Escape to Amsterdam

Maybe to escape from my mother

I came here, to live in this thin house, in this flat land.

My trunk, packed carefully, stood waiting in our front hall,

to be collected and shipped to Israel.

I'd planned a new life: new language, new friends…

It all turned out quite differently.

You, dear, were a safer bet

than the parched rocks and sneaky snipers,

a war I've never wanted,

in a land I didn't want to call my own.

So when you said "I love you", I pulled out a new map,

and began to study dykes, canals, and square fields.

Wonders of engineering you introduced me to,

and charmed me with your type of humour,

telling me of Hendrickje the cow who sailed to Alkmaar,

dreaming of freedom and the cheese market there.

So it never became bright azure skies with eagles hovering on wide wings,

instead —clouds seen upside-down in grey-brown waters

rippled by chilly winds.

Then the first snowflakes, and St. Nicolaas on his tall white horse

the children yelling for sweets

while toddlers gazes entranced.

Children: here I digress.

I chose you (I know now) to father my children;

hormones surging through my blood

filling my breasts with dreams of milk

before the slightest dreams of birth,

before you juggled with the name "father"

or contemplated such responsibility.

Today, many years on, I feel both shame and wonder.

Please forgive me.

So urgent and so simple my longing to be a mother…

Between us so many tears, and silences, and empty places

where we hung, waiting…

Today, our children grown, and in their own homes

I clear the dusty shelves

Find a notebook I kept when pregnant with our son

Read my old words:

How little I dared know about myself.