Every year about halfway through April until the beginning of May if we’re lucky, there’s a forest in Belgium, Hallerbos, that becomes a fairytale place.
Quietly and unassuming, thousands, millions of little flowers open up themselves, standing shoulder to shoulder, to cover the forest floor in a carpet of purple glory. If you can, go for a walk this weekend.
These days are the very last days the flowers are blooming like this. Because the pictures are pretty, but if you go for a walk there? You smell a million flowery dreams. You see just how far and wide the flower go.
You see just how beautiful it can be if every little flower just stands where God put it, and gives it’s color and it’s delicious smell. Just one is pretty. But all of these together? Too beautiful for words.
A day in the sunshine. Purple magic everywhere. If there were fairies, they would be right here.
But we don’t need fairies. We’ve got a million purple flowers and a creamy smell.
We’ve got little boys writing letters in the dirt.
We’ve got tree branches to walk on and trees to hug. Blue butterflies to chase.
[…]
My tulips are brave in the wind. It nearly forces them to touch the ground when it blows at its hardest. They look quite fragile, as if a small puff of wind could blow the leaves right off. How do they hang on so tightly?
I want to be brave in the wind, too.
I want to hold onto my leaves and my colors. Would that look like courage and a smile, like kindness and joy?
I want to keep that while bending down low, while the wind comes right at me and pushes me down. And then to bounce back up again.
I tend to think my life should be that of a tulip in a grassy little flower garden on a sunny day in June all of the time.
When it isn’t, I tend to think it is dreadful, and my life is dreadful, and I am dreadful, and everything will always be dreadful. Like something is wrong, big time, with my life and myself.
Silly me. Am I so easily fooled? Tricked into discontentment? It would seem that I am.
There is rain and there is sunshine, there are dark skies and blue skies, there […]
The little dimpled hands are ever so cute, clinging to me.
The big blue eyes he can charm anyone with are just too perfect. Pools of blue laughter, love and drama. His first steps, his headlong falling in my arms because he knows I will catch him and he is too lazy to learn how to walk. The little baby sounds, trying to copy ?my words. A giggle from deep down in the baby tummy bubbles up and seeps out through features in the expressive little face and the delighted mouth that isn’t scared to get really loud. Delightful, is what it is. What he is. Just like the flowers he tries to grab.
I don’t blame him. Their bright colors are pretty and alluring.
It’s also exhausting. One second on the floor and he wails for Mama, loud and heartbroken because his little brain can’t wrap itself around the fact that Mama still loves him, even though she does not pick him up. One second out of my sight and his world crashes. His head tilts back and a loud screech splits the air. Or he lets his little body fall face first on the floor, […]
Two little men-to-be, running in the sun. One of them is fast and agile, the other one can’t seem to follow his own legs.A third little guy sits on the stone pavement, eating some mud and giggling delightful baby sounds to his brothers.I sit on the doorstep, enjoying this first day of warm, barefoot weather sunshine.?I gaze up at the tree that almost succeeds in dwarfing this huge house we may live in for now. All at once my head snaps up, and I run to the tree. Pulling one of the lower branches down, my fear is confirmed.?After months of waiting for it to bloom all pink and fluffy like a Queen in the garden, I discover I’ve missed it. Did it happen while we were gone for the weekend, two weeks ago? One week ago? We were only gone for a weekend, twice. Surely it can’t be over that fast??This is the second year I waited in vain. Last year, too, I anticipated the day the Queen would put on her pink fairy dress and dance tall, slow and elegantly over the garden. I thought I ?saw the pink blossoms peek out from under the […]
Yesterday morning I brought the two boys to school and it was such a normal day. Caleb stayed home with papa. I came back home to find him on papa’s lap, and for probably the first time in his little life, he preferred to stay with papa. With a very self aware smile, he looked at me, pretending to be a little shy. And then his face went back to the baby Einstein movie he was watching on papa’s phone. Total bliss radiated from his face.
As we sat there adoring our youngest, we were interrupted. A friend called on papa’s phone, to ask us if we had heard about Zaventem. We had not. A few seconds later we were scrolling through the newswebsites, looking for the very latest bit of news.
Yes, we now knew.
1 casualty. 4?casualties. 6. Up it went, along with another explosion. And so as far as we know right now, the count is up to?34. A lot of others wounded.
After reading the news, I went with my sister to wash her car and buy fresh milk. It was a nice day. Sunny. Summery. Trees with blossoms and birds that sing and life goes […]
Here it is. After a very long silence, my first thoughts of 2016. Not that I am just now thinking them. I am just now sharing them, that’s all 😉
New Year. Full of expectations. A new page. It comes just in time, after Christmas.?Christmas. We look forward to it for so long and it seldom fulfills our expectations. Or maybe we don’t even look forward to it anymore because after all, we are cynical Belgians, and we have to keep up our reputation.?So Christmas didn’t fulfill my expectation, although I knew that beforehand – because I wanted the Christmas of my childhood. The one with traditions and people who are not here anymore, or don’t live in the same house. I wanted the time of magic and fun times.I knew beforehand that I am not a child anymore, that I have children of my own now and that family gatherings?with small children are not all that.I knew that the Christmas parties of then are not now, that they have changed.
Still, it must have been there, deep down. Because there was an emptiness, a missing. Logic and understanding didn’t prevent it.
I couldn’t quite forgive the people […]
In this world there are buttercups and baby toes and tiny little dewdrops.
Also, there’s evil that barges in with a shattering silence, shooting heartache into the world. They shoot it into lives while shooting away lives.
Me? I don’t know what the “should”s are that I ought to do.
Should I focus on the pretty, on the cute? Leave the heartbroken to fend for themselves? Or Should I focus on the pain, the broken things and
Do I keep myself safe, guard my children fiercely and only?
There might be a balance to do both, but I dislike it. Balance seems halfhearted. I prefer throwing myself into things entirely. I’m not saying that approach is the wisest. Only that this comes more naturally to my impulsive character.
I look outside and it’s grey out there. ‘Nippy’, a long forgotten word Emily’s mom taught me again. It says it quite right. The big tree that towers over our not so small house has lost most of its leaves. The empty branches stand out starkly against the grey watercolor sky. The rain falls down silently, slowly while birds fly by in a hurry.
It seems only right. With all the […]
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