Strawberries and Whipped Cream

Chapter 1 - Burgeon

Heat, wine, Palm trees quietly dancing with the wind the slow dance we never got to do. Why did we never dance, just the two of us? We had music, lots of it and nights at the beach. But I never got that dance, that last dance, just between us. Strawberries, peaches, fish, cigarettes. You didn't smoke, but when I do now, I will still think of you. I will always think of you. Here, when I visit my grandma again in the summer. I wanted to return, it simply seemed impossible. Because, how could I come back to this place?

After that summer, after everything, I saw you only on the internet. I heard your name in my friend's mouth and I couldn't bring myself to tell them to stop. But I will always cherish these days, these nights I got to spend with you. Although you left a gaping wound behind, that I hope will one day not even be a mere scar anymore, but a memory, I cherish you. You gave me what nobody else could. Ma chérie. Mon monde.

I never liked visiting my grandmother. I know how cruel and unforgivably teenage-egoism-like that sounds, but it is true. I always begged my mother to let me be with her around the holidays, to let me visit dad wherever he was that summer and to allow me to relax with them, together. And most of the time, all my begging, all my faces filled with sadness leading up to the day they would have to make a decision, it would work. My mother and I visited Baba when I was a child one or two times, but always together and only for a week before we would fly off to our actual summer destination, which was most of the time somewhere in the south, maybe even Asia or the Caribbean. She listened to my wishes and since I only had so many weeks of summer vacation to spend with my family, she allowed me to skip the time I would have to spend alone with Baba. 

But this summer, my mother didn't want to go with me, she had her own plans and those apparently did not involve my presence. As I grew more independent, so did my mother and she did not need me as much as she had before. And so, I had to spend the summer somewhere else, where she didn't have to worry about me and that wouldn't be at home, where I would sulk around all day and do nothing, like she believed that I did. I was already exceptionally busy for my age, but in her eyes all I would do is to lay on the couch and let the days run by without being productive in any shape or form, which was the reason that made me believe, that I was old enough to spend this time with my grandmother, all by myself. I was nineteen. 

So yes, maybe she was right, I was at a ripe age and mature enough to even spend this time all on my own in another country, but I would have rather gone with my friends and spent this summer with them. I too had my own plans, but my mother was a very strong-willed woman and I could hardly ever change her mind, as she was already set in her ways. You pass the time when mother knows best and it is a horrible thing to experience. Necessary, but terrifying. Who liked to see their parents knowing less than you did, to be responsible for them? I felt helpless, like a child forgotten on the street, when my mother asked me what a word meant or; how to interpret a painting we had seen in a gallery or what the capital of Peru was. 

I hated it, but when she would decide something over my head, not knowing that she was in the wrong and that I would have a much harder summer down in France with grandma, I wanted nothing more than for her to realize her mistakes. And she would. I knew she would. But for now, she had made her decision and I had to bend to her will. So, without further discussions, off I was, flying on the next plane to Nice, where my grandmother picked me up from the airport.

I don't know what I thought would happen. But I should have known, that this would not go the way I had imagined, when my grandmother rushed down the curvy streets of south France, the wheels of her old car squeaking, her cigarette ash flying out the open window and my life flashing before my eyes with every time her head dropped to pick something up or her gaze landed on me and not on the road ahead. My grandmother could not speak German. And I could not speak French.