Happy holidays

Happy holidays lovers. Christmas eve in France.


Empty bottles of champagne. Old wooden floors punctuated by high heels throughout Christmas dances. When I was little I used to hide behind the two large glass doors that made the entrance to the parlour. There I could admire the wonderful skirts that twirled around the room to the rhythms of old jazz. The men were tall and handsome. The women beautiful with pale skin and blood red lips. Their diamonds made reflections of the sun on the walls, through the lights from thousands of candles. This Christmas was filled of that old jazz and dad poured whiskey from the old crystal carafe I love so much. He served endless amounts of macrons and sang to me with closed eyes. I dried empty three bottles of champagne myself and hummed all night.


When the party had died, all the presents had been unwrapped and all the guests were either in their guest beds or long gone home, I took the last bottle and emptied the tray with macrons. Danced to myself while humming. Then I fell asleep on the floor and dreamt about the Parisian sky and C and the sunrise and him and more champagne. It was quite a silent holy day. To be honest.

from the past

So I must go to France. Of course. It will do you some good, my mother told me. Yet I heard the fear in her voice. Whenever I visit my father, she is worried that I might not come home. It is strange and we have been discussing it for years, still it's just the way she is. C is stable, her mother called last night. Anxious woman with a high-pitched voice. She once told us that when she was young she tried to make it darker by drinking a lot of whisky. Then she understood, her face turned crimson red and she left us with our mouths open. She is a lovely lady, that's for sure.


So my booked tickets made me dig in my wardrobe, and I found treasures. Old photo albums. My father is a photographer, meaning I have every minute of my life from France memorised in thousands of photos. In our old house he had a installed a dark room in one of our walk-in-closets. So there is not only a lot of photos taken, there are a lot of photos developed. Result - hundreds of albums. Invaluable for me. I have always been a sucker for the written word, for the illustrated images. 


Found one of her. Fathers wife that is. From one of the parties in the old house. She wore long black silk dresses. When she finally put on some heels, became an amazon and whirled around in the house - as the perfect hostess she was. As a child I loved to hide under tables. When she came looking for me, the skirt always reminded me of running horses. The silk fabric waved and showed off her shapely legs. We were both as proud of her, father and I. She was the foundation, the supporting pillar of our happy family. After her decease, it just wasn't was the same.. 

Who is C?

Took me quite some time to realise what he'd said. What had just happened. And then I needed to figure out what to do. I hid in my room, let the tears come, the screams, the memories.. C is my great love. My only friend. My femme fatale. We grew up together, sharing everything - heartbreaks, favourite clothes and family troubles. She was my sister. She already had quite a few, but for me she was the only one. When we moved away, we wrote letters. Hundreds of them. I have saved them all, in three rusty boxes. They contain every thought, every laugh and every cry we have ever had. Together or in solitude. 


She struggles. She have the biggest heart, the most fair smile. She is weak in her mind, but strong in her fists. We've been through this before. I have had that call before. Because underneath the beauty lies something dark, something that carves out her soul, break her bones quietly from the inside. Something that she will never recover from. I know. For a long, long time I was the only one who did. We shared it. Like sisters. Then something pulled me out of the water, gave me the oxygen I needed to continue. Saved me from myself. But no one did the same for her. She just continued to drown, one day at the time. I was never enough. Though I yelled at her, stroke her hair and whispered softly in her ear, cried beside her hospital bed, picked her up from the floor and said that I was done - she never stopped. She wouldn't even consider it. There was never something else. Just that. 

numb night, saturday it is

So, my father called. I needed the night to recover. I needed the time to sort out the thoughts, to figure out the words, to let it sink in. After 53 minutes since the first giggly sound from mother, she jumped off the chair and walked across the dining area and up the stairs covered in soft velvet. She knocked, did not wait for an answer and entered my kingdom of solitude. She handed me the phone without a word, turned around and left. Mon coeur, enfin! was his first words. The six following minutes contained phrases without any real meaning. He described that when a glimpse of sunshine came, he turned his face against it, just to feel a little bit closer to us, his loved ones. He told me that he visited Christophe et Jean-François the other day. Their big house on the countryside was my childhood heaven. Big house filled with surrealistic art, antique porcelain behind glass doors and books, so many rooms just for books. I could hide away from the world for hours behind hundreds of bookshelves, reading dusty books that made me cough. He told me that he missed me. That I should come visit, some time very soon. I will, I thought quietly to myself. He sounded so eager to get me there, not like usual, but as the world and our future depended on it. I shivered when I understood that the funny undertone in his voice was panic..


C is hospitalised chérie. You must come home. She needs you, they need you, I need you.

A punch in the face. A sudden indisposition. A lump in my throat. Then all black. I fell on the floor, dropped the phone under my bed. Mother came running when she heard the noise. She helped me up in my bed, picked up the phone and closed the door behind her. A few minutes later she came back, wrinkles on her forehead and a troubled face. She brought me tea in my favourite cup, asked if I wanted company and went off again. She knows me too well. 


I left my tea untouched. Situations like that require something stronger, something calming, something to numb the feelings. So I spent the night in my window sill, shivering, numb, anxious and totally empty. Long time no see, I haven't had one of those nights in a very long time. It was overwhelming so I spent most of the day in bed while listening to tragic jazz tones . Mother left me alone. I smoked cigarettes, put rum in my tea and continued to be numb. I can't think about the consequences quite yet, I need some more time..

paris calling

Came home this afternoon and heard giggle from the kitchen. It was mother. She was sitting on a chair, dangling with her legs. The image of a little girl. I knew who she was talking to. There is only one person whose calls will transfer her into that. I knew it had to be my father on the other line..


My father. Tall, dark and mysterious. The one they talk about in movies, the one they describe in literature. He lives in Paris, Jean-François. Mother ones lived with him but decided to move back home to England, because she missed the weather she explained. But I knew that was not the real reason. So she moved, well we moved. But they continued to be together. Long distance romance. Every once in a while he'd be in England and they'd carry on like nothing had happened. Same thing when we were in France. Then father met his french love and they moved in together. But nothing could change the great love between my parents. One or two or even three persons to love is only natural. And I got along really well with his new female friend. So who would care..


So our lives were filled with love. Everybody loved everybody. C'est l'amour, elle est comme ça, explained my father. And I never questioned it. I never thought about it as something other than perfectly normal. I just lived with it, like everyone else..