Sisterchicks in Wooden Shoes! (19 page)

“Come.” Now I was the one who had picked up Noelle’s quick, to-the-point phrase. “Even though I walk over a footbridge into the town of Delft, I will fear no evil…”

Noelle spontaneously looped her arm around my neck and gave me an unexpected kiss on the side of my head. “You are the best medicine. You know that, don’t you? The Bible says that laughter is the best medicine but—”

“Actually, the verse in Proverbs says that a merry heart does good like medicine. I looked it up once.”

“Fine. Now hush. I’m giving you a compliment.”

I laughed at her brash reprimand.

“Okay, so the Bible says that a merry heart does us good like medicine. The point is, you have been like medicine for me. Your visit, the timing, and everything have been just right. I needed this. You’re a gift to me, Summer. You really are.”

My eyes teared up. “You’re a gift to me too, Noelle. You always have been.”

We hugged each other and strolled into the old city like old friends, joined at the heart.

I
want to take you to the market square first,” Noelle said. “After being in Saint Bavo’s Cathedral in Haarlem, you should see the church here.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to visit another church. Not that I minded where we went particularly. “All I ask is that we see some Delft tiles before the day is done.”

“We will.”

“That’s the only thing I remember you telling me about Delft. They make tiles here.”

“Yes, they do, and they have for hundreds of years. Remember we saw them in Vermeer’s paintings? We can go to a place where on some days you can watch the craftsmen paint the tiles.”

“Wonderful.”

“I also want to take you to a
pannenkoekenhuis
.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Do I want to know what a pan-a-kook-whatever is?”

Noelle’s lighthearted air was returning. “I think I’ll keep you wondering.”

“That’s right. Surprises are your hobby.”

“And you are allergic to suspense. I remember. Don’t worry. I won’t make you wait long.”

“You’re too good to me, Noelle-o Mell-o.”

“Quite right.”

Before I could muster a noteworthy comeback, Noelle stopped walking. We had come upon several shops and decided to do some meandering. I hadn’t shopped for any souvenirs and was thinking it would be nice if I returned home with a little something for Wayne and each of the kids. But what?

The first shop was filled with Delft pottery. The distinct, hand-painted blue tiles and pottery were intriguing because each piece was slightly different. The scenes painted by hand on the white tiles included windmills, canals, cows, milkmaids, boys ice-skating on canals, and, of course, wooden shoes.

I had selected four tiles and then put them back. They were heavy. Since we had to pass this shop when we returned to the car, it seemed wise to do my buying at the end of the day rather than haul everything around with me for hours.

The next shop we explored sold kitchen gadgets and a gourmet assortment of what Noelle called “stinky cheese.”

“We can sample anything. If you see one you would like to try, tell me.”

It seemed pretty early in the day for sampling cheese, especially when it was presented as stinky. What I did love about the shop was the understated beauty of how everything was lined up on the shelves and how the rounds of cheese were displayed in the refrigerated case in the center of the store. Everything was just so.

I felt as if I had walked into a modern still life by one of the Dutch masters. Once again it was the common, everyday setting and the people that formed the composition. But the orderliness of the “props” and the soft light through the windows elevated even this cheese shop to a level where I felt touched by a hazy sense of the eternal.

I stood with my head tilted, gazing at the way the light came in through the high windows and changed the visual effect of a shiny metal nutcracker. The gadget was on display next to a very large round of Gouda cheese, so marked with the name on the red wax casing. Next to the nutcracker was a small bowl of walnuts available for demonstrating the nutcracker’s handiness and for sampling the nuts, along with carefully cut squares of cheese. A clean, empty white dish stood ready to the side, a willing receptacle for the unwanted walnut shells.

Noelle sidled up to me and followed my line of sight. “What are you looking at?”

“The sacredness of the everyday,” was the answer that tumbled out. I didn’t expect to say that. I didn’t know I had even thought that line. But there it was. I was an appreciative observer of the sacredness of the everyday.

Turning to Noelle I asked, “Was that line used at one of the museums yesterday in connection with one of the Dutch painters?”

“No, I think you used that term when we were watching the milkmaid pour from her pitcher.”

“That’s right. Her simple act seemed so pristinely noble.”

“You said she was reflecting the sacredness of the everyday or something like that.”

She nodded toward the dish of small Gouda samples. “Did you try the cheese? Gouda is made in the Netherlands. In the south. It has more of a mild taste than sharp. Some varieties taste a little smoky to me. You should try some. It’s going to be more distinct than what you would find at home.”

I still was basking in the thought about the sacredness of the everyday. Every day unfolded with moments when the eternal seemed to touch the temporal. Light overcame darkness. Hope triumphed over despair. Nothing here in the earthly realm changed. But God somehow touched people, places, and moments, and the everyday became a glimpse of heaven.

“It’s like Corrie and the Hiding Place,” I said to Noelle, ignoring her offer of cheese. “Or the tulip fields. Or even the painting of our little milkmaid. Common, yes. Unsuspecting, yes. But so beautiful. Like a glimpse of heaven out of the corner of your eye.”

Noelle leaned back and examined my expression.

“The sacredness of the everyday,” I repeated since she obviously wasn’t on the same track I was on. I had left her standing on the platform and was riding this train of thought as far as it would take me.

She didn’t say anything. That was one of Noelle’s traits I was coming to appreciate. She was good at just being. She didn’t require a lot of details or explanations. Nor did she offer many of the same. But her actions and her words matched up.

Noelle was a living example of the sacredness of the everyday.

With a slow-rising grin she said, “You are learning to be Dutch, Summer. You say what you think, put it out there for discussion. That’s how we do it.”

I didn’t know if I was ready to put a lot of my thoughts out there for discussion, but this one clear thought comforted me. The sacredness of the everyday. God allowed us little glimpses of heaven here on earth.

“Noelle, do you have any paper? I need to remember this.”

“I think so.” She rifled through her purse and pulled out a small flip notepad. Adding a pen in the other hand, she said, “Go ahead. I’ll take notes. What do you want to remember?”

I reiterated the thoughts about the sacredness of the everyday and how these glimpses of beauty are moments when the eternal breaks through into the temporal.

“Got it,” Noelle said, reading the notes she had taken.

“Here’s my other thought. Write this down too, will you? Is it possible that planted inside each of us is a yearning for heaven? Is that why we’re drawn to beauty and sacredness whenever we find it in temporal things?”

Noelle tore off the pages from her notebook. “Your thoughts, my friend.”

I looked at what she had written and felt warmed. With so much of our communication being via e-mail, it had been a long time since I’d seen Noelle’s familiar, slanted cursive writing. In all our years of exchanging thoughts, we’d never had this luxury of completing the thought and writing it for a personal hand-off

I would treasure this simple piece of paper. Not so much because of my formulating thoughts that were recorded there, but because Noelle had written them and then handed the paper to me.

“Now, to complete your moment of personal enlightenment, I still think you should try some of this cheese.”

“Okay, which one should I try first?”

Noelle stuck with her original suggestion of trying the Gouda.

I chewed the small square slowly and thought of the young, grateful woman who had sat across from me at the farm. The taste of the soft, mild cheese was similar to the simple jack cheese I bought at home by the pound. Although the Gouda had a deeper flavor. A broader aftertaste.

“Do you like it?”

I nodded. What I liked more than the taste of the cheese was that all my senses were involved. This seemed to be a high value for Noelle and Jelle, as I had learned from my meals with them. Food was not for wolfing down so you could run out the door refueled. Meals were for conversation and fellowship. Food was for enjoyment and discovery of tastes and textures and lingering sensations on the palette.

The Gouda certainly left a lingering sensation on my palette. We moved on to a more-intense-flavored white cheese followed by a cracker. In five minutes Noelle had led me on a circular tour of Dutch cheese, and we were back where we had started, by the refrigerated case with the Gouda.

In the same way she didn’t ask me at the museum which painting I liked best, she didn’t ask for an evaluation of the cheeses. The experience seemed to be simply for the opportunity to observe, taste, and appreciate.

I wanted to cap off the moment somehow. I had just experienced a sampling of God’s immense creation. My mind was in a place of appreciating the Lord’s everyday goodness, even in such
things as stinky cheese and light coming through a store window. I felt the need for the equivalent of an amen to this everyday act of worship.

What sufficed for the moment was the use of the nutcracker and a single, perfectly balanced walnut. It cracked right down the middle. The nutmeat fell into my hand, and with that, my sense of taste seemed to say, “Amen.”

Noelle collected a few things in the shop to buy. I didn’t. Again, I didn’t want to carry heavy items around with me all day. She seemed used to doing this sort of shopping and walking, which once again explained why she was decidedly fitter than I.

Then I glanced at the nutcracker. The sun had moved, or perhaps it was I who had moved the nutcracker out of the direct path of the light. The metal no longer lit up with that hint of the sacred that had captured my thoughts when we first entered the shop.

I wanted to remember that. It wasn’t the nutcracker that was holy. It was the touch of the eternal that bathed the utensil with light. It was the momentary reflection of that light that made the common tool beautiful.

In a way that I still can’t explain, I felt as if I understood what it was like to be an ordinary nutcracker. I was nothing out of the ordinary. But whenever the eternal touches me, I know that I warm and maybe even glow a little. I am one of God’s everyday women. But He makes me sacred.

We were about to leave the store when I stopped and thought for a moment. “Just a minute,” I told Noelle and went back to buy the nutcracker.

We left the lovely stinky cheese shop and strode across the wide-open market square.

“You liked that little nutcracker, didn’t you?” Noelle’s voice was sweet and motherly.

“Yes, I did. It reminded me of one my mom had. She used to bring it out every autumn along with a special wooden bowl that she filled with nuts. It was a big deal whenever we got to use the nutcracker to crack our own walnuts and almonds.” I knew the memory was simple, but it made me feel close to my mom, and that was what made it golden.

“You had a wonderful mom,” Noelle said.

“Yes, I did.”

“I remember something you wrote about her years ago after one of your miscarriages, something about waiting with empty hands.”

I nodded. “I remember writing to you about that day. It was a huge moment for me. I think I was only twenty-four. I thought God had abandoned me.”

As we walked across the open square, I reminisced about how my mom had come over to our apartment with a batch of fresh-baked cookies. She had looked into my eyes and said, “Summer, I know you are carrying this loss as if it is yours alone to bear. But you were not meant to carry such a heavy burden. Give it back to God and keep giving it back until you have no more grief in your heart to hand over to Him. Then wait and see what gift He places in your empty hands.”

Noelle summarized the memory for me by saying, “And now,
all these years later, we know what God placed in your empty hands. Six children.”

I shook my head. “No, not six children.”

Noelle stopped walking and looked at me. “Did I count wrong, or did you only rent those scrub-faced children every year to pose with you and Wayne for your Christmas cards?”

I smiled. “No, they’re all mine. I claim each and every one of them. But the true answer is that after the first two miscarriages, God placed in my empty hands a third miscarriage.”

Noelle’s expression turned somber. “I forgot about the third one.

“That one was the hardest, I think. By that time no one really entered into the grieving with me. One friend told Wayne and me it was time for us to take a hint or get a clue or something along those lines. He and his wife had two children, and they hadn’t experienced a miscarriage, so he didn’t know what he was saying. But my point is, after double sadness God gave me more sadness. After that, He gave me joy.”

“Joy times six,” Noelle reminded me.

“Yes. Double what I had lost.”