Ode to Anna Pogge | Housewife is also a profession

This text was translated using AI and may contain errors. If you have suggestions or comments, please contact us at info.ode@amsterdammuseum.nl.

Dear Anna,

Last Thursday was your birthday. Due to busyness, a lame excuse I know, I forgot to send you a card or letter. Therefore I congratulate you now and I promise not to forget you next year. You are in my phone and two days before your birthday I get a notification to remember.

Of course I know how old you have become, but it doesn't seem so neat to write that down here now. That's something I was strictly taught: never ask a lady her age!

We met in a very special way. Through your friend Anna ten Bruggencate, also an Anna, we came into contact. With some strangers you can suddenly have a good click. With you I had that immediately!

I loved listening to your life story. You were born in Amsterdam; your father, like me, was also named Jan. You didn't like it as much that your mother was also named Anna Petronella. It was always big Anna and little Anna in the family, even when you were long grown up. That's something we have in common. I was also always little Jan, and like you, I found that very annoying!

By the way, it is funny that your husband's name is also Jan. Apparently you have something with Jan after all. Your story showed that your Jan Christiaan Theodorus Ludeker was your great love. Fifteen years older than you, but who cares? I find it bourgeois, bitchy we say now, when people act strange about that. If you're really in love, age difference doesn't matter.  Besides, you showed the world that you were serious. Except for two days, you have been married for almost 37 years. At 61, you became a widow. How sad you must have been.

Frankly, I found it a little strange that you said you had no profession, but that Jan was a telephone writer for the City of Amsterdam until his retirement. Being a housewife is indeed a profession! It is also a profession for which you learned in school. Just think of the math lessons, so you can get by with the household money, and all that handiwork in preparation for life together. Of course I understand that it was a different time with different ideas about profession and being a housewife.

I heard stories from other friends your age that they hated it so much when the crafts teacher came and stood next to you with scissors in her hand. She would take your cotton cloth, knitted with blood sweat and tears, and cut a square hole in it! And now you are going to sew that up so neatly that later I won't see a thing,' she would say. 'How did you experience that? You must tell me more about that the next time we speak. And also about all those other handicraft samples you kept so neatly in a box for years.
Dear Anna, see you soon, I hope, and with warm greetings from Jan.

Author's note
 

Anna ten Bruggencate found a box of craft samples in a giveaway box in Amsterdam. We got in touch via Facebook and she gave me the box. Immediately I read the name A Pogge on the small sampler. After some sleuthing in the Amsterdam archives, I came across information showing that all those textile proofs belonged to Anna Petronella Pogge (January 19, 1902 - March 16, 1990). No other A. Pogge appears in the archives, and the year of birth 1902 seems quite plausible to me. All those pieces of work must have been hers!