Thank you for your editor’s letter, Carolyn (“Goats do roam”, Bolander, January 16 ).
I always love to read your columns because I feel your words come from your heart.
I realised that you and I have so much in common.
Whenever I hear about a devastating fire, my thoughts are with those people who lost their homes and memories.
And I think of all the frightened animals.
I remember very well the fire January 2017 in the hills and mountainside of the Helderberg.
The firewall stopped only about 20m from our house. All neighbours were on the street when police and the fire brigade arrived.
And last but not least, a car from Teva Vet Clinic slowly drove through the street looking for disturbed animals.
I also have lots of memories, and especially precious is one old photo, which shows my husband’s great-grandparents. My husband passed away two years ago, at the age of 91!
We, too, lived in the United States, at the east coast in Connecticut.
During our stay there we visited two old aunts of my husband. Their parents emigrated from the Sudetenland, Czech Republic to Iowa.
There we met many elderly people still speaking their German dialect. Two nice ladies presented us a collection of Native American tools and stones.
Back to the fire. There were also quite some fires in the Connecticut area, but fortunately never in our city.
But, one morning in winter time, there was such a lot of snow that we couldn’t open our door. We had to wait for the people from the city to remove that wall of snow.
After our stay in the US we lived in Paris, France. There we experienced good as well as bad memories.
All the odds and ends and the memories I have around me from everywhere we lived, are balm for my soul.
