The Christmastime is a great time for storytelling.
In my childhood the family came together on a sunday-afternoon to tell stories, and I still honor the tradition by telling stories during christmastime to my 6 children and their friends.

Here are some of the favorites.
All about little miracles in my life.

It was near christmas.
My father and grandmother still lived.
It must have been a saturday, as we barely had all the groceries in the house, when my grandmother phoned.
She needed help.
The roads were iced and she didn't have bread, nor other groceries.
The niece that had promised to get it didn't show up that day, and she couldn't cross the road to get it herself.

Dad and I just looked at each other and went.

We barely could drive our car over the slippery roads in the neighbourhood.
It was all ice, with little hills of white snow at the side of the road.

The winterlight of the late afternoon was already greying the sky and the lights in the christmastrees in the houses spread a mysterious light.

We felt lucky that the main road was ice-free and it didn't take much time to drive to the little hill that was leading to the wood we had to cross to reach our gram.
There was no other way.

"Well, let's hope we are lucky this evening. It's for a good cause", said my dad, whne the last car drove by, enabling us to cross the road and we started to get up the slope.

The car had enough grip, and we already seemed to feel the warmth of my gram's house.

Then we reached a far too iced spot, and the car just went back...
towards the awfull bussy road we just had crossed...
My dad asked me to push the horn, and he steered us to the side trying to get the car into the fields and not between the other cars on that bussy road.

I could feel his concentration while we were slowly sliding backwards.
We neared the road, no-one seemed to hear the horn signaling danger.

Fear spread like a cold hand to my heart and intermingled with the deep trust in my dad.

Just before the road the car was suddenly sliding sidewards and we landed in the field.

We just sat there, filling up with a huge feeling of relief.
None of us understood how the car could have slipped into the fields.
It was like a miraculous force had pushed the rear end of the car aside.

When we finally looked at each other we laughed and felt utterly grateful.

My gram lit a candle to thank, when we finally arrived.

Like always my dad had something in his car to spread the sand from the fields on the road, and after that we could find our way without problems to my gram.

This is one of the precious moments I shared with my dad about 35 years ago.




More stories will follow soon.
Watch the "updates".