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| A forgotten receipt in an old book—a five-year bridge to our life in Portugal. |
Yesterday, I was cleaning the kitchen when I found an old receipt, tucked in the pages of a literature book I had forgotten in a drawer. Dated five years ago. From a small shop in Portugal, where we lived before Denmark and then Belgium.
I stood there, holding this useless piece of paper, and suddenly I was back in that shop. The sunlight slanted through the door. I could hear Portuguese chatter, laughter from the shopkeeper’s son. My wife, pregnant with our son, picking out a small lovely blanket.
Five years. It feels like yesterday. It feels like another life.
I put the receipt back in the book, next to other seemingly useless things. A dried flower from our first spring in Brugge. A stone my son gave me when he was two, because it was “beautiful.” A photograph of my father, taken last year, showing a man I barely recognize as the one who carried me through the dark.
These are not important things. Throw them away and the world does not change. But to me, they are everything. Because they are not objects. They are tiny moments, made solid.
Maybe tonight, you can notice a small thing too—the smell, the sound, the touch—that will stick with you longer than you think.
The Moments We Almost Miss
My son has a habit of waking up slowly. Not like me, who jumps out of bed as if the day is already late. He lies there, eyes half open, watching the ceiling, listening to sounds I cannot hear.
This morning, I sat on the edge of his bed and just watched him wake. Five minutes. Maybe ten. He did not talk. I did not talk. Just a father and son, breathing the same air, sharing the same silence.
When he finally sat up, he looked at me and smiled. Not a big smile. Just a small one. The kind that says “I know you were there.”
That moment will not be in any photograph. No one will write about it in a book. But I will carry it forever.
These are the moments that build a life. Not the weddings and graduations and big celebrations. The ordinary Tuesdays. The slow mornings. The small smiles.
Maybe you have one too. A smile, a sound, a glance you almost missed. Keep it.
What I Did Not Know Then
When I was a child in my village, I did not know I was collecting memories.
I did not know that watching my mother cook dal would one day feel like prayer. I did not know that sitting beside my father while he repaired tools would become a lesson in patience I would carry across oceans. I did not know that the sound of my grandfather's voice, telling stories under a kerosene lamp, would echo in my heart long after he was gone.
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| Childhood memories of Nepal, where stories were told under the glow of a kerosene lamp. |
I was just living. Just being. Just a boy in a village with no electricity, no shoes, no idea that the world was so big and that I would one day see so much of it.
Now I am here, in Belgium, with a son who speaks Dutch better than I ever will. And I realize: he is doing the same thing. Just living. Just being. Not knowing that these ordinary days are building him.
The way he runs to the window when he hears my key in the door.
The way he holds my finger when we cross the street.
The way he says “Papa, kijk” a hundred times a day, showing me things I would never notice alone.
He does not know he is making memories. He is just living. And that is exactly how it should be.
The Distance That Teaches
My father is 75 now. Every evening, I call him. The connection is always bad. His voice crackles and fades, like a radio station from far away.
“Buba,” I say, “kasto cha?” (Father, how are you?)
“Thikai chu, babu. Timi kasto chhau?” (I am fine, son. How are you?)
We talk about the same things. The weather in the village. The health of the buffalo. Who has died since last month. My son's latest words in Dutch. My wife's job. The price of vegetables.
Nothing important. Everything important.
Last week, he said something I will never forget. “Babu, timro awaj sunna pauda, malai lagcha timi yahin chhau.” (Son, when I hear your voice, I feel like you are here.)
I sat in my Belgian apartment, thousands of kilometers from the house where I was born, and I understood something. Distance does not erase love. It just teaches you what love really is.
Maybe tonight, you can call someone far away, just to hear their voice.
Love is not being together. Love is carrying each other in your heart, across time and space and bad phone connections. Love is a 75-year-old man in a village without paved roads, waiting for his son's voice every evening. Love is a 40-year-old man in Belgium, closing his eyes and seeing his father's face.
The Weight of Tiny Things
My son has more toys than I had in my entire childhood. His room looks like a small shop. And yet, what does he love most?
A wooden spoon I use for cooking dal.
An empty cardboard box.
A stone he found in the park.
Children understand something we forget as adults. The best things are not things at all. They are moments. Experiences. Connections.
Yesterday, he spent an hour playing with a cardboard box. He made it into a house, a car, a spaceship, a cave. He talked to it. He hugged it. He slept beside it.
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| My son doesn’t know he’s making memories yet; he’s just living. |
I watched him and thought: this is what my childhood taught me. To find joy in nothing. To create worlds from whatever is available. To need less and imagine more.
My father gave me that gift, without knowing he was giving it. By having nothing, he taught me everything. And now I watch my son, with his cardboard box and his wooden spoon, learning the same lesson.
Maybe you have a cardboard box in your life too. Something small that taught you to dream.
The Moments That Stay
When I think about my life—really think about it—I do not remember the big things.
I do not remember the day I got my first job. I do not remember the graduation ceremony I never had. I do not remember the first time I saw a mobile phone or used a computer or flew in an airplane.
What I remember is this:
The sound of rain on our village roof, and the feeling of being warm and dry inside.
The smell of wood smoke at dusk, when all the families cooked their evening meals.
My mother's hand on my forehead when I was sick, cool against the fever.
My father's silence, which was not empty but full of something I could not name.
I remember being carried through the dark, three hours to the health post, my father's shoulders rising and falling beneath me. I remember thinking, even as a sick child, that I was safe. That nothing could hurt me as long as he kept walking.
That is what I want my son to remember. Not the things I bought him. Not the places we went. But the feeling of being safe. The knowledge that someone is there. The quiet certainty that he is loved, not because of what he does, but because of who he is.
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| Brugge at night. Distance does not erase love; it just teaches you what love really is. |
One World, Two Lives
Sometimes I look at my son and feel sad. Not for me. For him.
He will never know the world I knew. He will never sit in darkness so complete that the stars feel close enough to touch. He will never walk three hours on his father's back because there is no other way. He will never gather around a single radio with forty people, all breathing together, all waiting for the same song.
But then I look again, and I feel grateful.
He will never know hunger. He will never know the fear of sickness with no doctor nearby. He will never know what it feels like to have nothing and wonder if he will ever have something.
He will know different things. He will know two languages before he starts school. He will know that the world is big and full of possibilities. He will know that his father came from somewhere far away, and that love can cross any distance.
We are the same, my son and I. And we are completely different. One world, two lives, connected by blood, memory, and the tiny moments we share.
Maybe you can notice one of your tiny moments today too, and carry it with you.
The Drawing on the Fridge
Tonight, after dinner, my son brought me a piece of paper.
“Papa, voor jou,” he said. (For you.)
It was a drawing. Two stick figures, holding hands. One tall, one small. Above them, a yellow sun. Below them, green lines that might be grass.
“Dit is ons,” he said. (This is us.)
I put it on the fridge, right in the center, where I will see it every day.
This drawing will fade. The paper will yellow. One day, years from now, I will find it in a drawer and wonder where the time went. But the moment—this moment, right now, with my son's small hand in mine and his drawing in my heart—that will never fade.
That is what tiny moments do. They last.
Not in photographs. Not in objects. In us.
Closing
Tomorrow, life will continue. School runs. Work calls. Dishes to wash and meals to cook and emails to answer.
But tonight, I am sitting here, looking at a drawing on my fridge, thinking about my father in his village, thinking about my son in his room, thinking about all the tiny moments that built me and all the tiny moments I am building now.
We do not know, while we are living them, which moments will last. We do not know which ordinary Tuesday will become a memory we carry forever.
But that is okay. We do not need to know. We just need to live them. Fully. Presently. With open hearts.
The tiny moments will take care of themselves. They always do.
My father's voice, crackling through the phone tonight: “Babu, ma timilai samjhanchhu.” (Son, I remember you.)
My son's voice, five minutes later: “Papa, kom je slapen?” (Papa, will you come sleep?)
I am going to close this laptop now.
I am going to go be present for the tiny moments. The ones that last.
And maybe tonight, you can too. Notice one small thing, one tiny moment, and carry it in your heart.
Sometimes the tiniest moments—those quiet, everyday things—leave the deepest mark on our hearts. I’d love to hear about the small moments that have stayed with you. If you feel like sharing, please leave a comment. Your story might remind someone else to notice the little things too.
With love, and for all the tiny moments that stay with us,
-Bitty
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