Blast from the past

I was in bed a few nights ago, seconds away from falling asleep. Then suddenly, I found myself in the bedroom my sister and I used to share when we were little. There was a single bed on the left hand side of the rectangle-shaped room. Across it, a brown study desk. I was sitting on the floor in between, and so was my sister. I was playing with one of those toys that taught children to recognize shapes. There was a red plastic cube box whose six sides were adorned with cut-outs of shapes. A square, a rectangle, a circle, an octagon, a crescent moon, and a star.

The door opened and in poked my parents' heads. My mother spoke and I looked up.

"We are leaving now, so grandma will stay with you tonight, is that okay, dears?" I didn't know where they were going and I didn't ask. My sister might have said something to them, though I was too busy with my toy to pay attention.

The door closed and not long after, the front gate creaked open, letting out my dad's car, and creaked back closed. I wasn't aware of it then, but it was the last night that I was the youngest child in the house. The date was October 8th, 1985.

My dad came home the next day, my mum a few days after. More than eight thousand days have come and gone since then, including the day my grandmother left and never returned.

Funny how randomly the brain picks which memory to surface.

What a difference Doraemon makes

Just in case anybody's wondering, I had a nice weekend. The weather from Saturday morning onwards was not agreeable but thankfully I had a lovely companion to spend time with indoors.

We didn't do much. We just played the role of couch potatoes pretty much all weekend long. What impressed me was that he could sing some of the lines from the Candy Candy theme song. Apparently Candy Candy was really big in Belgium. He didn't know about Doraemon, however, and when I showed him an episode on YouTube, he didn't really like it. But, "I enjoyed watching you enjoy it, though." Wow, this guy is good.

And just for the record, the theme song for the weekend was "What a Difference a Day Makes".

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Despite all that loveliness, I am still at a loss, thinking about what had gone wrong that had brought me to this point. I'm not in a bad situation or anything, but this was certainly not what I had in mind a few weeks ago.

Still, I'm loving this city. And with spring well underway, there is no reason for me to be sad or think about the what-could-have-beens. Besides, sooner or later, they* will all eventually disappoint, anyway.

*men.