That afternoon, Margreet and Lisa drove to the village. They decided to go to the thrift store first. They immediately dove into the corner of the pieces of fabric.

"Look at this," Lisa pointed out, "those curtains. It's a weird idea, but I really like the fabric. It looks like linen, and that color..."

Margreet felt the fabric, "I think you're right, it feels like linen and it looks like it too." Margreet found a little label at the top of the corner. "Right, it's linen, a nice firm and airy linen. What do I care that it's a curtain! That fabric is perfect for a skirt! And I love that color green, too."

She took the hanger off the rod and looked for a mirror. She held the fabric in front of her and looked at herself, while Lisa watched from a distance, waiting to see how her friend would like it.

"You know what I think, Lisa? I think, this curtain hung here for me, it's just perfect! Really, it just touches me." She lowered the fabric into her shopping basket and pulled the basket behind her, back to the curtains. She walked quietly past them, looked, felt.

She shook her head, "For now, this is the one. Shall we have a look at the other fabrics?"

Like the curtains, the larger pieces of fabric were hung over hangers. Margreet found a cotton fabric with ferns. She liked it, but wasn't sure if it would be nice for her. She took it back to the mirror and held it in front of her legs. Slowly a smile appeared on her face.

"He's nice huh," Lisa said next to her, "like the ferns are growing up along your legs."

"Yes, I like it too, but I notice that I experienced much more of a click with the plain fabric than with this one. No, I'm not taking it anyway. It's different, I think it looks nice, but I don't see myself walking in it. I think I'll go more in the direction of plain fabric."

"How nice that you can sense that difference! I saw another plain fabric, a little golden brown, I don't know what it's called. Maybe that one would be something for you?"

Lisa walked back to the rack and pulled out the hanger with the fabric she meant.

"I don't know if there's another name for it, I'd call it golden brown too. And yes, I think it's beautiful!"

Margreet looked at this fabric in front of the mirror as well. A happy smile came to her face, "It's great! I can see myself walking in this!" Just to be sure, she looked at the card to see what size the piece was.

"Way too big, I'm going to keep a big piece of this left over, just like that curtain, but that doesn't matter, what I have left over I can maybe use in a tapestry someday!" Triumphantly she looked at Lisa.

"What an idea! So how do you think you're going to do that, how you're going to use patches in the tapestry?"

Margreet put the golden-brown rag in her shopping basket and gestured with her hands as she said, "If I put a piece of fabric down on the tapestry, and twist it a little, and then lay thicker threads over the edges of the patch and attach it... I think that's going to give a nice effect!"

"Gee, how did you come up with the idea!"

"I’ve no clue how I came up with that idea," laughed Margreet, "it just came to me. Sometimes it feels as if my soul is a well from which things are increasingly bubbling up. Or a fountain, from which ideas gush forth. It feels so good, so alive!"

She gently squeezed Lisa's arm. "It makes me happy, Lisa!"

Lisa understood her completely, "Exactly the way I experience it sometimes with my violin or cello, when a melody just comes out, a melody that surprises me myself."

Margreet nodded, "Yes, that's just like that. Beautiful huh!"

Enjoying it, they walked on, looking around to see if they came across anything nice.

When Margreet turned around to take another path, she almost bumped into two people. "Sorry, I hadn't seen you! Oh wait, you're staying at guesthouse "Bloemenhof" right?"

"Yes, that's right! I'm Fiona, and my husband's name is Daniel. Don't tell me, just think... Annerieke told me. Aren't you the ones who make sure the guest floor stays so tidy? Margreet and Lisa?"

"Yes, that's right! I'm Margreet, and this is Lisa. Are you guys having a good time in this area?"

"Yes, the surroundings are beautiful, wonderfully rural. And the guesthouse is fine, especially those cakes. This morning we saw Annerieke and Simon walking to their house. They are a little older than us, but you could just see that they were so crazy about each other, like adolescents in love!"

Daniel nodded smiling, the laughter even reaching his eyes, "Yes, that was really nice to see."

Both Margreet and Lisa sensed that something was bothering them. Lisa dared to ask gently about themselves, "And you? Do you guys know that too?"

Daniel and Fiona looked at each other. Daniel nodded to his wife, knowing she was a bit better able to articulate what was going on.

"In a way, we love each other too, but we both feel something is missing. That spark we saw with Annerieke and Simon, yes really, it was just so visible. And we don't have that. We don't fight, and really, we really love each other, but I think we miss what we saw with them, whatever that was."

Margreet and Lisa listened, really listened. Unconsciously, they listened with their hearts and tried to feel what was going on.

Margreet decided to tell them about her meeting with Huib, what she had experienced, that magnetic click they had felt that had given them the certainty that they belonged together.

"And from there, a fire arose, which rose so quickly, glowed in us. We couldn't avoid it, we didn't want to avoid it. We belong together, without any doubt. Huib is really my everything, I can't even imagine my life without him anymore. Huib goes through fire for me, understands me, feels me, helps me heal emotionally, stimulates me." She explained, how at Bloemenhof they helped each other to live from their hearts, to listen to their inner selves. "And somewhere I have the feeling, that you are doing that too, maybe only for a short time, I don't know, and that’s why you sense that this spark is not there with you. Was that spark there in the beginning?" Somehow Margreet already knew the answer, but she waited for their response.

Daniel and Fiona looked at each other thoughtfully.

Daniel thought aloud, "When I think back to our first year, the time we were dating... no, I never had that click like you describe. But I just thought Fiona was a nice woman, and I still do. We took almost two years to get to know each other and then got married. We had a good time, and yet..."

"That's right yes, that's how I experienced it too," Fiona added. "I tried while you were telling, Margreet, if I could feel how I experienced it then. It was good, but that spark was not there. Could it be that we just didn't really fit together? Then why were we attracted to each other?"

"Maybe because of common interests, because of looks. It could have been anything." Lisa thought for a moment, then shared, "I was married before, before I came here. Why was I attracted to that man? I guess, because he saw me somehow. He complimented me, stroked my wounded ego. Yes, for myself I know, that my inner wounding played a part in that. I was shy, didn't like myself. And with his words he seemed to pull me out of the pit. Yet he did not really do that, on the contrary, he only did it for himself. He tried to shape me, I had to become like he liked it. And when I compare that to how Sjaak treats me now... That is a night and day difference! We have that same magnetic click as Huib and Margreet, that soul connection. It is that inner certainty that the other is the one who belongs to you. And that's why we didn't need years, even months of courtship. I moved in with him very quickly. And Sjaak," Lisa smiled in love, "Sjaak is real, he sees me as I am, he tastes my insides, regularly recognizes my wounds and says and does what I need. It's barely describable, it's... incredibly beautiful!"

Daniel and Fiona nodded.

"When I look back," Fiona began, "I know that I did my best, to be a good wife for Daniel. And vice versa he did his best to be a good husband to me. So it's not because of that. But somehow we don't really feel each other out, at least not the way you do."

Fiona sighed deeply and wiped away a few tears with her index fingers under her eyes.

Daniel put an arm around her shoulders, "True, we did what we could, but if that basic spark isn't there, then maybe we have to conclude... you know, we just need to talk it through together more, figure out what the fuss is about and what we can best decide for the future. Everything in me resists breaking up, that I can't do that to you. I don't know, we have to come out of this together!"

"Yes," said Fiona, "thank you for your openness, we'll get on with it. I'm sure we'll work it out!"

"I'm sure you will, you guys want the best for each other!" responded Margreet. "But I have one more little tip for you: try to figure out what's best for yourself too. Ask yourself what you need, what your desires are. Try to feel if the impressions you get about that really belong to you, or if they are impressions from your emotional wounds or from beliefs you have been given. It is not selfish to search for who you are and what suits you."

Fiona smiled, "That sounds like taking good care of yourself."

"It is!" thought Margreet.

"And I want to respond to what you said, Daniel," Lisa interjected, "that idea that you can't do it to Fiona. I understand that, but suppose you don't belong together, if you lack that real click, what are you doing to her by staying with her? Think about it and if you want to know more, just ask us."

Daniel nodded, "We certainly will, thank you!" He still had his arm around Fiona's shoulders and turned her around. Embraced, they headed out of the store.

Margreet and Lisa looked at each other: "And that just happens in the thrift store..." said Margreet. "Daniel and Fiona, they are a beautiful couple, they are fighting for each other and for their marriage, but it is missing the core. I hope they dare to let go of each other. And you, you were right this morning: what we do from within is important!"

They smiled at each other and continued looking for things they needed or just liked. Margreet found a few spools of yarn she wanted to use for her skirts.

"Funny, an identical color for both skirts, and also a contrasting color. Those skirts are going to be beautiful!" Pleased, she walked on, even discovering buttons that matched the fabrics perfectly, and that she liked too. The green ones were square, the golden brown ones just round, but with a nice small ledge in them.

"It's the little things that do it!" thought Margreet. "Do you want to look any further?"

"No, I wouldn't know what to look for at the moment. Shall we go checkout?" suggested Lisa.

A moment later they were outside, walking towards Action. Already in the first shelf Lisa found a suitable USB-stick. She had never been to an Action before, and gazed her eyes out.

"What an extraordinary assortment they have here. This really can't be placed in any category. They have clothing here, but it's not a clothing store. They have office supplies, but it's not a bookstore. They have cleaning supplies, but it's not a supermarket. Look at this place, how nice, all those baskets!"

"Yeah, cool huh, when Huib has made a cabinet for my hobby stuff, I'm probably going to buy baskets here to put in the open shelves. I think these kind of baskets look very cozy in such a light wood cabinet."

"Will that cabinet be in that room behind the living room?"

"Yes exactly. He's going to make a cabinet there with lots of open compartments, from the same wood as that beautiful desk he made. It's so lovely, I can just leave my tapestry on there and move on whenever I feel like it. As long as our little one can't reach it yet..."

Margreet smiled at Lisa. "Time flies, but sometimes it doesn't. When I think about my pregnancy, I find that time crawls. I'm still in the first month!"

Lisa chuckled, "Just wait, when you're over half way! I used to have that with vacations all the time, the second half always seemed to go much faster."

Margreet recognized that.

They walked on, past the shelves of creative goodies. "Nice wooden beads, Margreet, and here glass beads, wouldn't that look nice on your tapestries too?"

Margreet nodded slowly, "That's a good idea, Lisa!" She let her eyes slide over the boxes of beads and took several in her hands. She enjoyed the fact that she had made it a bit of a habit to feel if she had a click with something. This way she knew exactly which ones she wanted to buy and which ones she didn't.

Lisa watched and asked her, "What are you going to keep them in?"

Margreet had an idea and preceded her to the shelf where she had seen all kinds of little weckpots and other small glass jars. "These seem handy, and I like them!" She thought for a moment, and put as many as twenty jars in her basket.

Lisa chuckled and teased her, "You have big plans!"

"Oh yes, big plans with small jars!" laughed Margreet.

They paid at the cash register and walked back to the car. Margreet felt rich, even though she had hardly spent any money.

To chapter 172. Business preparations

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