“Finding Joy in Small Things: Walking Through a Quiet Village Center”

Since I try to take ten thousand steps a day, I am even more likely to walk through our village center without attractions. I still have the most fun with the elements. Strong wind, always good. “What’s the wind,” I say to everyone I pass. This is often responded to positively.

“Well,” they say.

Or, “Well, well.”

A woman said, as she got on the electric bicycle at the Kruidvat, that she had a tailwind on the way there.

“And now against the wind.”

Sometimes I think it’s a big joke, that they secretly agree how to defy me by keeping the conversation even more meaningless. For me it really doesn’t always have to go into depth, the war between Ukraine and Russia doesn’t have to be discussed, but with the exchange of superficialities, the bottom has now been reached.

On Sunday I walked through the village with three daughters. Straight on and then back again. The highlight is then when we pass ‘De Huiskamer’ on the way there and back. It is the only catering establishment, they mainly consume ice cream on Sundays. You will find half the village there. Good, silent and licking.

On the way back we went to the classroom, I had no choice, all their classmates were there licking.

I met a licking mother I knew from the schoolyard. Raindrops fell from the sky. She stopped licking for a moment, looked at the clouds and said: “At first I thought it’s not going to rain, but now it’s starting anyway.” Then: “If we stay here we will all get wet.”

I found it an eye opener. “It’s dry inside,” she said. We go inside.

The kids whined, they finally wanted ice cream. The world of ice cream has changed. I myself come from the time of logical flavors such as strawberries, vanilla and chocolate.

My kids like ‘smurf’, ‘speckle’ and ‘snicker’.

“You know what’s good?” said the mother.

“Cake batter”, she had it herself. “Two scoops.”

“And?” I asked. “What does it taste like?”

“Cake batter,” she said. “It’s like I’m at home licking the bowl.”

The two youngest wanted a cone of cake batter ice cream, but Lucie van Roosmalen (7) ordered ‘smurf’ as always.

After a few licks she noticed that ‘smurf’ also tasted like ‘cake batter’. She was verbally reprimanded for this by the woman I sometimes see walking with a large dog in front of our house.

She thought it was “big nonsense”, I thought it was brave.

Marcel van Roosmalen writes an exchange column with Ellen Deckwitz here.