Thursday, June 7, 2012

It's not that easy

The last time I had seen my godmother and her family, was on my Confirmation in 6th grade. She came to church, to support me, but she didn't stay for the party that was planned. I never thought it would take 7 years before I would see her again.

I have two nieces. They are both older than me and very different. One was blond and had tons of pretty freckles. The older niece had curly black hair, all the way down to her bottom. I loved to go over to their place for sleep overs during the holidays. They lived in the area of Ghent at the time and I was invited to stay with them for a week or so. We were young back then. Younger than 12 for sure. One of the nieces had an orange record player. It was the most beautiful record player I had ever seen. It had rounded corners. It wasn't big and the sound was probably not the best, but we could play records in her room. One of the records we would play over and over again, is a record not many of you will recognize. It was called: Kiss me mio, amore by The Loveletts. I'm pretty sure the record belonged to her parents. The music is not exactly fitted for young children. But we loved it. We would sing along: oh baby oh baby, oh baby my little baby. If the record player would have had a repeat button, we would have used it. It was quite tricky to put the fragile needle on the record without scratching it. We were afraid to damage the record, so we were very careful with it. I never forgot that song, nor the moment.

At the age of 18, I got my driver's license. I had longed for this piece of paper for a long time. Being able to drive, would give me so much freedom. It didn't take me long to buy a second hand car and soon after that, I would drive myself to school. No more boring train rides for me!
On my way to college, I passed a familiar area. I recognized some street names. Only a few weeks later, I realized this had to be the area where my godmother lived. I was totally excited! My heart pounded in my throat when I took the exit and started to look for the house I was familiar with. I even remembered the address by heart. But what if they had moved? They had moved before you know, since my uncle worked as a police officer and he was asked to move several times. But I decided to give it a try. I got out of my car and walked my way up to the door. Then I chickened out and ran back to the car. I had to calm myself down. What could happen? Not much, right? So I pulled myself together and rang the bell. My godmother opened the front door and showed no sign of recognition. I told her who I was and she was moved to say the least. She was just on her way out to see her doctor, so she hugged me and asked me to please come back some other day. And that's exactly what I did..

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