Sitting on a terrace of the, as the folder describes,
Leading Small Hotel Hugenpoet,
under the smoke of Essen.
After a long day.
Was up early, went by car to Goch,
just across the German border from Nijmegen,
for a press conference about the building of the Alfred Jodocus Kwak House.
A holiday house for families with children
troubled by their health.
The house will be, if the money can be found,
on a beautiful location at walking distance of a lake and large forest. Eighteen
houses must be built,
homes shaped like a fan around one ‘biosphere-like house,’
in the form of a huge drop.
Just like the text of Alfred Jodocus Kwak’s favourite song:
“Spetter pieter pater, lekker in het water.
Ga maar vast naar huis, ik kom een druppel later”.
“An educational and ecological example but above all:
for children sensual and realistic”,
a professor explained it at the press gathering.
My thoughts went out to Patricia.
She once wrote me a letter.
“Mister Van Veen, could you come and visit me some time?
I am in the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital in Utrecht.
The doctors say that I don’t have much longer to live.
Would you please come and sing a song for me? I would like that very much.
The girl was so sick she could not live without the help of machines.
“Can you ever go away from here, on holiday?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered,
“if all the things and the people who operate them can go with.”
“Does such a place exist?”
Nobody knew.
I phoned friends, companies, organisations.
If such a place did not exist, then it has to be arranged?
A house where girls like Patricia can enjoy something more essential
than hospital walls and windows with a view on parked cars.
It can be done!
But it would take much longer than the time Patricia had left.
I had to tell her that.
She looked at me with surprise in her eyes, took my hand,
and, as only mothers can, gave it a squeeze.
How it happened, I don’t know.
But when our “Columbine House” was opened,
against all odds, Patricia was our first guest.
Yet sadly died on her first night in our holiday house.
Thought of her today, while the men where talking.
I hope that the beautiful new house in Goch,
will not be too late for another child.
For more information: www.alfredjkwakstiftung.de or www.hermanvanveenfoundation.nl