Pictures on my mind
It’s my birthday today. I am a woman of fifty-five. It seems like fifty-five minutes now.
The earliest memory I have is the vision of a tree from above in a little green yard between two apartment buildings. I can only have seen this from the balcony of my grandparents, where I was living. Must have been around one year old. I also remember falling out of the swing, two years old maybe?
I haven’t forgotten the yellow dress I was wearing when we all moved to a new place together. Age: two and a half.
I recall the green curtain with the little figures my mother made, hanging in my room. I have a memory of my father sending me out of his room. By the time I was three, he was gone.
I was a happy child, always wandering outside. Most of my friends were boys.
In an old orchard near to the newly built houses where we lived, there was an old horse, Napoleon. Out of a fairytale, he was white and beautiful. Perhaps he wasn’t beautiful, but in my mind, he is mythical. I was climbing in the fruit trees; plum and apple. Sharing the fruit with Napoleon.
It’s been a curvy path from the promising child I was to this today.