Chapter 9

The next day, Ilse told me that her ass felt a little sore, but she was okay otherwise and happy that I had fulfilled this long time wish of hers.

The rest of Thursday came and went, and before I knew it, it was Friday, and I was getting ready to meet Ilse’s parents. I was a little nervous, but Ilse assured me that I’d do fine. We were supposed to be at her folks’ house at three in the afternoon and stay there for dinner, after which we’d go home again. Normally, Ilse had to take two different buses and a train to get there. If she wanted to be there on time, she’d have to leave at one-thirty. However, since I had a car we could take it easy and leave an hour later. It was only a thirty minutes’ drive by car.

Ilse was very thankful for that since it was always a real hassle to make it to the bus on time. The long wait for the train to arrive was no fun either when you had two young children who wanted to be entertained. It sucked if you had to rely on public transportation when you wanted to travel from one city to another. I recalled how I used to have the same problem when I was a student.

Once you have owned a car, the costs were about the same as those for public transportation while it offered you a lot more freedom of movement. However, public transportation was free for students and when you were on a tight budget you had to make do with what was available. This was especially true when you couldn’t afford to buy a car, let alone pay for the lessons and exams to get a driving license. In the Netherlands, that easily set you back between thousand and two-thousand Euros or even more if you were a slow learner.

Bram and Naomi were happy to visit their grandparents again. They had made many drawings of the animals at the zoo and everything they had seen. They had also made a drawing of the sandcastle I had helped them build on the beach and they were eager to show all their drawings to their grandparents. A day earlier, when I had the digital photos printed, I had extra copies made as well. This way Ilse could give them to her parents.

The drive to her parents was pleasant. Once we got on the highway, it didn’t take me long to reach their city. With Ilse’s help, I located her parents’ house quick enough. They lived in a nice looking row house. It looked to be about the same size as my house from the outside, perhaps a little smaller. It also had a nice garden in front, which looked a lot better than my own front yard. I could see where Ilse got her green thumb. Well, that and she had also told me that her mother loved gardening, which had also cleared up that mystery.

Ilse had also told me that her parents had a large backyard. In fact, it was about twice as large as mine was. It was good to sit there when the weather was pleasant. The kids usually played outside on such days anyway. Unfortunately, it was drizzling now and I doubted that we’d sit in the garden. It appeared that this was a house built about thirty years ago. Ilse had once told me that her parents had moved there when she was very young. Considering Ilse is now thirty-one, that seemed like a good estimate.

Once I parked my car in front of her parents’ house, an elderly woman hurried out of the front door. I guessed it was Ilse’s mother.

Hearing Bram and Naomi yelling “Grandma!” confirmed that though.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, but it could have been a neighbor or a visiting aunt.

Ilse’s mother greeted her grandchildren with a warm hug and gave them a peck on the cheek, after which she welcomed me with the customary three kisses, on my left, right, and left cheek again. Ilse received the same greeting. I shook her father’s hand next, who had also come outside to greet us.

Ilse’s mother ushered us inside after we finished the initial greetings to get us out of the drizzle. Once we were inside their home, she introduced herself as Anna and her husband as Erik.

“Grandma, look at what I’ve drawn!” Naomi yelled excitedly, magically producing several of her drawings.

Naturally, Bram had to show his drawings too. This left me with Erik, since Ilse joined the merry chatting with her mother, telling her of our adventures of the past week. She also showed the photos of the zoo after a proud Bram and Naomi showed Anna their drawings.

Erik offered me a seat and we started chatting about random topics that kept us busy in everyday life. I told him that I worked as an accountant for a large company. I learned that he used to be a public servant before he retired five years ago. Some quick math told me that he was seventy years old. I sensed that he was working up to asking me a question that was really on his mind and I wondered what it could be.

After some more small talk, Erik went quiet for a moment and looked me in the eyes.

“Tell me Tom, just how exactly did you meet my daughter? You seem to lead vastly different lives and you don’t have a lot in common in everyday life.” His bushy eyebrows arched when he asked his question.

I guess that question must have played through his mind for quite a while already.

“Well, through pure coincidence, I guess,” I said, scratching my head while thinking back to that fateful day, several months ago.

“Ilse was standing in line in front of me in the supermarket. It turned out that she had a negative balance in her bank account when she tried to pay with her bankcard. She looked desperate, so I decided to pay for her purchases. Additionally, I gave Bram my pack of chocolate chip cookies and I told him to share it with Naomi. I left a baffled Ilse behind and went home. I don’t think she really realized what happened until after I had left the store. She came running after me and that’s how we got to know each other,” I explained.

“That’s a pretty amazing story, son. I’m trying to support my daughter financially when I can, but we’re living off a small pension ourselves,” he offered, as a way of an apology.

“Don’t worry, I never regretted paying for her groceries,” I replied, with a smile on my face. “In fact, I think it was one of the best things I ever did in my life. Ilse is a wonderful woman and I really like Bram and Naomi too.”

“That’s good to hear,” Erik said, sounding proud.

It wasn’t exactly what he said, as the way that he said it. It felt as if I had received his blessing to continue dating his daughter. We had reached an unspoken agreement. Switching topics, we talked about other things that interested us. It felt good to know that despite my relatively young age he deemed me worthy of his daughter. Call me old fashioned, but I felt a lot better about dating a woman when I had her father’s permission to do so.

Once Anna saw all there was to see, she engaged me in friendly chatter. She wanted to learn all there was to know about me and why I had taken Ilse and the kids to the beach and the zoo. She didn’t accept my simple explanation that it had seemed like a fun thing to do. That woman really knew how to draw information right out of you!

On the positive side, she was a very good conversationalist and quickly made me feel comfortable. I told her that I wanted to do something special for Bram and Naomi and allow them to experience things they had never done before. On top of that, I had figured that it would be good for Ilse to have a break of her daily drag and let her relax for a day too.

I guess I said the right thing because Anna was smiling proudly at me with a twinkle in her eyes. My additional explanation seemed to have earned me her blessing as well and she didn’t seem to care either that I was several years younger than Ilse, or that I had little experience with mature relationships.

“You’re never too old to learn, dear,” she told me, “although you can become too old to remember. Don’t forget that.”

Her little joke made me chuckle. She was a dapper little woman with a talent for putting people at ease.

Ilse helped her mother out in the kitchen, while her father and I kept Bram and Naomi occupied. They were telling their grandfather about all the animals they had seen at the zoo, which quickly switched to the best ways of how to build a sandcastle with a moat. When Erik asked his grandchildren where they had learned such things, I had two little fingers pointing at me. Erik nodded thoughtfully and gave me a strange look for a moment. It felt as if he saw me in a new light and regarded me with more respect.

When I had to visit the bathroom, I eavesdropped for a moment on the womenfolk in the kitchen. I overheard Anna talking with Ilse about how I was worth keeping and that she shouldn’t give me up. Ilse protested about what gave her mother that silly idea in the first place and that she wasn’t planning to do that.

I guessed I was in the safe zone. I just wished my family would be as accepting about Ilse and her family, as her parents were about me and mine. Then again, I still had to meet her older brother and sister, Ilse being the youngest child of Erik and Anna. Her brother owned a successful company in the west of the country while her sister had married a successful real estate agent. Her sister and brother-in-law lived in the south of the country.

Ilse had been a bit of a black sheep, financially at least. Her ex used to be a construction yard worker, and she had married him out of love. When I asked her about him a month ago, Ilse didn’t really want to talk about her ex since the memories of the divorce still hurt. She stated that he was a strong and handsome man, but that he had radically changed after an accident at work. The accident had left him partially disabled. As a result, he couldn’t work in his profession anymore, which had a very negative effect on him. On top of that, they also missed a lot of income. He used to have a good wage and social security simply didn’t pay as much.

Her ex had started taking a liking to strong liquor due to their problems and stress. He had even been abusive on occasion, in particular when he was drunk. She had told me that she was lucky that it was mostly just yelling and screaming, but during some of their fights, he had retorted to physical violence too when he couldn’t win an argument with words and became fed up with her attitude.

He easily became jealous and couldn’t stand it when other men looked at her. However, since Ilse was a beautiful woman, there were many times that she made quite a few heads turn around. I had noticed that myself whenever we went out in public, but I didn’t really mind. She was mine after all. I guess her ex must have felt very insecure about himself, most likely due to his disability. She told me that she only had eyes for her husband, but the attention had really frustrated him. He wasn’t too shy about letting her know either. He pretty much blamed her for being a good-looking woman.