Ode to De dienstmeisjes van Amsterdam | Without you, the city would not be

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To the maids at Huize Lydia

In 1927, Huize Lydia was completed to house single women and to provide short-term housing for young women from rural areas. Afterwards, they would be given jobs as maids. These girls, often already young women, came to Huize Lydia three or four times a week to dance, sing or socialize together. These evenings were also meant to get to know others than just the family where they worked, but also to keep them away from the cinema and from men. This is an ode to all those invisible girls who kept the city running.

Your name is Gerda,
Your name is Else
Or they call you Mies
But that's not your name
Mies, because that's easy
That's what they were all called
There in that big house.

That big house, where you came to live
Where you cooked, did the dishes, waxed the floors
Where you wash and feed the children
The house where you're always ready
Even when evening guests come
When the clock strikes ten.

Three times a week off, apron off, and soon
May you go to that beautiful building
Lydia House, you may dance and sing
Together with your friends

May you not go to the movies or go out with boys
At home, sometimes, in the dark, he comes
May he not, you don't want to.
You don't talk, fear, afraid, meek
You want to leave, you're homesick

Sometimes you get extra money
For home, you send it.
You feel indispensable
You're invisible
And far, far away from home.

Amsterdam full of pink-white aprons
So visible in the market, on the street
And yet, they don't see you walking
They don't see you standing, so late already
Bags full of cheese, meat, bread and buttons

You think: what would the city be without
Without all those young women
Women who keep things going
Who change sheets, sew curtains

Women who dream a thousand dreams
About later, later is happiness, later is safe
Now not yet, now still toil
Sometimes a compliment, sometimes a kind word
But safe you are not.

You deserve it, happiness and love
You, in your swirling aprons
In which everyone sees you, and doesn't.
A hundred years later, I show you
I shower you with feathers and feathers
Without you the city was not.