts. When looking for me, she learned to look up, as I was likely hiding in a tree.
I was born by the sea and my parents would take us to the beach whenever possible, where we played, built bonfires, and learned how to swim. I was a great swimmer with one major “flaw”. I would only swim underwater. My mother would sit on the shore scanning the water to see when and where I would come up for air. The only time I would stay on the surface was when I just lay on my back and let the water carry me. It wasn’t until we moved to the East of the country that I found out this wasn’t the way we were supposed to swim.
At my new school swimming lessons were an obligatory part of the curriculum, which in a country like the Netherlands made sense. As I didn’t have any official swimming diplomas, on our first school trip to the pool, I was sent to the peddling pool. I felt offended. And confused. How could I go under in knee-deep water? I tried and scraped my knees on the rough surface of the bottom of the pool until it bled and spent the remainder of the swimming lesson in the dressing room, wrapped in a towel while the teacher bandaged my knees.
My mother managed to persuade both the schoolteacher and the swimming instructor to allow me in the main pool, promising them I wouldn’t drown. Not quite reassured the swimming instructor brought out what looked like a giant dentist hook and locked it around my head to keep it above water. I had found this experience a little too traumatic, so my mother took me to private swimming lessons, and I could get my first swimming diploma as quickly as possible.
With the letter A stitched onto my bathing suit as proof I could swim, I returned to the pool with my classmates. The exam for the B swimming diploma required swimming underwater for a minimum of seven meters. Something most of the other kids struggled to do. I jumped in, swam the entire length of the swimming pool underwater, and climbed out the other end. I finally felt avenged.
Luckily, on holidays I still had the sea. We had our boat. Once my father had traded our seven-meter small sailing boat for a 21-meter barge, we no longer had to pay attention to the tides. Flat bottomed, we could just wait for the water to retreat, and the boat settled on the sand. This would be my cue to jump off with a bucket and fishing net. Catching shrimp was like shooting ducks in a barrel. Left behind by the sea, I could just scoop them up from the shallow puddles they got stuck in.
The euphoric pride on returning to our barge with my bucket filled to the brim with shrimp would quickly fade once my mother put a pan on the stove and threw the live shrimp into the boiling water. I lifted the lid, whispered I am sorry, and sat on deck staring at the bottom of the sea, waiting for the water so I could throw the remainder of the shrimp back. I couldn’t quite stop my urge to forage and fish, but always felt I was taking too much and boiling a creature alive was just too cruel.
My brother and I went fishing regularly, and even though I love eating fish, whenever we didn’t manage to actually catch anything, I secretly felt relieved. When one of my cousins took up fishing too but came back from the pond in the local park, hysterically crying and clutching a distraught duck he had accidentally caught using bread as bait, I decided that fishing was no longer for me.
When one of my cousins took up fishing too but came back from the pond in the local park, hysterically crying and clutching a distraught duck he had accidentally caught using bread as bait, I decided that fishing was no longer for me.
I went from being one with the natural world around me to feeling like an intruder. I developed a relationship with it that became based on guilt. The first time I interfered, with detrimental results, was when a childhood friend and I discovered a nest of baby birds in a hedge. Half-naked and with their little yellow beaks wide open, huddled together in that small nest, we took pity on them. And went to look for worms. We tore them into tiny pieces and fed them to the birds.
Convinced that this was our good deed for the day we ran home, excited to tell my parents all about it. My father immediately fell into a cold fit of rage and told us “You stupid girls, you have just killed them!”. My friend was sent home, I was sent to my room without supper where I wept into my pillow until it was soaked with tears. I hadn’t saved anything, I had murdered innocent baby birds, who would now be “covered in our human stench” and “for sure rejected by their mother.” And starve to death.
We never went back to the hedge to check if my father had been right. For days I wrecked my brain to see if I could remember having touched the birds, while dangling the pieces of worms. I couldn’t. Eventually I consoled myself by thinking that maybe the stench would have wafted away by the time the mother had come back and all would be well.
Photo by Lotty Rammelt: Kaatje in de bedroom window
When years later a large flock of rooks settled into the big oak tree behind our house, I felt I was given a chance to make amends. Every spring one or two baby birds would fall, or get kicked, out of the nest. And every spring I would make a fierce attempt to save them. First, they would be kept in a cardboard box lined with a towel and placed in front of the gas heater in the kitchen. Those who lived long enough would then move into the improvised cage my mother had fashioned from an old kitchen cupboard and some chicken wire.
Every morning I would head down to the kitchen with a knot in my stomach, shooting up silent prayers, hoping they hadn’t died overnight. They all did. Except Ka. This scruffy little creature was my loudly yelling saving grace. Even though he had firmly imprinted on my mother, he accepted me as his second best, a role I took on with earnest conviction. Pocket money was spent on ground-up dried maggots to feed him, and any free minute of the day was spent with Ka.
During one of his feeding times Ka took a tumble off the kitchen table. I had walked away to add extra water to the dried maggots and Ka had followed me. My first solution was to start feeding him on the floor, so he couldn’t fall. I then realised. He is a bird. He needs to learn how to fly.
Photo by Lotty Rammelt: Feeding Kaatje bug porridge
How do you make a bird spread his wings? I started putting him on things that were higher than me, then call out to him, to encourage him to come to me. He refused and would just yell, hopping around hysterically, until I came to get him. He liked sitting on my shoulder and get carried around, but he needed to find is own way. “You are a rook,” I told him, “Not a Pirate’s parrot.” I don’t remember how I came up with the idea, but I took Ka outside. I put him on a broom and lifted it a little higher off the ground. Then I yanked it away as quickly as possible. Ka flapped about a bit clumsily, but it was a start.
He took to this daily practice as a fun game for us to play, jumping eagerly onto the broom as soon as I took it out. Bit by bit we went higher and higher, until one day he hopped off the lifted broom onto a branch of the pear tree. There he sat, like a real bird in a real tree. Then, he refused to come down. He didn’t want to hop back onto the broom, he didn’t let me pick him up. Eventually I gave up, lay down under the pear tree and closed my eyes. I was startled by the sound of flapping wings and then felt him land safely on my belly.
This became our new ritual. I would lift and aim the broom at places he could hop onto. Various trees around the garden, the roof of the garden shed, he would come down from anywhere, providing I would offer him the soft landing of my belly. The day came where he no longer needed the broom and flew up all on his own. Which made me proud, but also dread the day he would also no longer need my belly. Because once he could fly and land alone, that meant, he could fly away.
The day came where he no longer needed the broom and flew up all on his own. Which made me proud, but also dread the day he would also no longer need my belly. Because once he could fly and land alone, that meant, he could fly away.
One entire summer Ka followed us around everywhere we went. He came along on visits to the neighbours and to the village fair. Hiding in the clocktower of the church he would await my mother’s arrival home from work at four every afternoon. As soon as she stepped off the bus he would come flying and settle on her shoulder and they would come home together.
Time came for Ka to re-join his other, non-human, flock. He started disappearing for hours on end, no longer needed to be fed and rarely slept inside. Hours became days, until he would only occasionally come into the garden to say hello. I tried very hard not to worry about him while he was gone, and trust that Ka was ready for his life a rook. I have no idea why, but after Ka left, we never found another baby bird under the oak tree.
I grew up, grew may hair and grew my nails. I became a city girl and left for London, where apart from the occasional picnic on Hampstead Heath or a quick trip to Brighton, there was not much space in my life for the sea, or trees. For about two decades I entertained no concept of what nature meant to me. I don’t think I even owned any house plants.
Walks returned, mostly as a necessity, after two radical abdominal surgeries knocked me sideways. Circling around the garden behind my parents’ house, where I stayed during my recovery, my mother viewed me like a bear in a cage and decided to release me into the wild again. I was perfectly content pacing in between the Buddha statue and my stepfather’s carefully cultivated flowerbeds. But she thought not.
We explored the fields of heather in full bloom, regularly resting on the wooden benches along the way. As I became more mobile, we started going off the tracks and into the woods. When I moved into a small apartment in a village near my parents, every day I went on walks alone. My motivation to venture out, had nothing to do with the idyllic countryside that surrounded me. I wasn’t pulled back in by old oak trees or dense bushes hiding birds’ nests. I felt myself gravitating towards a pile of giant stones.
Up in the North of the Netherlands, in the province of Drenthe, are the ancient burial grounds of the Hunes. The stones they were built with originate from even further North and are thought to have been pushed down by the layers of ice, that covered the earth 150.000 years ago. The burial grounds, called hunebeds, themselves date back to 4000-3000 B.C.
The road they had travelled, through gravity and a force greater than them, combined with their longevity gave me a new perspective on life. “My” hunebed was enclosed by a circle of pine trees, which perfectly framed the sky when I lay on top of my favourite stone. I would lay there, listening to the birds, to my own breath, contemplating my newly imposed expiration date.
“My” hunebed was enclosed by a circle of pine trees, which perfectly framed the sky when I lay on top of my favourite stone. I would lay there, listening to the birds, to my own breath, contemplating my newly imposed expiration date.
Although nobody said it out loud, unless I did, I wasn’t expected to survive my dual cancer diagnosis. The words “palliative care” in my medical file had made this abundantly clear. Where the first one detected, an adeno carcinoma of the uterus, left a lot of room for optimism about available treatment, when the second one presented itself, a very rare sarcoma subtype called PEComa, both the treatment plan and the optimism got cancelled.
When a tree first appeared on my horizon again, it came in the shape of a Sicilian lemon tree. I have a lifelong obsession for the scent of the Sicilian lemon, which to me to this day is the closest thing to perfection I know. Not being able to escape thoughts of my end being near, I had asked my best friend Kevin if he would be willing to face that with me. “Sure,” he said after a brief pause, “On the condition we go on holiday first.”
I don’t know if it was Kevin’s irresistible Irish lilt or my intense longing for Sicilian lemons, but I agreed to it, and we made it there. In between my existential fear fuelled panic attacks we went to the beach. There splashing in the waves, with my battered and bruised body twice its usual size due the lymphedema, I experienced what it was like to be happy again, for the first time since hearing the words “There is no cure.” Then, wandering around the tiny island of Favignana, we stumbled upon a lemon orchard, and picking a lemon straight from the tree, burying my nose in it, for a split second I thought “Maybe I am ready to die.”
I didn’t. So, there is no way of knowing, yet, if I would have been able to maintain that level of bliss and peace right up until the end. Because my end kept being postponed. I obediently showed up for my six-monthly scans, until after five years the risk of radiation related trouble became too high. By then I had already survived the most generous prognosis, twice over. Besides, my oncologist was about to retire, and I had no interest in sharing the “watch and wait” approach with anyone but him. With his blessing I cut myself loose as a cancer patient, and as he ordered “went on to live my life.”
Once death stopped hovering on my doorstep, I returned myself to the wild. No longer willing to meet expectations or abide by the law of time, I simply wandered off. I needed to live surrounded by something I can be in awe of. Which I do now, on the edge of a forest, with nothing in between myself and the trees but the river. The little river that runs at its own pace, never pushed, or pulled, and which sings me to sleep through my bedroom window.
If I was to wander back into the woods, what better place to seek refuge than Transylvania. The land that literally owes its name to vast forests, covering hills, creeping up on mountains and sheltering an abundance of wildlife. The bears that trail along my garden fence. The lynxes who are shy to show themselves, which sparks the desire to spot one even more. It may seem strange to move away from loved ones, after all this. But maybe I have just finally come home.
The light that won’t sit still, not even for a second. Whatever I see will never be seen, or unseen, ever again.
My grandfather was the son of a forest ranger. During the second world war they had joined the resistance and spent months hiding in the woods, living off nature. Grand dad didn’t have time for my sensitivities.
The fried ants. I can’t remember their taste or structure. They were only fried and eaten to prove a point. That they could be.
When I first met with my end of life counselor she equalled my predicament – a terminal cancer diagnosis- to being in the autumn of my life. I have a strong and sentimental attachment to storybook seasons. The picture-perfect ones, illustrated by bursting blossoms, turning sunflowers, fat chestnuts and carrot nosed snowmen. Autumn is harvest, but how do you harvest when caught in the clutches of mortal fear? When the only way through winter is the deep longing for, and implicit promise of spring.
On video calls my mother will still sometimes enquire when was the last time I brushed my hair. These days, long estranged, my father paints giant canvases full of wildflowers and feeding grounds of wild boar. He probably never even knew I was ill.