Once I was vertical and it was clear nothing was broken, I could see in the corners of her eyes a burst of laughter dying to come out and play.
Wiping the wet sand from the side of my mouth and releasing an involuntary shiver, I kept a straight face as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. In my best deadpan voice I said, “That oughtta frighten those birds. It certainly scared the life outta me.
Noelle’s giggle gave way to a full burst of laughter as I limped in an exaggerated way and went ka-lumping down the shore in an attempt to retrieve my shoe and sock. The wayward pair had turned into a bird-seeking missile during my fumbling fall. The sock-loaded shoe had missed its unintended target in the launch and landed in the sand. Now the icy fingers of the North Sea curled around my shoe, beckoning it to come with them into the abyss. My shoe tipped to its side, as if listening to the call of the deep, but the wise ol’ sole hesitated to accept the invitation to go for a dunk.
I quickened my pace toward my shoe, but the gulls, with the advantage of their wings, arrived at the shoe before I did.
The resilient Dutch feathered resistance had been unruffled by my charge-and-topple attack. There they were, back on the scene, boldly launching an in-depth investigation. Their curious, long sea gull bills were poking and prodding every corner of my shoe.
“Leave it alone! Shoo! Shoo from my shoe, you shoosters!”
The ringleader with the peglegged hop managed to firmly grasp my sock. He extracted it from the shoe and held it like a dead fish, drooping lifeless in his beak.
“Hey, drop it!” I waved my hands and made an aggressive yet wisely nonsprinting movement toward him.
The gull flapped his wings. His cohorts did the same. They seemed to loudly protest his greed. Two of them pecked at my sock from the side, trying to extract the treasure from his grasp.
“It’s a sock!” I hollered at the birds. “You can’t eat it! Drop it! Hey, stop! No, don’t you dare!”
With a flip of his feathered behind, the sea gull spread his wings and took off over the North Sea with all his gang members launching into flight right behind him. My sock, still clamped in his mouth, was the prize of the day.
“Are you kidding me?”
The taunting thief was about two hundred feet out over the North Sea, flying low, when he apparently realized the nonexistent nutritional value of my fuzzy footwear. As Noelle and I watched, the sea gull dropped my sock into the sea.
Noelle laughed before I did. She wrapped both her arms around my shoulders and let loose with the sort of rollicking belly laugh I always knew she was capable of delivering.
We stood on the shore, with Noelle laughing her heart out and me saying, “I’m sure this will be a lot funnier to me at a later time, but right now I really am in desperate need of a rest room.”
With my sockless, numb, sand-covered foot thrust inside my soggy shoe, I shuffled alongside Noelle to the nearest café that would let us use their rest room.
I couldn’t clean up properly. The entire left side of my body was soaked with seawater and sprinkled with sand. A small piece of something oceanic and strange had latched on to my hair. It had the texture of green moss growing on a piece of dirty plastic.
With the indulgence of way too many paper towels, I did my best to become publicly presentable. My efforts deserved a grade of about a C-.
Noelle was patient. I appreciated that she was a compassionate woman. That quality had been obvious when she jumped in to assist Zahida that morning.
In her generous effort to help me, she arranged for a taxi to drive us back to the parking garage. I was grateful I didn’t have to walk all the way back with one shoe leaving a salty footprint everywhere I placed my foot.
Once we were settled in little Bluebell, I think Noelle and I exhausted just about every bird, shoe, klutz, and sock joke we could think of on our uncomfortable ride home. The discomfort for me was from the cold. The discomfort for Noelle was that she kept the heater running at full speed to help me dry while she perspired in the salty sauna conditions.
She told me about a summer when they tried to take a picnic to the beach and a rainstorm had ruined the day. They drove home that time with the heater running the whole way and the scent of sea brine filling the car.
“Everyone was so grouchy. We sat in traffic for a horribly long time because it was one of the finals before the European Cup, and we had won. Everyone was more interested in cheering and celebrating than in keeping the cars moving.”
“Forgive my ignorance, but what is the European Cup?”
“Football. Or I guess I should call it soccer since that’s what you call it in the U.S.”
“I have heard that soccer is a big deal here.”
“You have no idea. You should come back with Wayne and visit sometime during the World Cup. Everyone wears orange, our national color, to show support. As a nation of more than sixteen million people, we do a good job of rallying around our team.”
“Did you say sixteen million?”
Noelle nodded.
I tried to picture that many people fitting into the small land-mass that comprised the Netherlands. No wonder the houses were built up instead of out and were so close together.
“I had no idea so many people lived here. I was looking at a map on the plane and saw that the country isn’t that big.”
“No, it’s not. And if you want to really be impressed, I’ll tell you that we are third in the world for agricultural exports. The U.S. is first, then France, then the Netherlands. How’s that for a country with a fraction of the landmass of the others? I think it’s a third of the country that is below.”
“Below what?”
“Below sea level. Engineers continue to find ways to dredge land from the sea. That’s how the usable landmass keeps growing.”
“Well, one of these days they’ll scoop up land from the bottom of the sea, and my sock will be there, mixed in with all the sand and silt.”
Noelle laughed. “A little part of you will forever be a part of the Netherlands. I love it!” We rode for a few minutes, both smiling.
“Noelle, do you ever miss home?” I had noticed the way she aligned herself with the surrounding culture yet at the same time talked about being appreciative of having me, another American, visit her.
“This is my home,” she said firmly. “I have lived here twice as long as I lived in the U.S. I love it here. Hup Holland!” The last line came out strong like a cheer.
“What was that?”
“The national cheer for our football team. I told you, we’re passionate about our team. By the way, can you feel your toes yet?”
“Just barely. Are you melting? You may turn off the heater, if you like.”
In her best Wizard of Oz witch voice, she said, “I’m melting!”
As she turned down the heat, we launched into a fun discussion of how we both were terrified of the flying monkeys in that movie. Then we disclosed our Sound of Music desire to be Julie Andrews when we were twelve so we could become nannies and skip through Austria with our own entourage of adoring adolescents wearing lederhosen.
The conversation helped speed up the ride back to Noelle’s. The first thing I did on arriving was to shake off the dried sand before I went into the house. The same neighbor who had heard me call Noelle an oen took a moment to observe me slapping my jeans—only the left side, mind you—and hopping and shaking to get the sand off.
I was almost adjusting to the reality that the neighbors could observe so much of what I did while at Noelle’s.
A long bath was next on the list for this unusual day. This was definitely a private event. The bath was great. Relaxing and restorative. The kind of leisurely bath I never allowed myself to take the time to enjoy at home.
After I returned to the guest room in my robe, feeling all steamy and fresh scented with my clean hair wrapped in a towel, I found a tray waiting for me with a note from Noelle. She had fixed a sandwich along with a glass of milk. Her note said th
at Jelle had called and needed her to pick him up at work. I had forgotten that they shared one car, which was possible due to the convenient public transportation.
She went on to write that the two of them would stop on the way home for dinner since she assumed I planned to go to bed early.
The end of her note read: “If this sandwich doesn’t interest you, please help yourself to anything you would like. My refrigerator is your refrigerator. Except I’m sure mine is emptier and doesn’t yet have as many cool photos on it as yours does. But I’m working on that and feel confident that my current exhibit will be a crowd pleaser.”
I took the bait from her teasing last line and made a little trip downstairs. It felt odd being the only one in the house, tiptoeing around in my p.j.’s.
A light was on over the kitchen sink. It illuminated the room enough for me to easily view Noelle’s spur-of-the-moment photo addition to the front of her refrigerator.
I stood there, barefoot, in Noelle’s kitchen, laughing until my sides hurt. She had printed out a picture in black and white on a basic sheet of computer paper. Obviously she had done it as a joke. And what a joke it was. The shot was of me at the shoreline attempting to chase the birds. My arms were in the air, and in front of me, as clear as could be, was the pesky sea gull clutching my sock and spreading his wings.
She had captured the moment perfectly.
While the whole fiasco was happening, I was so caught up in trying to get the bird to stop that I hadn’t seen much humor in it. I was desperate to retrieve my sock and not objective enough to realize how funny the scene must have looked to Noelle.
Now, even in black and white, I could see what a frolic it was and why Noelle had let loose with a belly laugh.
I lingered in the kitchen, helping myself to a handful of grapes from the bowl of fresh-washed and still-glistening beauties Noelle had left on the counter. I wanted to remember this. The laughter, the friendship, the comfort. The peace. This gentle longing for “home.”
As the deep purple grape burst open in my mouth and filled my senses with the rich taste of communion, I felt as if I were closing the day by savoring a little taste of heaven.
I started the next day with morning devotions again. I was glad Noelle had left the book by my bed. I hadn’t packed my Bible, and to be honest, in the past few months I had been inconsistent in doing any daily Scripture reading. My soul felt hungry and ready for each word.
The devotional for that day was entitled “Even Though I Walk.” The passage from the Bible that started off the reading was Psalm 23-1 read it quickly, feeling familiar with the passage. Then I remembered how I had felt like a little lost sheep the day before as I drove Noelle’s car to the church parking lot. I didn’t enjoy that feeling, but this morning, secure in the warm guest bed, I realized I was more open and vulnerable to God as a result of driving around directionless. In fact, this new day I wanted God to be my Shepherd.
A few hours later, walking with Noelle to the train station for our journey to Amsterdam, I thanked her for putting the devotional by my bed. I told her how much I was enjoying it and commented that the reading for the day was from Psalm 23.
“The title of the entry seems pretty fitting for us, the way we’ve been walking all over the Netherlands since I arrived.”
“I hope it hasn’t been too much walking for you. Jelle needed the car today. And the train station isn’t far.”
“I don’t mind. I’m just not used to walking so much. It’s good for me.” I moved my shoulder bag to my other arm. “So, even though we walk to the train station, I will fear no evil. Or maybe I should say, I will fear no muscle cramps.”
“Or maniacal sea gulls,” Noelle added.
“That’s what I should have been praying yesterday. ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of sea gulls.
Noelle turned to me with a light-bulb-over-the-head sort of expression.
“What?”
“I never noticed that part before. ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.’”
“What part had you not noticed?”
“The verse says even though we ‘walk’ through the valley. That’s different from stopping in the valley or sitting down under the shadow of death and just giving up. We aren’t supposed to stop and get stuck in the dark places. We’re to keep going. Keep walking. I really like that thought, don’t you?”
I nodded, holding in the depth of my truer feelings. Noelle had no idea how poignant her insights were to me at that moment. The threat of cancer was my valley of the shadow of death. I had involuntarily taken the first step into that valley the day I answered the phone call from my doctor’s assistant.
Here I was, in the valley of the shadow of death. Was I fearing no evil? God was with me. His rod and staff were there to comfort me. What represented His rod and staff in my life?
I pictured Noelle and Wayne as being two very effective tools in the hand of the Great Shepherd. God was using both of them to keep me close to Him, which is what I always pictured as the purpose of a rod and staff. Wasn’t the rod used for discipline and the staff used to rescue?
Once again, just as I had sensed while waiting for Noelle in the church parking lot yesterday, I saw myself as God’s little lamb. I was more helpless than I wanted to admit, but I also was being cared for more deliberately and tenderly in this valley than I would have guessed possible. I was loved. What a great gift that was.
“Thank you, Noelle.” Tilting my head to offer her an appreciative grin, I tried to impress her by saying it in Dutch. “Bedankt.”
“You’re welcome. But what are you thanking me for?”
“For walking with me.”
“Okay…”
I didn’t want to add the part about walking through the valley of the shadow of death, although, at the moment, talking about it didn’t feel as monstrously frightening as it had before. Still, I skirted the real thoughts that had prompted my thank-you.
“I appreciate your putting everything in your world on pause this week to give your time to me. You were very kind to let me show up the way I did and hijack your life.”
“Are you kidding? Your visit has been such a lift for me. I was telling Jelle last night what a gift this is to me. I couldn’t stop talking about the Ten Boom house while he and I were having dinner. He’s never been there either. I’m taking him and the girls. And I’m reading all her books. Your visit is stirring up things in me that I walked away from a long time ago, and I don’t know how I feel about all that yet. But I do know I need to pay attention to the feelings.”
Our conversation would have gone further, but we were at the train station and had to hurry to make the train that was boarding just as we arrived.
We sat with mostly businesspeople. Our seats faced each other, and the view out the window was more expansive than what I had seen from the main roads. A uniformed conductor came down the aisle, asking for our tickets. We showed him the passes Noelle had arranged for earlier, before we dashed to board the train.
“Would you like a morning cup of hot chocolate?” Noelle stood up with her wallet in her hand. “This train has a beverage car.”
“Sure. Should I come with you?”
“No, I’ll be right back.”
For breakfast I finally had tried the drinkable yogurt Noelle had purchased for me at the grocery store earlier in the week. It wasn’t my favorite jump-starter beverage. Perhaps it was the texture and slightly sharp taste of the chocolate yogurt. The drink didn’t go down smoothly.
I had higher hopes for the cup of Dutch chocolate Noelle handed to me a few minutes later. “That was fast.”
“I was first in line. Doesn’t happen often. Let me know how you like it.”
I lifted my cup to hers. In a dull, barely audible tap of the cardboard rims, we toasted. “To a day without sea gulls,” I said.
“To walking right on out of the valley of the shadow.”
Instead of saying the customary “Ch
eers,” we both said, “Amen.” I took a sip and wondered what Noelle’s valley was.
I would have pondered that thought more extensively, but my mind was diverted by the sensation of deep, rich chocolate rolling over my taste buds. Nary a bud was disappointed in the immersion. “Oh, this is good.”
“You like it?”
“Most definitely. It seems to be more bittersweet than what I’m used to. Not that I’m a hot cocoa connoisseur. I love it. Does it have less sugar? Is that it?”
“I don’t know. I think it has less alkaline or acid or something. I’ll have to ask Jelle’s sister. She’s the Dutch chocolate expert. All I know is that it’s processed differently than anywhere else in the world, and I happen to think it’s the best.”
“I would agree with you on that.” I took another slow, savoring sip of the delectable Dutch chocolate from my cardboard to-go cup and gazed out the window. The train pulled into a stop at a town called Leiden, according to the sign on the landing.
More travelers boarded the train, filling the remaining empty seats. We hadn’t gone far after that when the scene outside the train car window turned into what seemed like a wide, flat-screen view of a travel show that was better than anything I ever had watched at home.
We were passing a tulip field.
I held my breath as if I could hold in the sight of the flowers’ color, symmetry, and brightness.
After the train rolled past the last row of dazzling tulips, I took another long sip of my Dutch chocolate and slowly turned to Noelle with a contented smile on my lips.
With a softening expression around her eyes, she leaned over and whispered, “You have a mustache.”
I licked my upper lip and used the tip of my finger to finish the quick chocolate “shave.” “Better?”
She nodded.
“Why don’t you come to the States sometime?” I hadn’t premeditated my question. It just jumped out, so I went with it. “You should come and bring Jelle. I would love it if you would stay with us. I’ll show you all the sights. Of course, that will take about twenty whole minutes, but it would be fun. I really want Wayne to meet both of you.”