I was just three years old!!!!!
What do I remember about that time?
It was winter, just before St. Nicholas. Everyone was more than a little excited, because the Saint and Black Peter were supposed to come. I was playing around with my brother who was four years older…when all of a sudden, my cheek touched the red-hot coal-burning stove. Screaming and crying from the pain, my brother was all upset and my mother tried to calm me down by pressing a cold washcloth to my cheek. What a shock, (since that time, I have always been afraid of fire, and I find that lots of appliances get too hot far too quickly).
Then, that evening, the doorbell rings…and there are the Saint and Peter in the flesh. And St. Nicholas knew about everything that had happened, because he gave me in consolation for my fall on the stove a little child’s bike: a brand new tricycle.
For years, I always wondered how the Saint and Peter could have known about my accident and my wish for a tricycle. Until many years later I found out about the myth behind the story.
How marvelous such an unquestioning faith about the world around you. So pure and unspoiled.
Remembered on the 12th of November 2008
Truus Palmen, from the Netherlands, born 4th of June, 1947
