Here and There, Now and Then

* Mama told me "Someday, you will regret it". Fourteen years later Mama passed away. And I regret it.

* I thought how wonderful and almost identical the stalagmites and the stalactites were, but then I overheard the guide saying something about the unbelievably clear water in the bottom.

* We ran to catch the last train back to West Berlin in that April night in 1988. A beautiful stranger started to talk in French with my friend. She said she was a former ballerina. Big talk about life, despair and the others was conducted. Faces of East Berlin train inspectors, cold weather and the dark-haired late thirties ballerina added a flavor to the ride.

* My friend and I were walking back to the hotel. We did not know exactly the road, but we knew we had to cross the dark park. Two girls, walking a few meters ahead, looked back at us and turned around. My friend said to me "They are scared of us. Two foreign-looking men and a dark park are no good equation".

* In 2012 I felt I almost lost 3 friends/acquaintances. Sadness, surprise or disinterest was the feeling that colored my reaction to each of those losses.

* "You missed me?" I answered "No". "You did not miss me?" I repeated "No". "Do you understand what miss means in English?"

Like a drugged person who suddenly came into conscience I came back to my senses and realized what I said. I apologized and tried to explain that I was distracted because someone entered the office. It was true but I was really surprised though that the meaning of "miss" was blacked out in my mind for 20 seconds during the telephone conversation.

* The first thing I used to do in the morning was to go and sit beside him on bed and read the newspapers in a loud voice. Reading was his passion but my father almost lost sight and hearing in his last two years. Sometimes I felt bored or was in a hurry….If only second chances could be given.

* Mama and papa left us (sister was around 8 years old and I was 11 years old) with our grandmother and they went out. The three of us were watching T.V. in the living room when grandma suddenly asked us "Is your grandfather in the bed room?" We did not know what she was talking about because as far as we knew our grandpa was dead for many years, so we said nothing and thought there must have been misunderstanding somewhow. Seconds later she started to talk in her usual kind amicable way about persons and incidents we did not know and even she imitated sounds of roosters and cats while looking naively at us. My sister and I got panicked and we slowly went out of the room. The moment we were far from her, we both asked in the same breath "Did grandma become insane?"

* Under Eiffel tower I was stopped by a girl who asked me in English with American accent "It is a bit embarrassing, but can we have a photo together? My friend will take it" and she pointed at another girl holding a camera few steps away. I was surprised at her request, but then she added "Can we look a bit intimate in the photo?" I smiled and asked "How far intimate would you like us to get? She laughed and said "Not that far". We posed and I put my arm around her shoulders. They thanked me and walked away. I am neither a celebrity look-alike nor that stunning looking that a girl would go back home and brag about. What did she do with the photo..I do not know.

* He mastered his subject as a university professor and also had his efficient teaching tools. Nothing ever appeared unusual with him for almost two years. We had many chances to talk about matters unrelated to the class, so when the newspapers mentioned his name as a member of a strange cult that was under investigation by the authority, I could not believe it. The papers cited bizarre practices against the law. Members, including him, were sentenced for few years. I tried in the last few years to search him on the net but could not find any trace.

* Recently I found myself wondering in more than one occasion how could I be sure that some people are really as very nice as they seem to be. From the course of the events they are either genuinely nice or completely fake, and consequently I am either too naïve or very suspicious. Or we are both somewhere in the middle according to the old wise thought.

Yellow

Button in The Street

Two of my brothers-in-law passed away in 2011 and 2012. Two different characters and two different circumstances of death. Sometimes when a close relative or a friend passes away, I find a very little old memory of him/her flashes through my mind. It is not usually a memory that reflects a big or significant something, no, it is usually a simple and foggy situation that quietly sat down in my memory until it found, at a certain moment, its way out. It could be as significant as finding an old button in the street that vaguely meant someday someone passed by there.

One day when I was around 11 years old, the first brother in law, my two cousins and I were walking along a small narrow canal that ran through the green fields on the outskirts of my brother-in-law's hometown. When I picked up a small stone from the ground and throw it in the water, he asked if I knew how to throw it and make circles of splash waves next to each other instead of concentric splash circles. I didn't, and he showed me how to do. I tried few times and did not succeed.

The last time I saw him on the bed in the hospital after a long bitter battle with the disease and just few hours before his departure, I found myself recalling the cheerful young man who showed me how to throw a stone in the water in that very far breezy afternoon in the countryside.

The second brother-in-law got married to my sister in a much later stage of my life. It is common to hear praises mentioned for the dead, but here I find words stand unable to interpret my feelings toward him. He was one of the very rare persons who made life, for those around him, bright and worth-living. Once we had a calm talk in my room about a personal problem that put me through a difficult and critical phase of life. He did not try to lecture or to advice, but talked about little funny incidents that happened to him when he was teenager. 

His death made me wonder how a flame of humour, energy and kindness could get extinguished suddenly like this, and how a small grave could embrace what life seemed once not big enough to embrace.