HOME TRUTHS: Marianne

Marianne is an Alphington local who considers home to be a state of mind, a
place that moves with you – from a summer house in The Netherlands to an
apartment overlooking the Seine, and even a Catholic boarding school! It’s
with you wherever you go and can always been found if you look hard enough.

Name Marianne

Age 72

Lives in Alphington

Please finish this sentence – Home is where … you make it. I grew up in The Netherlands and moved many times. Years ago, I made the decision that home is a space I create and is therefore wherever my front door key fits. The day I decided that, I stopped being homesick.

Describe your childhood home. I was born in a tiny summer house near the beach. It was just after WW2 and housing was really scarce in The Netherlands, so we were lucky to have it. It was a two-storey red brick house and with a tiled roof. Although the house was tiny, it had large windows and French doors through which I would see the cottage garden. In summer the walls were covered with climbing red roses and, in winter, ice flowers covered the inside walls in the corridor. My brother and I played on freshly mowed lawns, had bushes to hide in and trees to climb. Beyond the garden was a wood that invited mystery and endless games. During the long summer days hunger was the only reason to go home. It was a child’s paradise. This is despite the fact that there was very little money. My mother sewed our clothes and knitted our socks and my father made our toys, including a doll’s house that was a scaled down version of our actual house. My mother was a great cook and we lacked for nothing that I can remember.

My parents shared their love of art and culture with us and with their friends. Our house was always open to people and they taught us to be kind and generous. However, there was always the shadow of dad being frequently unwell and anxious. As a Jew, he spent the war in hiding and lost his brother and other family members in the camps. He had great trouble adjusting to life after the war. My mother kept everything together, but my father was my hero. He was funny and sharply intelligent, but he never escaped the ghosts of the past. It destroyed his dreams. He died when I was 11 years old and my brother was only 7.

Did you ever have to make a home away from home? Why? What was it? 

At sixteen I decided school wasn’t very interesting and found myself a job as a chambermaid and cook at the local hotel. I would leave home in the morning with my mother thinking I was off to school, but would go to work instead. I managed to play the system for 75 days, but when my mother found out, she panicked and sent me to Catholic boarding school, which was a real shock for the free-spirited non-Catholic girl I was. I had to adjust to a lot of rules but was lucky to be taken under the wing of the head nun, who seemed to understand me. We became friends and negotiated our own rules. She trusted me to keep my word, and I did. For example, I was allowed to smoke at home, so I got permission to come and smoke the cigarettes she kept for me in her office. There was to be no sneaking off and breaking the rules. As a result, I got away with a lot more than the other girls. ‘Mère Préfète’ (her official title) had a huge influence on my life. She directed my reading towards my father’s Jewish heritage. I learned so much from her – about myself, my father’s culture and how to live in the world. 

Where’s home for you?

Home for me has been a cottage by the seaside, a sunny apartment in Paris with views over the Seine, a national trust house in Fitzroy and a cottage with a compost toilet on the banks of the Yarra. Now, it’s a unit in Alphington with enough garden for my herbs and a big living room to gather my people. It’s the walls that I make into my home.

What does home mean to you? 

Home is wherever my friends and family are. Part of me remains forever in Europe, but if I were away from the people I love – my children, grandchildren and my friends – it would be sad and lonely. My physical home is a place where I can welcome the people I love, cook for them and have great conversations. I like to have a nice light rooms, surrounded with beautiful things, eclectic furniture, memories on the shelves and interesting images on the walls, but really, it’s just a place to fill with love and share with others.

There is a Dutch term ‘gezellig’. It does not translate well, but it can be described as warm and cosy, nurturing and full of laughter. That is my home.

Do you have any home truths for people dealing with the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic?

This is a time to learn to accept what is so. We all think we have some say in what happens, that we have control over the events in our life that we can control life itself. The pandemic has shown us that we don’t. Life is like the tennis ball coming towards you in a tennis match. You can’t control the ball, it just comes at you. At times you make a perfect return. Other times you barely get it over the net. Sometimes you miss it altogether. It whizzes past you and you think ‘Whoops, what just happened?’ The choice we have in life is the way we react to our circumstances. Acceptance gives you the freedom and ability to deal with the circumstances powerfully.

 Illustration by Ellen Porteus Interview Maria O’Dwyer