17. The welfare allowance

The garden needs work, but it's raining cats and dogs. At least that doesn't have to be done today. How ordinary my house feels. My room, the colour of the window frames, the garden, the dripping bushes, the grass with the daisies. Just mine, my home. Sometimes I sense my parental home in this house. It feels like home in the old days, when as a lazy teenager I would lie dreaming in the window sill and the sun would draw shadows on the terrace. The smell, the warmth. Longing for those carefree times.

 

For the moment I have the place to myself. Jan has gone to the UWV (Employee Insurance Agency) with Peter. Ingeborg has not yet returned from school. She has probably gone home with her best friend after school. Just another hour. Then everyone will probably drop in again. Then I have to start thinking about dinner. What can I tell you in an hour?

Jan is home on leave and then he takes over certain tasks. Which is lovely. Peter has to get a state benefit. He is almost nineteen so now we have to pay health care premiums for him. We do this gladly, but my devoted sister Lucia pointed out to me that he cannot forever live at our expense. He must build up an independent life. A state benefit should be a start. My heart bleeds, but it has done so for years. Sometimes it pours. I was so convinced that my children would turn out well. My beautiful, sweet, intelligent children. I don't know anymore what I can do to turn the tide.

 

A few weeks ago, Peter and I went to social services for a social security allowance. We were sitting opposite a rather blunt man who wanted to know from Peter why he had left school without a diploma. Peter felt overwhelmed by this question. He remained silent, bowing his head in a way that I had seen him do more often lately. His face was gone, hidden. At the last visit to the psychiatrist he’d done the same. I had to do the talking for him because he didn't say anything. But when we stood outside half an hour later, he screamed his lungs out in the car park. He ran around like a wild man. With his fists pressed against his temples, now and then punching them. I was shocked but apathetic at the same time. Sometimes I find it simply too difficult to feel compassion for my child. Sometimes I want to cry even harder myself. ‘Worrying about your child (...)’, I hear my granny. Is this what she meant when she tried to explain to me how she managed to bear the grief of losing her little daughter? That the grief about your child is too heavy to be able to feel for your child? I can't imagine it when I think of my dear grandmother. She could feel. She felt too much. Do I feel too much? And am I done with it all? Am I weak? When my child was acting up like that, for a moment I felt nothing at all. I was shocked, but I felt nothing. I didn’t understand his panic. I tried to ask him about it later, but he wouldn't talk about it. Pretended that nothing had happened. 'It was nothing. What are you talking about?’ Now I think it was just too confrontational for him. His situation is too confronting for him. Most of the time we just pretend it's not there. Only with the psychiatrist, then it all has to come out in the open. And now with the welfare officer. I didn't tell the man everything. I played it down, because I had learned to spare Peter.

 

Social security was a difficult thing. Peter would have to work. There was an obligation to apply for jobs and recently a new law was introduced, called the Participation Act. If you couldn't work, you had to do voluntary work. The elderly civil servant was rather cynical about it. ‘Didn't you see the Prime Minister on TV, when he announced that law? If you can't work, you can wash our coffee cups, can't you?’ No, I hadn't seen it. I don't watch much television these days.

‘But if you don't think your son can work, you might consider applying for a Wajong benefit. Although it's not so straightforward anymore that you can get one. Not even with a disability.’

He gave us some forms. Peter didn't want to hear about it. ‘I'm not crazy', he said. 'I'm sure to get my diploma one day.’

 

I hear the car on the driveway. How would it have gone? In the corridor upstairs is a window where I can see them getting out of the car. I see them talking to each other. It looks neutral. At least that's something. Peter is not upset and they seem to be having a normal conversation. Shall I stay upstairs for a bit? I sit down at the top of the stairs. The front door opens and closes. ‘You should see it, Dad, it's like a movie. You can choose the characters yourself and the outfit...' I can't hear exactly what he is saying. It's about a new game, one that's very beautifully and realistically made, that I allowed him to buy a while ago. I allowed him! Because I can no longer resist such wishes. What does this child have in life? Where can he find enjoyment? From his dreams for the future? No. From his plans for an education? No. From work? No. Friends to go camping with? No. So I support him precisely with that which removes him further and further from society. I can't think of anything better. My child needs to be happy once in a while. What else am I supposed to do? Argue? All day long? I'm arguing with myself now. Within myself. With society, with people who seem to look at me reproachfully. Who seem to think: 'There’s another one. One of those mothers who hasn’t raised her child properly so that now he has to go on welfare. She should have listened to the specialists. There are schools for children like that. It's all so very well organised in Holland.

I shout at them inside myself: 'Shut up all of you! Stupid moronic idiots! Nothing is well organised at all in the Netherlands! There are no specialists at all!’

It's my own defeatism, my guilty feelings battling with feelings of powerlessness.

 

I succeed in going downstairs calmly. They are still talking about the game in the living room. Jan looks at me for a moment. His glance and a small movement with his head tell me enough. No Wajong benefit. I would hear the rest later.

 

In the evening, Sam calls. He's in Spain for six months on an Erasmus grant for his training as an artist. Things work out well for Sam and that always cheers me up. I remember feeling such happiness when he received the scholarship. Sam was so happy too. So happy and so proud. When I am really depressed about Peter, I always think of Sam. He gives me reason to keep holding on. He would be so disappointed in me if I were to be locked up in an asylum, overwrought and screaming. And yet I so much long for that. A little white room. People who take care of me. Am I just weak? I ask myself that all the time. I do hold on. Because I have a child who would blame me if I didn't. Peter wouldn't blame me. He doesn't understand how I can still care for him. That's another reason to hang on. But a desperate one. Sam gives me a happy reason.

‘How is Peter?’, he asks after assuring me that everything is going well and that he has met such a nice Spanish girl. 'I tried to call him the other day but he didn't pick up.'

'He games a lot.'

'Oh.'

'It would be nice if you talked to him Sam. You eventually stopped gaming too right?'

'Yes, because I found something I liked better.'

'Your education.'

'Yes.'

We are both silent.

‘Daddy took him to the UWV today to apply for a Wajong benefit, but he does not qualify. The Participation Act. You know.' I am babbling. How can my twenty-two year old Sam know anything about such things?

‘Haven’t a clue. What is a Wajong benefit?'

‘It's a disability benefit for young disabled people.'

'Disabled?!’ Sam almost shouts. ‘Since when is Peet disabled? That's ridiculous, Mum!’

He startles me. I haven’t got the words to explain it to him.

‘We have to do something, don't we?’ I don't want to cry. But my voice apparently sounds different because Sam says: 'Sorry Mum, I don't want to upset you. But why do you think Pete is disabled?'

'He's eighteen. He has to pay for his health insurance now. There will come a day when we are no longer here, Sam. What's he going to live on then?'

‘Jesus, Mum! It hasn’t come to that yet, has it? He’ll be fine. He just needs some more time. When I'm home I'll spend more time with him.’

‘Oh that's sweet darling. Don't worry about it now. Enjoy your time there! What's the name of that girl you were just talking about?’ I want to hear him being cheerful again.

'Carmen.'

Of course Carmen.

'There's a wonderful opera called that.'

'Haha. Yes, I know. You used to make me listen to it. I knew you would say that!’

‘I'll send you a link to the aria in which Don José sings: Carmen, je t'ai-hai-me. Then you can sing that to her.'

'Mum! I've only just met her!'

'Oh sorry, sorry!' I call out laughing. 'Well, he sings it to her in the nick when she's not even there and she ends up leaving him for someone else, so maybe it’s not such a good idea anyway...'

Sam chuckles. 'And they all die at the end!'

'Oh dear, yes that too!' I cry out, laughing.

I'll think of something else if I want to serenade her!’

And we say our goodbyes cheerfully.