A child without an instruction manual

The father-to-be had made a list.

A healthy child. An obedient child. A child that slept when its father slept and woke up when it was reasonably convenient. He had also written down that it should later be good at arithmetic. That seemed practical to him for selling fish.

The midwife did not read the list. She put it at the bottom of the little boat, where it leaked.

“Good,” she said. “At least it’s some use here.”

On Urk, people used to say that children came from the Ommelebommelesteen, the big stone in the water. A father had to go out to fetch his child. For this father, who liked to do everything according to plan, that was a reassuring thought. An address was much better than a surprise.

He had already built the cradle. Perfectly straight. He had bought a blanket, exactly big enough. And he had made a box for the toys the child would later tidy away neatly.

His wife had asked him whether he could also make a box for his own things.

That was a different matter.

It was evening when they rowed to the stone. The midwife sat in the bow with a basket and warm baby clothes. Father rowed hard. Then he rowed even harder, because he wanted to show that there was no dawdling in his family.

They sailed right past the stone.

“Back,” said the midwife.

On the second attempt he came at it so crookedly that his cap fell into the water.

The midwife fished it out with an oar. She wrung the seaweed out of it and handed it back.

“You don’t have to prove everything today.”

In the stone there was a little door. That is the advantage of a wonder tale: where a sensible person sees only a rock, someone else has already found a key.

The midwife knocked.

Behind the little door came a shriek.

Father jumped. “Is that ours?”

“We’ll know in a moment.”

“He sounds angry.”

“Perhaps he’s being disturbed.”

The little door opened a crack. Warm light fell across the water. Father wanted to look inside, but the midwife planted her broad shoulder in front of him.

“You wait here.”

“I did have a few conditions.”

“So I heard.”

The little door closed behind her.

Father sat alone in the boat. The water slapped against the stone. He took out his list. The ink had run. Of the word obedient, only a black smudge remained.

He turned the paper over. Perhaps he could start again.

Behind the door, a second child began to cry. Then a third. There was a scuffling, as if someone with very small feet were kicking a bucket.

Father folded up his list.

The midwife came back with the basket. A small red face poked out above the blanket.

“A girl,” she said.

Father bent over her.

“She looks rather stern.”

“She’s seeing you for the first time.”

The child opened her mouth and bellowed. The sound was much bigger than the face it came out of. Father looked at the little door.

“Doesn’t anything come with her?”

The midwife raised an eyebrow.

“Instructions, I mean.”

“She’s hungry when she’s hungry. She sleeps when she sleeps. The rest you’ll have to work out together.”

Father smoothed his wet cap. He looked at the stone, which already looked like a stone again, as if there had never been a door in it.

“And if I do it wrong?”

For a moment the midwife said nothing. She pushed the basket closer to him.

“Just hold her.”

He picked up his daughter as carefully as if she were made of thin ice. She stopped crying, looked at his beard and grabbed his index finger.

She squeezed surprisingly hard.

“She won’t let go,” he whispered.

“That’s the idea, for now.”

On the way back he rowed slowly. When a small wave tapped against the boat, he held his oars still for a moment. He kept looking at the basket.

At home his wife lay waiting. He set their daughter down beside her and began to tell her about the stone. About his cap, the little door and the midwife who answered nothing.

“And your list?” asked his wife.

He felt in his pocket and pulled out the soggy wad.

The child made a sound that strongly resembled an order.

Father threw the paper away and got up at once.

His wife smiled.

So someone had become remarkably obedient that evening after all.