Margriet, weekly magazine for women and girls, 7 February 1970
Which woman-of-the-year deserves our tribute in the form of a golden Margriet? Whom may we honor with this gold for her selflessness, her helpfulness, her charity? You answered this question with so many letters that the editors of Margriet, after reading and re-reading all your spontaneous stories, simply had to decide to award more than one golden Margriet: there were no fewer than FIVE!
Fourth Golden Margriet: the rock and mainstay in this family of seven orphans
Aalten; the Hessenweg is a rather hard-to-find path, far behind the newest housing estates of this southern corner of the Achterhoek. To the side of that Hessenweg: a small farm. The property consists of a few cows, a few pigs, a few hectares of land. A young man in blue overalls is working with a tractor; some children are running around. There is no farmer, no farmer’s wife. But in the kitchen-diner there is a scent of freshly brewed coffee, and a girl, small in stature but sturdy, is busy juggling eggs, bread, and bacon to set an evening table for seven hungry mouths.
Her name is Joke ter Maat, 18, and she is the rock and mainstay of this family of seven orphans, of whom she is one herself. Her sister Riet: “Mother has been dead since ’61. And in ’69, father also passed away. Joke ensures that everything at home runs smoothly. For years now. She literally does everything, except for the real men’s work that needs to be done on a small farm like this. My brothers do that. The brothers are 23 years old.”
The farm is only small; they have jobs on the side. Riet also works “outside the home”; together, the three of them ensure that the business and family have the necessary financial resources. “But we can only do that because our Joke takes everything else off our hands,” these children say. For Dick (16), Gerard (14), and Ada (11), Joke is also, and perhaps primarily, a second and very caring mother.
“Since father passed away, it has actually become doubly difficult for her,” the older brothers feel. “She has now become the sole pivot around which everything revolves. And in fact, we leave almost everything to her. We decide on major financial expenditures among the older ones, and even then she has the final word; we trust her yes or no. If she didn’t do all this, our little family really wouldn’t be able to stay together as well as we do now…”
To all these praises, Joke herself hardly comments; she laughs and pulls up the chairs. And she doesn’t even sit at the head of the table…
