At this point in time we had been living in The Netherlands for 7 years, we had 3 small daughters aged 5, 3 and 6 months old, I was working as a nurse on Intensive Care at Reiner de Graaf Ziekenhuis in Delft. We were juggling working with child care, paying the bills and occasionally attempting to have a social life.

I could not see how this was going to work

And I had no idea where Macedonia was.

19 years later Johan built a house in Macedonia, he doesn’t live there he assures everyone and no the wife will not be moving out there in the foreseeable future. It’s a place to stay, a holiday home, a haven of rest for family and friends who fancy a change of scenery. This is the beginning of a new chapter.

Johan’s work has taken him, apart from to Macedonia to many different countries, once I was called into school and asked if everything was alright at home. I looked at the teacher inquiringly thinking oh help did I loose the plot once too often, when she helped me along by saying, very cautiously,  “Roseanne said she doesn’t know where her father is”. I breathed a sigh of relief and hastily assured the teacher that he was in Ghana on business and that he would be returning the following week. After that we had a morning ritual of ” papa is in ….. ” followed by the country to prevent my door being knocked down by Social services.

It has been a long journey, with many ups and downs, but the long and the short of it is that Macedonia has captured Johan’s heart, the good thing is he has a big heart and there is still room in it for his family and friends.

It has meant adapting to a different lifestyle, to sometimes feeling like a single mum, but always knowing that when I say that’s it I’ve had enough he will be on the next plane home and it won’t feel like he has been away. It has its advantages, the remote control is my own and I don’t have to share that bottle of Sauvignon Blanc with anyone!

Friends and family have at times not understood, is it for the money they say? (I wish I say!),  can you maintain your relationship? What about the girls? I even had one colleague (male) who insisted that Johan had a different woman in every country, I eventually quieted him by saying why do you assume its only the man who plays away from home?  My colleague did a masterly impression of a fly catcher and the subject was never mentioned again.

Yes, it does have its perks, I get to visit different countries with Johan ( I still get mega pissed off when he disappears off to Israel at a point when its impossible for me to go with him! Argghh!) Whenever a production unit opened I got to go along for the party and the girls have been introduced to many different cultures, not only by visiting the countries but also due to the fact that Johan often brought visitors from abroad home for dinner or indeed to stay for a few nights.

The girls probably speak to him more long distance than they would if he was home. When the girls were young he would phone every day at 18.00 hrs and speak to whoever wanted to tell him about his day. Now with social media there is contact more often during the day.

Its hard to imagine life without smartphones but I remember one day early on he had left Amsterdam on a Monday morning, by Wednesday evening I still hadn’t heard a thing! I was relatively calm, I did discuss with his sister whether I should think about funeral arrangements but we agreed maybe that was rather presumptuous.

Thursday morning he phoned. He had flown with an Eastern European airline, (which shortly after declared bankruptcy), the plane had only got halfway when they landed in Poland and were put into army barracks awaiting further transport. Of course in those days mobile telephones were in their infancy and he had no signal and had to wait until he arrived at the hotel in Macedonia to contact me. 

Johan has unbounding energy and its seldom that when I collect him from Rotterdam station on a Friday evening that he says he is tired and doesn’t want to go this birthday party, or that dinner with friends. He has been know, after travelling for 24 hours non-stop instead of getting a taxi directly to his bed he takes a detour to turn up at his sisters birthday celebrations!

Our relationship started long distance, with Johan in the Netherlands and myself in the U.K, with a stint in Australia, when the only means of contact was the written letter. I guess this was laying the foundations for our future life together… whatever the distance.