A Patchwork Quilt

I was excited to realize I was entering my one hundredth entry, and asked my son for a good way to make it special. He is a bright young man, and suggested I explain the name of the title of my web page, and its meaning. I had planned to do this later on, but thought it a very good idea. The meaning of the title is two fold. There is a reference to a lioness, and a reference to exile. I am Flemish , and the symbol on the Flemish flag is a roaring black lion rearing against a bright yellow background. I am female, so I chose the word lioness as the first part of the title. I am out of my country of birth, out of my culture, language, and due to tragic circumstances, out of my blood and family. Hence the word exile, as I feel very much isolated from everything familiar I grew up with, especially the chance to speak my native tongue, which I only do now by phone with my loving aunt Lieve in Oostende, once every two or three months for a couple of hours, and once in a blue moon with my cousin Marc in Koekelare, also in Belgium. He is the son of my father's oldest sister Denise. My brother Bart who has lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for the last 34 years no longer wants contact so I no longer speak my native tongue with him either. Both my younger sisters are dead, and so are my parents. So the word exile seems quite appropriate. As far as the structure of the web page goes, I designed  it like a patch work quilt. It can be read as a whole, chronologically, or it can be appreciated for its individual stories, which each take no more than  five minutes to read. So, like  a quilt, you can appreciate the separate pieces, at your leisure, or appreciate the whole of the stories and poems as they unfold. Like a patch work quilt, the poems and stories grew out of a life time of experiences, and lived in my heart and memory a long time, before I was finally able to release them. Some of the poems and stories were written in my heart over a long number of years, so like a patch work, I pulled the memories together in a pattern of remembrance to hopefully create a piece of writing that will both entertain and teach.