Monday 2 september 1957

At long last, after a long summer holiday and impatient waiting, the first school day was there, the most important day of my life, I believed.

I already had my chocolate milk inside me at seven thirty and this I did without spilling one single drop on my new clothes. Not because grandmother warned that something waited me if I dared to get dirty. No, I avoided spots and stains because it was not a bad idea to arrive in the “big school” clean and well dressed, question of making some kind of an impression, I thought.

In general I did not care too much of what grandmother wanted from me, she always ate my mind anyway, one way or the other and that I was going to get on my thunder if I managed to get myself dirty, went with me one ear in the other out, even when I knew very well that it was better for my lower back and limbs, not to ignore grandmother’s words simply like that.

In the kitchen, between the back door and our tiny little pump house cum bathing room, we had a built in closet with a light green door. On the left side wall, inside this tiny space, there were some wooden shelves. Grandfather put them there many years before I was born, to keep grandmother’s needle work and everything that had something to do with it. The highest shelf just under the ceiling, for which I had to transform myself into an acrobat to reach, was reserved exclusively for the monopoly and other board games.

We were allowed to play with these family board games only when it rained and with an adult present, to make sure that none of the pieces got lost, because there was already a shortage. Specially the money of the monopoly could be used for more than just the game it was made for. And I believed that it was grandfather who got away with the dices. I even saw my brother one day taking wooded pieces of the checkerboard to his friend Marcel. So me and my brother were warned by grandmother more than once, in wordings not easy to misunderstand, that we had to keep our claws far away from this particular shelf.

Against the right wall, of this peek dark closet hung our jackets, grandmother’s kitchen aprons decorated with tiny flowers, grandfather’s blue work clothing and brown dust coats on big black metal hooks over each other. The first hook in front was reserved for grandfather’s old brown leather belt and that alone.

If we, in grandmother’s opinion, were making life hell or when we dared to come home stinking like pigs, which, honestly spoken, happened more than was healthy for me and my backbone, came the belt above water. With this leather belt grandmother could keep her hands free of pain and dirt, something she loved repeating till doomsday, in a manner of speaking.

The most virulent beating I could avoid by jumping under the kitchen table and crawling very fast in small circles on my hands and knees. This way the robust table legs were getting more of the spanking than I did.

More than once grandfather complain to his beloved wife that she was beating all the varnish off the table legs and that he did not see it, to revarnish the scarred legs every year again. But madam did not listen to grandfather at all, because grandmother saw him not much at home, dealing with two brats like she had to.

In course of time, I, being one of the two brats, invented more than one trick to reduce the red streams on my thighs and bums to an acceptable minimum. Like for example, by not hanging my overcoat on the clothes hanger in the hallway immediately on returning home, in the hope that by keeping the coat on, I will not feel the impact of the hits grandmother distributed, when she felt once again the need to teach me some lesson.

And specially, when the last beating left such a deep impression that I still remembered it when I woke up in the morning, I dared to wear without anybody knew, two knickers over each other as a kind of extra protection. But it has to be said that I never had much on this, because it seemed that the days I prepared myself well, the leather belt stayed in the closet. It should not surprised me, if the witch did it on purpose.