In what can only really be described as a strange turn of events, tonight we hosted a simple coffee with a friend who has mother and daughter guests visiting from Australia. While that alone is unremarkable, not only was the mother (who is in her 80s) a teacher's aid at my primary school, their house was almost across the street from my family home - and the mother still lives there with her husband. The daughter is in her 60s now, so we were never in the same circles as she was in her thirties when I moved as a teen, but I knew her by face.
There was no real reason for them visiting us, other than a quirk of coincidence.
I was curious to see how Smallsteps would manage with the accent, as while she does talk to her family in Australia, the was they speak is very familiar to her and it is different face-to-face talking with someone. And, there was plenty of chance to listen, because the daughter was super talkative to the point that after they left, my wife said she was worn out from all the listening. However, she told many funny stories about little events from their travels in a way that made Smallsteps laugh a lot at the calamity. After they left, she said that their trip sounds like it has been a catastrophe.
Catastrophe is not a bad word for an eight year old with English as her second mother tongue. She has obviously learned it from watching her father's life and asking her mother for an explanation.
We didn't really talk much about the hometown or people we know, but familiar names came up, events from the past and the streets and suburbs around where we lived. It was weird, because I don't really think about that time of my life at all these days. It had a lot of impacts on me, but I have processed and moved on. It was where I was a kid, but doesn't feel like where I grew up, if that makes sense.
I grew up on the other side of the country, because once I moved there, I became just me. I was no longer tied to the history of a family in a small town, and the exploits of my older brothers didn't precede me. There was no history of my life at primary school or the struggles faced there. I could forge my own path, and build anew.
No known origin story.
However, what is good to note for anyone who is pretty young and considering what is important in their life is, none of that shit matters. Okay, I don't know what you are doing in general, but what I mean is that the majority of things that seem so important at the time, as a child, a teen, or even into the twenties, will largely be forgotten in the forties and beyond. Most of the people we meet when we are young go unremembered, most of the parties are filled with ghosts, and those strong emotions felt, fade to nothing. Even the things we think we remember, are remembered poorly, with factual errors.
Yet, the lessons learned from those experiences can live on for a lifetime.
I haven't set foot in my hometown for almost 20 years, and that weas as a visitor. Still, I wonder what it would be like to go back and spend some time there for a few days and wander around the streets I used to know, and perhaps running into familiar faces from school who are now raising their own kids there. I wonder if I would even remember most of their names when they are standing in front of me, or would it all come flooding back and it would be like I never left. Would I regress to not being me again?
In their eyes, probably.
But their eyes don't matter to me, nor do the memories I have from most of my childhood. Yes, there were some good times that I hold dear, but for the most part, it wasn't that bad, nor that good, but it was largely forgetable. And as a consequence perhaps, most of it has indeed been forgotten. Some of it though, I wish I could forget.
One of the things living on the other side of the world is, it is pretty much impossible to run into childhood acquaintances. But after twenty-plus years in Finland, I do indeed run into people I used to know, but I don't know anymore. Just today when I had lunch with my ex-colleague, there were three people in the tiny restaurant from different groups that I knew to the point my friend asked, "Have we come to a Taraz fan hangout?" No. but whether I remember all their names or not, they remember me as me, not as "the brother or son of".
I don't know why, but I think there is something in that.
But I don't know exactly what.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
