Miracles do Exist.

MIRACLES EXIST

Everyone of us experiences sometimes something miraculous. When I think of it, I have experienced at least five big and small miracles. Of three of them I want to tell you something. The first small miracle, which I still cannot believe myself, it is so extraordinary. After my divorce I started working as a help for the elderly with a former attorney of Unilever, who had an Brittish wife. This woman, who also was very demented and only spoke English, therefore I was placed there. Because of my Scottish grandmother Elsie, we spoke English pretty good since our childhood. The brittish lady, she was a lovely woman, which couldn’t be said of him. She had a colostomy, which sometimes leaked and it was a terrible dirty job to clean everything afterwards. I have worked very hard for them and did a lot of extra things, such as painting the kitchen and the bathroom, etc. When I left them, because she went to a nursery home, they gave me, as a thank you present, a real antique from 1880 carbonite lamp with a beautiful white porcelain shade. The shade fitted perfect on an iron ring and was flat on the top and then rounded down at the bottom with a slot around it for a beaded chain at the edge. It really was a very exclusive shade, which I’ve never seen before. For years it stood in our house as a beautiful piece of antiquity and I often thought about the woman. One day during a renovation the lamp was moved and the white porcelain shade fell off into thousand pieces. I was very sad, because such a shade couldn’t ever be replaced. Years later, living here in Zeeland, there was a big dump near Zierikzee, where everything was shoved on a small mountain.
Every year there are flea markets, where everyone who has something to sell tries to sell it to the tourists. At 5 o’clock everthing that wasn’t sold, went into a garbage truck to the dump. The stuff coming from various places of our island. The hill at the dump was almost 7 meters high with chairs, tables, washing machines, hair dryers, cabinets, pottery, toys, plastic, and more. On the same day that this takes place we went to the dump with our trailer at about 6 o'clock. I looked in amazement at the huge mountain, where already 10 people were searching for nice goodies. Willem threw all the things we had in our trailer, also on te mountain and I crept cautiously on the mountain lurking to find something. It certainly wasn’t the first time that we went back with a half-full trailer again. Willem cried: don’t take more stuff, please. All the other people cried: everything is broken already, what are you looking for? Nothing really, I am just looking, I cried back. You had to be carefull because tables and chairs were all over each other and before you knew it you dropped right down or half way the mountain. I looked between everything to see whether I would find something nice in between all the rubble, but it was so full of stuff you could hardly see anything. Than suddenly there below in a hole next to a drying rack between 3 chairs, I saw something white. I cried: I see something of porcelain, on which most of the people started to laugh and said that will certainly be broken. Very carefully I dove down with my arm and pulled it very careful, pushing things away, out of the darkness. I thought it to be a round bowl. When I got it up with difficulty, it turned out to be a beautiful flawless porcelain shade of a lamp. I shouted: Willem, come, please come. Others came as well and they all shouted: Willem come, it is a miracle, it is completely flawless. Consternation all over. Everyone wanted to see it, they couldn’t believe it, dumped out of the garbage van and still unbroken, a miracle. The biggest miracle had still to come when we were at home again. It fitted perfectly on the carbonite lamp and even had the same slot for the beaded chain.
Dinkie

Saturday, August 18, 2007