Childhood

As am getting back into my 'mother role' after this long, long summer... am also going though the days when summers where forever. I am not too sure what to do next year, I need my freedom for a couple of months, but am not that happy to leave my son with my parents so long. It's a shame, I know. I remember when I used to spend my summers in Barcelona, in Horta, with my Spanish family. They didn't understand me in many ways, just thought I was a weird spoilt little bitch 'coz I wanted to read adult novels instead of the crappy storybooks they were still offering me.

I remember my sister, when she was about 4 or 5, asking me what colour our mother's hair was, as she could not remember her well. That stuck in my mind, and I make sure I visit Hugo at my parents' every other weekend or so, not to let him drift away from me. I also remember my mother as quite a hippy those days, practicing a lower version of yoga with me on our lounge carpet, giving me an Asimov short stories collection to read being quite young, and making me study pages out of scientific divulgation books as a punishment, among other stuff. That was opposed by my Spanish, quite conservative, family and their style...


Me & my mom
Originally uploaded by okokitsme.

This is a pic I have always loved. It was taken at one of the few visits I remember my mother could afford during her main working season -hotel receptionist in the 70s, no days off!- and it was me feeling protected from the boring surroundings.

When I was younger still, most summers were in England. That was a completely different story. From a small flat in the middle of a tourist village, I went to this amazingly big -for me, then- house with a front & back garden, people who spoke the way I did, and an immersion in Upper-Middle-Class life, English Smalltown version: church every Sunday, Sundayschool and saints' cut-out figures, dancing around the Maypole.

Resulting in not quite fitting either among Spanish kids, nor English ones. Too Spanish for the English, too English to be Spanish.

I mean, just look at my summer beach, when I was actually living in the Costa Brava!


British Beach
Originally uploaded by okokitsme.