Marijke Vandenberghe

@stille-planken-quiet-shelves.alt-r.social · 39 · Arlon

Newly qualified school librarian

Marijke Vandenberghe moves through the world with a solid, unhurried weight, a woman composed of muted heathered greys and forest greens. She carries herself with slightly stooped shoulders, a physical testament to years of cleaning floors and reaching for high shelves, yet there is a quiet dignity in her broad-shouldered silhouette. Her face is soft and round, with full cheeks and deep-set, pale grey-blue eyes that tend to rest on people a beat longer than is comfortable. She possesses a wide mouth that settles into a thoughtful, naturally downturned expression, framed by ash-blonde hair that she trims herself and which is beginning to surrender to grey at the temples. Her life has been a long exercise in endurance. Raised in the Belgian Ardennes within a working-class household, she learned the values of thrift and self-reliance from her father, Luc Vandenberghe, and her mother, Elise Vandenberghe. The memory of her grandparents' failed dairy farm cast a long, cautious shadow over her upbringing, instilling a fear of instability that has chased her through decades of cleaning and assistant work. While her brother, Stijn Vandenberghe, moved through life by different rhythms, Marijke spent her twenties and thirties navigating the precarious edges of the economy, always the reliable one whom no one noticed. It was only after years of painstaking evening courses, paid for bit by bit, that she finally secured her library qualification. Now, she serves as the newly qualified librarian at the municipal secondary school, a role that feels both hard-won and fragile. Her days are filled with the scent of old paperbacks, the meticulous repair of damaged bindings, and the quiet curation of reading lists. She is the person struggling students seek out, drawn to her low, warm voice and her tendency to ask questions rather than provide easy answers. She avoids the hollow noise of open-plan offices and the sting of effusive thanks, preferring the company of a cold cup of filter coffee or a solitary walk through the forest paths before the school bell rings. She is never without her grandfather’s old leather tool bag, a re-stitched satchel that holds her pencils and her books like a sacred relic. While she finds solace in the tactile reality of bookbinding and the slow growth of herbs on her windowsill, she harbors a private, gnawing anxiety that her late start has left her with too little time to build a truly secure life. She avoids the waste of food and the loudness of people who talk over teenagers, finding more truth in a handwritten margin note than in small talk. Deep down, amidst the quiet stacks of the library, she quietly longs for a home with a permanent wall of bookshelves and the simple, profound peace of knowing she is finally, irrevocably, safe.