number 10
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Living in Amsterdam

Arriving in Amsterdam, I was anxious about how she would like my house. Actually, she was a bit disappointed, she later confessed, that it was only a two-room apartment, and not a real house. Nevertheless, she liked the place, although she found it a little bare, without things showing my personal history. Later when she left, she said that the place had looked sinister. Rightaway, she demanded a new bathroom, with a sink and a new shower. I agreed.

The next week we visited my family. My sister was at first opposed to this, because she had spent lots of time with #6. A little to my surprise, my sisters started telling her what a difficult person I was and how awful I could behave. But she just replied by stating: "I love him very much."

The week after that we rented a van and drove to Paris to get her stuff. Back in Amsterdam, we bought a number of closets and within a week all her stuff had found its place in the house. Sorry, apartment. I had written her already that I was difficult in allowing changes to the house, but to my surprise our ideas were quite compatible. Each day the place became more lovely. She renewed lots of things, in the kitchen for example, cleaned the woodwork and the walls, and we also bought a plant. My first plant in more than fifteen years. In the evenings we went out for a glass of wine, or drank a sambuca and smoked a joint. We were very much in love.

When we had done most of the work to install ourselves in the house, we started organizing the marriage. We selected rings. We went to the townhall to register. However, before we could register, she had to get a residence permit and explicit permission to marry from the police. This was a little more difficult than we thought. We had to spent hours of waiting at the police station and the townhall to get the paperwork done. We did it. Just in time to fix the date of the wedding before the summer holidays. This would be the most convenient time to invite the family.

In the second month, she did a ten-day course in Dutch. Learning Dutch was necessary, to be able to find work and to communicate more easily with the people around us. We spoke English with eachother, which was fine at the time, but for my son it was very tiring and sometimes just to difficult. For shopping she did alright, but she was a bit lax and difficult to motivate to learn the language properly.

A few weeks before the wedding, when she got her residence permit, we went to the employment agency, to see if there was any work for her. Again, this was not so easy as we thought. She had to be able to speak Dutch, and take a course before she would have any chance. We got her subscribed, and she would probably have entered a course in the fall. We were well on our way.

We did not see many people. During the day I went to work. When I came home from work, she was usually waiting for me, excited to see me, kissing me everywhere.

She loved the neighbourhood, with all the little shops, terraces and people on the street. "Everybody seems to have vacation", she often said. "Except me", I used to say. The weather was lovely that period, and many times we went out to have a drink. Saturdays we went to the market to do the shopping. After that we drank a coffee or a beer. I loved that. We enjoyed life and eachother. During the week she did all the shopping and all the domestic chores as well. I had a luxury life. Living together was beautiful.

There was one incident, that proved to be important later on. It was friday evening. We were out of money, so we went to the cash machine, together. When I had to type my PIN code, she was looking over my shoulders. I was reluctant to type the code. She felt I didn't trust her. She was upset. I apologized for my behavior. I did not expect her to abuse my card, but I felt uncomfortable with giving my code away. I know I made an error. It is one of the things she could not forget, that she criticized me for later. She may have been right about my attitude, but I was willing to change that, gradually.

Having lived a life as a solitaire for so long, it was quite a thing to learn how to share. The incident is an example of where I had a problem of allowing someone on what I considered as 'private space'. More in general, money, and how to deal with money was a problem.

When I met her, I had quite some money on my savings account. Going to Paris and New York, buying tickets for our holidays, buying the furniture, things for the house, a new shower, the preparations for the wedding, and in general our way of living, made my reserves disappear quickly. Since also her allowance from Paris stopped when she applied for her residence permit, our financial situation became a bit tight. I am used to having little money. In such a case, I just start living more economical. My worries about money, however, gave her a feeling of guilt whenever she bought something or, for example, even when she finished the last piece of cheese. But to be honest, it showed on my face. It wasn't my intention to restrict her, but just to be careful.


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