You don't catch a free bird

"But how on earth did you come to go all the way to Baarn for a goldsmith?", friends asked her in The Hague. She replied that she had been looking for a long time for a suitable memento of her father, a bird lover but also a free bird herself. She had seen my ash ornament on the Internet, a silver box with a little bird cut out of it, and knew immediately that this would be it.

She drove to Baarn to discuss the details, because she definitely didn’t want the pendant to be any bigger than a 20-cent coin. And, as we outlined together, it had to have gold berries on it! We had a nice, quite personal conversation, and a good hour later she left.

Yesterday the frail lady picked up the pendant. She kept looking at the pendant and asked me if I understood that she would first display the pendant in the open box on her desk for some time. She would look at it for a time, an important part of the process. Later, when she is ready, she will wear the pendant. I understood completely.