... children ...

19/5/2024:. My daughter is more and more behaving like her mother, dominant, sometimes even a bit aggressive, telling me don't shout, and forbidding me to be barefoot in front of the OBA. Amusing. I let it go a bit, just guiding it in the right direction. In some sense, those are management skills, it might even be considered positive. 

20/5/2024:  Well, now a few days out of trauma therapy. I keep looking at my phone, but apparently she is exhausted. Well, we just wait and see!

25/5/2024: Life goes on, my wife is back, we re-arranged the bed, and I had an appointment with my oldest daughter, near Bos en Lommerplein. After I just missed bus 21, the bus number did not turn up on the board, indicating arrivals., I called her, and she re-assured me number 21 would arrive in two minutes. So it did. We had a long, serious talk. First we talked about my current situation in life, existential doubt, anxiety about my physical condition, and the memory flushes tormenting me, making me doubt about the value of what I achieved in life. Then she told a lot about her weeks of therapy. They just scratched the surface, she told me, but refused to go into details about the therapy as well as the incidents that caused the trauma. Emphasizing the diagnosis PTSD, she told me how unhappy she is/was in life, even suggesting blame towards me, which I counteracted by indicating that I never used violence towards her, and only try to encourage her to be creative and make use of the opportunities the products of creative activity may offer. In a way I have been lucky in life, even if my current mood is not happy, by being able to profit from the opportunities offered to me due to my eagerness to learn, and turn such learning into products which gained the appreciation of people that could (and did) have an impact on the course of my life, and the (potential) reward of the activities I have undertaken. My attitude of passivity and ability to wait has proved to be an advantage to me, even though I cannot impose this as a rule for guiding or governing the behavior of others, and, to be honest, my own gratitude in this is to some extent also self-imposed!