I just finished reading Derick’s blog and when he mentioned his dinner -a Tandoori take out- I couldn’t help but smile and my mind wandered down on memory lane.
Tag: <span>memories</span>
I suppose we all have a celebrity crush when we are young. At 14 I admired John Travolta, just like so many other girls like me. I went with a girlfriend to the movie theater in Austria. We got tickets for the show, sat down, unpacked our cigarettes and got lost in Grease.
Sometimes, very seldom, I feel something like homesickness, even though it’s not for a home or family, but rather for a tradition and or perhaps rituals I remember so vividly. Right about now, at the beginning of summer, I was always called back home to our farm in Austria. I got an extra week of vacation, like so many of us farm-children who had to help.
“You are going to England for the summer,” my Grandma told me and she would spend my favorite time of the year with two children from Italy. She had been given a pamphlet of EF a student summer exchange program -which is still existing to this day. She had liked the idea, because she had signed up for it months before I knew about it.
I was born 4,500 miles away in a small village in the Alps. One foot one the Italian side, the other on the Austrian side my Grandma always joked. I met Gastarbeiter/Migrant workers), who were guest/gast in our country, invited by our government. Most of them came from the former Yugoslavia, a few Turkish men followed the invitation as well.
One of the rare occasions I will show myself. Banged up knee, no front teeth, one of Grandma’s ridiculous haircuts, yet the boy on my side could not resist my charm and became my boyfriend for one summer.
Lent was a big deal in our Catholic boarding school. 40 days of fasting was the motto, which didn’t bother us too much, we were used to it. Boarding school food is a bit like hospital food, and fasting comes naturally.
Many years back -not sure how many and I don’t want to think about it right now because it makes me feel old(er)- I attended a weekend seminar. I had been saving my money, and time for this adventure, and I wasn’t the only one. Everybody seemed excited about the topics, the speakers and our surroundings.
I watched the news last night, saw the pictures of our “new” old schools and I while I am glad they made them safer, I feel saddened at the same time. Many of the schools now look like prisons. The school shootings have left marks. Locked and guarded doors, steel walls, double entrees and armed security guards on duty are now the norm in many schools.
“Happy Mother’s Day,” he said, looked at me and gave me the receipt. He meant well, so do all the others, wishing me the same. Now I just smile politely, a smile that doesn’t reach my eyes and everybody who knows me well would notice. The strangers in the stores they don’t know me, they don’t notice. How could they? It’s their job to be polite to customers. They mean no harm. The younger ones, who don’t have children, think about their own mothers. The older ones, who have children smile, think about their own kids. It’s natural so it seems.