43 years and 45 days ago

I came into the world exactly 43 years and 45 days ago.  My first seven years were spent in Africa and I still remember little things like: how to get to school from my house, the wendy house my parents built for my 6th birthday.  It was big enough for adults to stand in and I could even have my chairs and table in there so I could draw and play with my dolls.  It had two windows with little shutters that worked and a red door with the number six on it.  Every once in a while I would scare my self when I was alone in my pretty little house.  It would be quiet, thoughts of snakes and monsters would make me freeze until I got the courage to run.
(Left, me, 3 years old, with folks)
Not long after that we moved to Europe, where I would spend the next seventeen years of my life. 
It was as if I had gone to sleep and woken up in this dream, another life.  I wished every night that when I woke next, I would be back in my house in Africa, playing in the garden or at my school getting gold stars for my excellent reading skills.  Eventually the wishes stopped.   

When we stepped off the plane in Brussels, Belgium I remember my parents talking about the freezing cold weather.  I didn't understand, but as I breathed in I remember feeling like my throat was hollow and when the wind blew it felt as if I had no clothes on.  We were picked up by a man my dad knew, he smoked in the car with windows closed and had told me to sit on the luggage in the boot of his tiny vehicle.  I moaned the whole time about the smoke and being squashed.  Aparrantly not one could hear me.  This man dropped us at our new home called the Waldorf Hotel.  It was massive and was brown and gold inside.  People looked funny and also were covered in brown.  We stayed on the fourth floor.  It was a smoking room.  I hated it.  When I look back now I realize what country bumpkins we were on arrival causing a lot of stares.

Everywhere we went people stopped and looked at us.  It was touchy topic my parents brought up to each other a lot, especially when we ate in the main dining room.  People stared at my brother, who shoeless, ran out of the hotel room, down the stairs and after my mother who had gone down to the little shop on the corner or the road. What did we know about wearing shoes to go outside.

There were times we went to the zoo twice a week because we had nothing else to do.  This makes me
smile now.  We never got bored of the animals but I am sure as hell my mother must have.  Riding the city trams was a scary event for us all because we didn't speak the language we never knew where to get off.  Instead my mother would just stick her head out at every stop, sometimes even getting shoved off in the rush.  Once she nearly lost her head getting back on the tram because her head got stuck in the closing door.  Luckily a lady shouted and the driver opened the door.  My mother often shouted at us and my father right in the middle of the street causing more stares from the angry looking strangers.

43 years and 45 days ago