L’innocence d’un enfant

“Don’t you wish you could take a single childhood memory, blow it up into a bubble and live inside forever?”

Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake.

As I was sipping a glass of champagne in my best friend’s garden, I caught a glimpse of my past.

A lone bottle of bubbles instantly took me back to my childhood in Holland & Austria.

I remember anxiously waiting for my grandmother to finish up washing the dishes in her & my all-time favourite house in Haarlem, so she could fill my container with “Dreft”.

She would always squirt an extra drop of that soapy magic knowing this was the key to seal the BIGGEST bubble imaginable.

After an afternoon outside it was home baked, dark brown bread with chocolate sprinkles & a glass of milk.

I still have my grandma’s antique sprinkle pot, milk cups & jug that once belonged to her mother…

It makes the fact that my kids continue to use my childhood memories even more special.

My brother Patrick

In the corner of the garden was also a chair, one of those rainbow coloured, plastic chairs.

My six year old self instantly remembered sitting and drawing in a same type of chair in Austria, in the middle of our heavenly garden, leading to the lake.

I would spend hours observing the world, always wearing my knee-high white socks.

Butterflies would fly past, birds would sing and I would continue to draw until nature turned off its lights.

I loved our holiday home in the countryside; just us; mum & dad, my 2 brothers & the lake, in touch with nature.

We would  fish, go boating & dive endlessly off the wooden deck into the cold water of the lake.

I always wished for it to never end.

Ossiacher See, our private entrance from the garden to the lake

My dear brothers & I in our garden in Austria, I still make faces like this 😉

Summer turned into fall and fall into winter.

Weather was never a hindrance for a Dutch child, often I’d put on my wellies after school to go for long walks at the beach, Bergen & Bloemendaal being my favourites.

All I had was a ball & my bright red jumping rope.

No matter how strong the winds or how low the temperatures “uitwaaien” was part of your childhood.

“Weer of geen weer” ( weather or no weather )

I can still recall the smell of cinnamon tea and feel how my face used to warm up into 2 enormous red cheeks.

Thinking back, we didn’t yearn for much; as long as we had “outside”

Hula-hoops and chalk to draw hopscotch was all we needed.

As I finished my glass of champagne, I wished for a second that these bubbles were made of soap, I could go home in Gemma’s dark blue wellies & paint myself to sleep.

Thank you for your friendship Inky & the lovely day we wrote this post.