Free Sisterchicks in Wooden Shoes! by Robin Jones Gunn Page A

vulnerable.”
    Noelle bent down and cupped her hand under a bloom in the first patch of deep red tulips we came upon. Her motion was similar to the way a loving mother would cup a child’s chin and look into sweet eyes with unconditional approval.
    “Yes, vulnerable. Aren’t we all? And yet somehow we remain protected by God.”
    I nodded, feeling vulnerable there in the midst of all the fragile beauty. Vulnerable and yet protected by God.
    Am I protected really? God obviously allows devastation in His
world and in His people. What about with me? What is He doing with my body?
What is He going to allow?
    I shook off the disturbing thoughts and looked closely at the tulips in front of me.
    But apparently Noelle’s thoughts hadn’t floated away from the tulips as mine had. “This is where I bought the bouquet I have on the table at home. They sell bouquets at the gift shop. You might have noticed that picking the tulips isn’t allowed.”
    I felt a primal urge to stealthily pluck just one, simply because Noelle told me I couldn’t. “There are so many. Why don’t they let people pick what they want and then charge them by the quantity on their way out?”
    “Because if you pick them at this stage, the bulb comes up with them. You have to cut them. Besides, the tulips here aren’t grown for bouquets. Almost all the tulips in the Netherlands are grown and harvested for their bulbs. The bouquets are not the big commodity; the bulbs are. They are exported around the world.”
    She leaned down to gently stroke the soft petals of an exceptionally large red tulip as if it were an endangered species and needed tender care to keep producing.
    I lifted my camera to catch the shot.
    She adjusted her position so the bevy of beauties framed her face. The sunlight seemed to ignite her blond hair, causing her to look as if she were wearing a halo. The contrast between the red tulips and her golden hair was stunning.
    “You look like a little Dutch girl. All you need is one of those hats with the wide wings that stretch out the side and curl up at the end. Like the flying nun’s hat. Remember that TV show?”
    Noelle laughed. “Yes. Here the traditional costumes are called
klederdrachten
. You only see elderly people wearing them at special festivals. They’re hard to find. It’s kind of like going to San Francisco and trying to find a bonnet.”
    “Well, you look like a darling little Dutch girl just the way you are, you and all those little red-hot-mama tulips.”
    “I think I would rather be described as a red-hot mama than a darling little Dutch girl.”
    “As you wish, red-hot mama. Now go ahead and pose for me all you want. I’ll keep taking pictures.” I lined up another shot.
    “Here. Take one of me tickling the tulips. That’s what my girls used to call it when we came here. They would go up and down all the rows and touch the flowers like…what was that game we used to play? The one where you tap people on the head, and then one of them gets up and runs after you?”
    “Duck, Duck, Goose?”
    “That’s the one! My girls had a game like that. They played Duck, Duck, Goose with the tulips.”
    “Only I’m guessing the tulips never got up and chased after them.”
    “Well, one time…” Noelle broke into an engaging grin just as I snapped the shot. “I’m only kidding.”
    “Keep on kidding. It’s making for some great expressions in these shots.”
    I kept clicking away as if I knew what I was doing, which I didn’t. We switched places, and Noelle got me to smile and laugh with the red-hot mamas while she took pictures.
    We continued our self-guided tour for over an hour. She tookpictures of me, and I took pictures of her, and then we took pictures of our taking pictures of each other.
    The laughter flowed. Some of the shots I took were up close while others were taken from the start of a row of tulips. I was interested in trying to capture the uniformity and precision of the rows, the heights of