This is what we were celebrating on 22-2-2021:
Jelle: 45 years, plus 1 year plus 1 week and 1 day.
Janneke: 45 years old, minus 1 year minus 1 week and 1 day.
“What unwritten law governs the emergence of love at first sight? I was 22 when I met the man who was to become my life companion: a born reader, a great lover of music, wisdom, and languages, someone with sharp intelligence, an unusual sense of fantasy and an original lifestyle, a loner in the student world with the gift of recognizing quality and unmasking pretension, a young man whose reserved nature and tendency to process his own problems in distant silence attracted me irresistibly. He is the still, deep water that I yet find difficult to fathom.”
“The same law, puzzling as alchemy, has formed a sample card from the characters and properties of our children—in different compositions and individually nuanced—of elements that I recognize from my own history and can suspect based on what I know about the background of my husband.
Their secret is the total personal, creative and courageous way in which they have overcome and recreated what hinders and imprisons us.”
Freely rewritten from: “Zwanen schieten/ Shooting Swans” by Hella S. Haasse.
Want to read more?:
An article about the beauty and challenge of marriage: After 16 years of marriage
Funny characteristics about us: From behind the scenes
An interesting moment in our family journey: With our family in a monastery.
Last autumn I wrote my first book:Theworldaroundmytable.com/book
A giveaway:
Would you like to have the book, or give it away as a present? Because there is something to celebrate, I give 5 books away. So, be one of the first five and receive a book at home. Just send me an email with your address.
A question for you:
Where and when did we meet? It is a true gift to me if you respond below and let me know where and when we met. Maybe you even have a funny story to go along.
Warm greetings,
Janneke,
P.s. Would you like to join our online retreat and meet others from this online blog community from different parts of the world? You are warmly invited. (If you like to join, please do sign up, in that way you receive a link on March 11)
Dear Jelle and Janneke,
Congratulations on your rather special birthdays. Only couples with mathematical minds could work out the day. Perhaps you celebrate every new day like that. In any case have an especially blessed year.
Thank you, Chris. Indeed. Every day is a gift and in that way to be celebrated;-)