SOUR Weekend

Change is not always for the better

Sometime in 2024, the editor-in-chief of Volkskrant Magazine decided that Eva Hoeke was no longer relevant. I was outraged and to this very day still miss her Saturday silliness. Here’s the column I wrote back then.

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My 85-year-old mother faithfully saves every issue.
During our Sunday visits, I receive the fresh copy.
Subscribing to the Vinegar Gazette just for Eva Hoeke’s column always felt a step too far to me. Now I don’t even have too anymore.

I admire this woman who scuffles through life with such clumsiness, childlike amazement and warmth. So much Begeisterung that, right in the middle of the pandemic, I traveled to the Zaan region, a place I personally loathe, for an entire day of “Eva with bread rolls.”
Learning to write columns, to describe what I see, feel, think, wherever it may be, and to spread thick, creamy dollops of mayonnaise over sentences and thoughts.

Hugo wouldn’t allow it at the promised kitchen table. I missed the scruffy man shuffling into the kitchen, shoulders drooping, dandruff falling like snow.
Instead, in a furiously scrubbed-clean Zaans hotel, Eva arrived late.
“Sorry, the painter still had a story about the annual mudball festival,” she said.
She was never exactly quick with that big belly of hers anyway.

I scribbled myself silly that day, ate bread rolls, glanced around slyly looking for doubt on someone else’s face, and grew increasingly insecure about my own writing abilities and ambitions.

She can make the ordinary extraordinary, that Eva.
You can smell a comforting peanut butter sandwich; you can see a small child with a dangling wounded knee and a gypsy’s tear resting on the granite countertop.

Today de Volkskrant lands on my doormat, a delivery mistake.
“Well now, two left-wing newspapers today!” shouts my Mr.
“Het Parool and de Volkskrant. That’s going to be a sour weekend.”
“A delivery mistake,” I mumble.

Quickly I flip to page 9 and read everything about the editor-in-chief’s mistake. It all came out rather haltingly, as if she herself wasn’t convinced by the decision. Sweep everything out, then. Maybe new really is better. Absolutely not.

Months later, I searched frantically for my notes, as though I might forget the lessons. I wanted a refresher course, but that was no longer allowed.
“Kate, you already know how to write. You’re not allowed back.”

I carry that sentence with me. In dark moments, I conjure it up into a sky full of sunlight.

Goodbye, Eva. As far as I’m concerned, you may always take the helm.