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Mother-daughter

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The other night I woke up and saw unbelonging people standing in the small room we were staying at. I knew it was just my sleepy mind that made the scene. I closed my eyes and opened them after a while. Still there was a dark figure standing by my daughter. I didn’t see the face, just figure. ‘Must be Betty’ I thought.

‘Betty dear’, I said silently, ’ do not take my daughter!’

She did not move, did not hear, she was not taking her. She was protecting her. I stared and  stared and the image did not go away. I fell asleep again and in the morning it was gone.

I was not frightened at any moment.

Just had lunch with husband. Walking back full of zest of life. Sun was bright and warming. Food was good. I got a compex ideas in a good order. I just finished thinking luckily the crying times are behind.

Then I remembered the scene. And started to cry.

Still it was rather unfamiliar, not scary.

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Issues

Being very depressed yesterday I managed a bath to me. I bought the Laura Ashley scented candle. I picked up the lightweight-yet-interesting book. It helped.

You loved to swim but you didn’t bath. You brought the water animal set from Spain, they are there. We bought the monsterous water pistols last summer at your cottage, that hot day it was. These made bathing interesting to my son who joined me soon after I started the book.

Laying there I thought the elderly survival equipments I saw earlier the day. Beds with edges, beds without edges. Lifting and moving cupboards. How dare you be afraid I would not be there to help you. And more painfully, I feel quilty not communicated that clear enough to you. As your leaving is my fault.

It is not.

But never thought that a minute when my parents divorced.

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The hardest thing is
you realise
you need to be hard to get over her.
Being hard is the last you want to be.

The hardest thing is

you realise

you need to be hard to get over her.

Being hard is the last you want to be.

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White, blue, the sky

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The other day I was so desperate I said I want to follow you.

After saying it I realised we are not supposed to ask for things we do not really want. I want to live.

Then I was sure, after saying that, that I will die.

I paid a visit to a city nearby, it was snowy day. I was sure it is my last day. I was surprised to arrive home safely.

Yesterday I was away with 42 kids. I prayed nothing would happen to me or to them. Nothing did.

I certaily got a trauma of sudden deaths.

I also got a very strong feeling wanting to be alive.

Tags: sky trauma
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Melancholy, my new friend

I wish to have just few more discussions with you.

I wish to have just one more hug.

Human nature is insatiable. Which prooved here.  

I can look at your picture now. Flipping them through is too painful. But I miss you so much.

I went to see a doctor for cardiological diseases; it was gastroentero problems.

I went to see a dentist for a broken tooth; not even a hole.

You never had problems with heart or teeth. But you had to diet from coffee. I transformed this to me rejecting cardiological threats coming from DNA.

I started to plan a music for your funeral. I am so lost. Hope to find a perfect way. I don’t accept ‘nobody cares really’! Life is just about caring, nothing else matters!

I was so desperate I yelled God to help last night.

“In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus. “

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Dear my

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You think you know what sorrow is and then you don’t.

Your heart is ripped off. Your mind blowing. Your body shivering.

And yet you know that this is only the first chock. The sorrow comes later.

First days are blind. After a while you see a climpse of things people normally keep reasonable. They are entirely meaningless to you.

You yell at night ’where are you’. Then you wake up and remember and burst into tears.

You think ancient people who personised death were wise. They created somebody to hate to.

You know she is in heaven now. She just jumped to the lap of God beside her missed husband. Can you blame her for that?

You open email and think has anybody proved emails don’t catch heaven?

You say that aloud.

People are concerned of your mental health. You lightly recognise that but don’t care.

You go to see a doctor.

Doctor takes an EKG to show your heart is ok. A blood sample so that you are not expiring.

You eat your digestion pills and feel strong.

You are strong enought to make few more phonecalls.

You find out people who want to know because knowing is power and they like to be powerfull.

You also find people who doesn’t like power but care.

You think being lucky finding them now.

Yet you serve a funeral to everybody.

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But it was her life

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The day she met that piece changed her life. It was a dark and foggy day, she was bored and wandered around in YouTube. Mozart for the mood, then Liszt. Starting with Liebenstraum she ended to the sonata.

Love at first hearing. She played it again and again. She bought the notes the same day. It took some months, years actually, but eventually she learned to play it.

After the first time she got the whole masterpiece through without interruptions, she cried. ‘This is it, this is me, he must have made this for me’ she thought, referring to Liszt as him.

The Sonata became an unseparable part of her life. Boyfriends were tested with the music. She asked ‘how do you like Liszt?’ ‘Medium rather than raw, ha ha.’ answered one poor fellow and had no possibilities.

‘I don’t care about boyfriends, not as much as the Sonata’ she answered to her mother who was worried after another dumped prospect. ‘But honey, the sonata is not bringing you life nor kids!’ mother said. ‘Well, the Sonata is my life, I don’t need other lifes’ she answered.

Of course she finally found a guy who enjoyed the Sonata. They got married, they got kids. Not that life would have then started. Her love just widened to other directions.

She found a proper workplace. ‘You keep talking and talking’ she thought in boring meetings. ‘I don’t care. I have something else, I have more. I have my Sonata.’ She thought that especially when the meetings got a nasty articulation. ‘If only you would hear me playing the Sonata, you would not talk to me like that’ she thought. 

This came her mantra. She categorised people to whom she would play the Sonata and to whom she would not. But she never did perform it to anybody except the family that heard it by nature.

‘Why on earth you stuck in that piece, change it, move on!’ her husband said. But she found no reason to do so. The Sonata was the core of her life.

The outer shelters of her life grew up. They moved on, they moved away. ‘Oh mother, we will miss you playing your Sonata!’ the kids said when flying away from the nest. ‘I can play it in your weddings’ she said. ‘Well… ’ they said, glancing each other. ‘Maybe you will’. But she didn’t.

‘I must play the Sonata to you some time!’ she said to her colleagues. ‘Yes, do!’ ‘In my retirement party if not earlier!’ she said and laughed. The party came, she did not perform anything. It was a nice cup of coffee party.

‘Life is too light!’ she said to her husband. ‘Is it really’ he answered thinking all the heavy accords she specially loved in the Sonata. ‘Yes, light and passes by too easyly !’ she answered.

One day she realised she couldn’t remember the Sonata through anymore. It was a dark and foggy day. Weeks and months after that remained melancholic. Slowly but inevitably she said good bye to the Sonata. She didn’t want to and that made the process so sad.

The last accords she remembered were the last ones. Sweet, tender, despondent.

‘Oh those accords, they are so you!’ her friends said when she tried them with their pianos when visiting there.

Then she could not play even them.

‘In my funeral, please arrange someone play the Sonata’ she asked her family. They promised. But when the day came that they had to plan the funeral they discussed about it. ‘It was her only wish!’ ‘But it is so long!’ ‘And do we know anybody who could play it!’ ‘I think Chopin funeral march is much more suitable’ they finally decided.

But whenever anybody she knew hears the Sonata, they remember her. It is remembering, after all, that remains. Lightly and then disappears, as life.

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Teaching learning

And then the students came in.

I love my work even more!

It is a heartbeating feeling to notice ‘I can teach. I like teaching! They listen to me.’

I taught straight 3 hours without a brake. At the end I asked if they used to have breaks. ‘Yeah, every 40 minutes or so’.

I love when they hello and smile when meeting at the corridor. ‘Swedish words, this early at the morning!’ I bewared not to show my sympathy, swedish is i m p o r t a n t to learn, but just ‘you are doing it fine!’

I love when in same elevator they are shy and quiet. Once there alone I was staring at the mirror lifting the eyebrowns up in different ways, to consider which looked most professional. And then they came in. Shy and quiet and did not notice anything.

I love to explain once again the difference between target gross profit and needed money. See, that is very important!

Ex-work looks like a nightmare. I hope soon the anger has passed by. I still have silent battles with ex-collegues, ex-bosses. Nightmare yes, but without it I would not be here.

Now preparing next week. Cosy sitting and searching for sociology theories of ‘The art of financial welfare of human being’.

Nice!

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I love my new work

I love to notice the lady in deep long red hair with a polka dot bow at the same meeting. I love not to hear jokes about her gender, hair colour, hair lenght nor that bow. 

I love to smooth cordyroy and see that as a possible outfit material. I love imagining me as a teacher.

I love when collegues don’t see North Korea as somehow good just ’because there must be at least one happy grandmother’.

I love to use words like ‘explicitly’ and ‘tutoring’. Explicitly I am tutoring the next starting class on January, which I -explicitly- love.

I love to nodd mentally ’right right right’ after spending so many hours trying not to yell aloud ‘wrong wrong wrong’.

I love to sit at the top floor at the last corner because functional training is so very beneficial.

I love being forced to pour my own coffee, instead of machine. Even when here is not own coffees but shared coffees. If you cook it you share it.

It only makes me cook hot water aka tea, jasmine tea.

Which I love.

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Life, the happy one.

When I was young I thought happy and harmonious family life was an imaginary thing. A little related to Cinderella castle or Santa Claus. So nice if they were but they don’t.

Then I had family of my own. Happy and harmonious.

I thought we just were lucky or succeed well with the family thing. We were exceptional.

When I saw a family smiling to their own joke I thought ‘yeah, everybody is happy sometime. But I know. I know you guys live in a misery. ‘

Wrong. Most families are most of the time happy!

Millions of happy dinners held all around the world. Millions of mothers cheering up to their children. Millions of fathers going out to fly paper aeroplanes with their kids. Millions of brothers filling out the empty tire of litlle sister’s bike.

In France the families nationwide bake cakes every weekend.

Is there any more a ‘happy family’ -tag than baking a cake and then eating it together? I don’t think so.

This is mentionworth because understanding the big wide ‘happy family happy life’ thing lying beneath everywhere I became …not happier… but more mercifull to others. ‘yeah, that was a mistake and a bad thing you said but I know. I know you have a happy life!’

And that was a slow start for being more mercifull to myself.

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Of rich



Have you ever thought ‘husband’ sounds like ‘house band’? A gang you hang with in the same house? Oh yeah!

My husband is rich with early mornings. Awakening with sunshine. Thoroughly reading the newspapers. Running in the fresh and bright forest.

To enjoy your richness; not easy. You have it, you get used to having it, you take it for granted, and only small step you don’t see it as a blessing but a nuisance. Early mornings, yeah, they are nice. But. The sun is not really warming. Newspapers, boring.

I am rich with hair. I have thick hair, ‘oh you hair is so thick all hairdresses say’ -thick. It is also hot and sweaty.

‘Oh yeah? But thanks! Yes, I like it. Yes, it is easy.’

He is rich with a good physical condition. He can run 10 k whenever. I can hardly chuff 2k.

I am rich with music. It is always on and everywhere.

‘Yeah, I could join you to 10k running round. If only my Ipod had batteries. Bummer!’

Our richnesses meet in the bathroom. Early showers, loose hair on the floor, string band playing background.

Now that really is rich.

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Cinnamon rolls

Our neighbor family was bohemian. Not hippies, the father was a doctor after all, but were original with a Volkswagen-bus way.

The mother baked cinnamon rolls with dark wheat flour. There were no icing on the top. You could hardly tell if it was a sweet treat or just a bun with cinnamon taste.

They traveled around Finland with the bus, cheerfully waving out from the windows, cinnamon rolls-buns packed along with green tea.

The children grew up to artists, doctors, officers.

Isa, girl my age, my friend, became a pianist. We stopped being friends at some point. Did I mention something impolite about those rolls, I can’t remember.

Anyway, their mother got an Alzheimer disease right after turning 50 years. A year after that she died.

Two weeks ago my son got confirmed. He and Isa’s daughter attended the same camp. At the church I saw Isa. Her daughter and my son attended the same camp. She nodded slightly and smiled.

After the church we had a confirmation party.

We had buns and cheese, among the cakes. ‘I am so obsessed to these buns, if anyone asks, I ate them all’ said one guest.

My mother made them. She makes buns adding white suger to the dough. They are soft and delicous. You can hardly tell if you are eating a bun or a sweet treat.

‘Did you have cinnamon rolls at that camp?’ I asked the party boy, my son.

‘Yeah’, he replied.

‘Did Alma (Isa’s daughter) like them?’

‘Mommy, whaaat!’

New generation, our children, is so in the white page. Where business failures and bankruptcies banned our relationships, they start creating their own from the empty space.

And if their relationships are disfigured or promptly cut, there comes a new generation. A new wave after wave, again and again.

Life is such a wonderful big wave.

Sometimes iced.

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On beauty

‘She is so beautiful!’ her parents said.

She was, absolutely. 

Two things hit me hard: I never heard that from my parents and I never will. 

‘You are too thin to that dress.’ ‘That dress is too short!’ ‘Red really doesn’t suit you.’  That’s what I heard.

At teenage I felt sick, literally, every time I looked at the mirror.

Now the excuse is endless rush and therefore lack of details.

Like the party we had. 

It all started from the dress I saw. I got the inspiration for the theme; food, decorations, atmosphere, all according to that theme. For the very last night before the party I was sure I could sew such a dress from the material I had.

‘You are not going to use this material, are you, it’s too sheer!’ ‘That nude, it’s obviously not your color’, my mother told me. 

Fifteen minutes before the start the dress was ready. Not sheer, not short. ‘Ah, flamenco style. I never thought you would like that!’

To please her I skipped the hair and face; flamenco style yes, but only in the dress.

The party was a great victory. But I didn’t like the pictures from it, I was missing the point, obviously, the details. I hated myself. I hated my mother. 

I decided my short cut beyond all the hatred is to start to treat myself as beautiful.

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Tags: diaries
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Poppy seeds

‘Mommy, what are these?’

‘Poppy seeds’

‘Poppy seeds! You know what happens if you eat too much poppy seeds!’

‘No??’

‘Mommy!’

My teenager boys.

Brother-in-law paid a visit. They are nice people to talk with. As his wife entered the ancestry first, she has been the matron to all of us new comers. It is obvious she finds it very hard with me. Tenderly mocking my children, openly praising hers, upbringing her achievements, nonchalanting mine.

I talked to her husband then. About the books he might have read, the books he should absolutely read ‘I will get it to you, it is a master piece picture of war that book!’. Talking about flying which she is scared, talking about other languages which she cannot speak.

I am not proud of myself, but couldn’t help. See, I respect no matrons.

I made a reconcilement cake for them. Poppy seed mascarpone strawberry cake.

Yesterday they, us and 19 other people gathered around our table to eat that cake. After the dinner of course.

She said nothing. Not a slightly positive comment we know as small talk or human interaction. Not a word.

Maybe she could not stand the raw-cut style to finish the cake.

Hard way vs. easy way.

Rural vs. cities.

Resentment vs. forgiving. 

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Divan hammock

I watched her walking through the parking lot. Determined steps. Slowly but inevitably getting closer.

She entered the patio furniture sales corner. She had a black tailored coat, pink skirt, a tone deeper pink Burberry scarf and lipstick same colour. She wore petite lovely shoes. She was one walking adult-sized doll.

She came directly to me. I was laying in a monsterous thing called divan hammock. Husband was around the corner making bargains with a very green salesclerk. (He used arguments like ‘this is my first real job’, ‘please use financing because I get provision of that’,  ’I really need to do some sales today!’  He could be my son! I couldn’t dicker an euro! I let my steel hearted lover to do that. ) 

She was not glancing the polyrattan sofa sets neither patio dining sets. ‘What’ I thought, ‘does this alive barbie want this divin hammock?!’

‘Are you the clerk here?’ she asked. I gasped. Wearing a leather jacket, jeans and laying in that thing, was I the clerk?

‘No, I am not. He is around the corner.’

She went there. Because my horizontal position was disturbed, I jumped up and joined husband.

‘Are you in queue?’ she asked.

‘Yes I am, I just cruelly jumped you’ I thought.

‘No I am not, waiting for my lover’ I said.

‘Your husband’ husband said.

He paid, undersigned, was ready to go.

‘Buy that divan, it is divine! ’ I whispered to her knowing hammocking was not the thing to Burberry princesses. They sit preppy in deck chairs. She stared at me, not answering.

Sometimes the worlds just do not match.