With everything I didn’t need sold, all that remained was for the removal company to come and pack. A strange feeling settled over me ~ being in a small space with four other people, watching them pick up my belongings, wrap them in paper, add layers of bubble wrap, and carefully fit them into boxes. It was a puzzle of my life being neatly packed away.
Some of the things I no longer needed found new owners among the packers, and it brought me joy to see the delight on their faces. But the sound of the taping machine at first drove me near crazy ~ an endless, grating whine. Then, when they were done for the day, there was an eerie silence, thick and heavy, as if the house itself had lost its voice. Empty rooms have a strange way of echoing.
Finally, the time came to load everything into the container. I stood watching as it was all driven away, and a knot of dread settled in my chest. A parade of ‘what ifs’ marched through my mind in bold, capital letters.
One last thing remained ~ selling my car. That, too, became a done deal when a man showed up, transferred R45,000 into my account while standing beside me, and then drove away. I turned, walked into the house, and began to cry. Suddenly, everything became very, very real.
But there was one goodbye that couldn’t happen over the phone ~ her name is Alida. My dear friend, and the only one still alive of my three best friends, lived on a farm called Tweespruit, outside the town of Senekal. I spent a few glorious days with her and Piet, soaking in the peace of the farm. When we finally hugged, we both knew it might be our last time standing eye to eye, letting our embrace speak of a love that needed no words.
Alida could bake like no one else, and before I left, she handed me a few of her precious recipes. Because she knew. She knew what I was dreaming about.
Long before my feet even touched the emerald shores of Ireland, I was already there ~ in my mind, in my dreams, in the lush, enchanted world I conjured while still in South Africa.
It was a dream so vivid I could almost taste it. The aroma of freshly baked bread wafted through a kitchen where an AGA stove ~ the one I never quite got in this lifetime ~ kept the heart of the home warm. My herbs, grown from the seeds I carefully packed, danced in the breeze outside, lush and green, ready to lend their flavors to bubbling pots.
I dreamed of coffee brewing on that same AGA stove, the aroma winding its way through the house, a fragrant invitation that whispered, “Come for a coffee.”
In my dream, I would bake real bread, golden-crusted and warm. I would snip fresh thyme, stir fragrant pots, and write ~ always write. I would put Pers Heks on the map with her enchanting stories for little ones, tales of magical places, whispered histories, and a touch of whimsy scattered like wildflower seeds.
“If you don’t dream, you die,” the quote goes. Not a death of the body, but of the soul ~ an existence reduced to a dull routine, a life with one foot in the grave.
I never wanted to live without a dream, no matter how small. Dreams are a gift we give ourselves ~ a promise whispered to the heart, a gentle nudge to the soul. They are the fire that warms us on cold days, the compass pointing to who we wish to become. To dream is to dare, to believe in possibilities yet to unfold.
But dreams are wild things, like seeds cast upon the wind. They sprout in their own time, often in unexpected ways. Sometimes they arrive exactly as imagined, but more often, they take surprising turns, blooming in colors we never foresaw.
And that is the beauty of it. A dream doesn’t have to be perfect. It only needs to be ours. It is about hope, about faith in the unseen, about trusting that life, in its own magical way, knows what we need.
One of the biggest secrets I’ve learned is this: When your dream arrives ~ perhaps dressed differently than you imagined ~ it is how you react that truly matters. I see it as a test from the Universe. Are you ready? Have you grown? Will you recognize the gift, even if it wears an unexpected guise?
What I didn’t know, as I stood in South Africa dreaming of green fields and freshly baked bread, was that the dream might look different when it arrived ~ but that didn’t make it any less real.
Carl Sagan said,
“Nothing happens unless we first have a dream.”
I had a dream!! Things will happen. I was ready!