Memory Box 2
Memory.
I am probably about 4 or 5 years old. My father is on all fours, growling on the floor and I'm riding on his back. We are enacting my favourite book which is the Jungle Book and I am Mowgli and he is Balu my great protector. We have just been for a walk with Bagheera (played by the -conveniently black- dog) and now we are resting on the banks of the river Ganges.
Through the half-open doors we catch a glimpse of my mother moving around the hallway, so my father whispers *shush, be careful and quiet brown frog, it's Sheer Khan* and so we hold our breaths and duck down low into the reeds.
Memory.
A long long time ago. The world is fuzzy, made up of sounds and glows. I am very little. I can't yet walk, but I have mastered my hands and feet and I delight in kicking about. I have been sleeping, and I wake into a warmth and darkness. There's a different kind of feel to the room, an expectation, a feeling of excitement. My parents faces swim into view like two great moons and they lift me up and carry me to a thing that really is magical - a tall tree strung with glittering things I reach my hands out to.
Memory
I am 4
My grandmother and her friends are sitting around a table, playing cards. I am convinced that the only reasons they are doing this dull thing is because they aren't aware that Barbie dolls exist and that instead of chucking little squares of cardboard at each other they could be at this very minute dressing them up in little outfits. So after much internal pain and debating (because I'm firmly grafted onto every possession and loath to let go of anything, even for a second) the compassion wins out and I magnanimously offer them my dolls to play with and am absolutely stupified when they aren't keen on the idea.
Memory
I am 3 years old, and there's a French teacher who comes to the house to play with me, and talk to me in French so that I start to pick up the language. My mother has explained to me that she is a very nice lady who talks only in her own special language and so we have to learn it to communicate with her. A notion which backfires slightly as I keep pointing out that surely it would be more practical to teach her Serb instead so that she can communicate with the rest of the world.
Soulier my French teacher says patiently in French, tapping her shoe.
Cipela. I repeat just as patiently in Serb, tapping my own footwear.
I am probably about 4 or 5 years old. My father is on all fours, growling on the floor and I'm riding on his back. We are enacting my favourite book which is the Jungle Book and I am Mowgli and he is Balu my great protector. We have just been for a walk with Bagheera (played by the -conveniently black- dog) and now we are resting on the banks of the river Ganges.
Through the half-open doors we catch a glimpse of my mother moving around the hallway, so my father whispers *shush, be careful and quiet brown frog, it's Sheer Khan* and so we hold our breaths and duck down low into the reeds.
Memory.
A long long time ago. The world is fuzzy, made up of sounds and glows. I am very little. I can't yet walk, but I have mastered my hands and feet and I delight in kicking about. I have been sleeping, and I wake into a warmth and darkness. There's a different kind of feel to the room, an expectation, a feeling of excitement. My parents faces swim into view like two great moons and they lift me up and carry me to a thing that really is magical - a tall tree strung with glittering things I reach my hands out to.
Memory
I am 4
My grandmother and her friends are sitting around a table, playing cards. I am convinced that the only reasons they are doing this dull thing is because they aren't aware that Barbie dolls exist and that instead of chucking little squares of cardboard at each other they could be at this very minute dressing them up in little outfits. So after much internal pain and debating (because I'm firmly grafted onto every possession and loath to let go of anything, even for a second) the compassion wins out and I magnanimously offer them my dolls to play with and am absolutely stupified when they aren't keen on the idea.
Memory
I am 3 years old, and there's a French teacher who comes to the house to play with me, and talk to me in French so that I start to pick up the language. My mother has explained to me that she is a very nice lady who talks only in her own special language and so we have to learn it to communicate with her. A notion which backfires slightly as I keep pointing out that surely it would be more practical to teach her Serb instead so that she can communicate with the rest of the world.
Soulier my French teacher says patiently in French, tapping her shoe.
Cipela. I repeat just as patiently in Serb, tapping my own footwear.