2.Turn back time

I promised you the beginning, and you will get that.  But before we go there, we have to take a pitstop in Prinsdal (Suburb of Oslo), the year is 2000.  That’s when you for real came into my mind.  As you soon will figure out, my biggest strength is not chronology.  BUT, im just the best when it comes to go round and about.  I guess it’s supposed to be this way, or else my cells would have been assembled in another way.  I will try to keep the faith to chronology, but count on some detours – this is the first.

Prinsdal.  I lived in a worn down house, a “two family home” type of house – faced to the wrong side, as far as the sun goes. Constantly in the shadows even in the middle of the day.  Our properties best assets were two old apple trees that quarreled about space, about as big as a dime – on a lawn full of moss.  They produces delicious august-fruits on branches twirling together in orderly chaos.  It was just made to climb in, those trees.  Just staying up there. Dreaming.  The worst asset to the property was our garage.  In it’s own rotten nonchalant way, it leaned towards the house, as if to manage to stay up.  Having one hour of sun up by the roof, I used to hang my washed clothes way up there during the summer.  They dried quickly during that hour.  And dressed in clothes that smelled like the sun, the shadows were easier to bear.  It wasn’t great.  But it was home.

In the year 2000 I had extended my maternity leave with my son number two. On year extra to be with the greatest miracles on earth – my children.  The days went by slowly in the small valley of Prinsdalen, and there was time to think of the big things in life. I didn’t spend much of my time doing that.  One day, while stuffing myself with waffles on the Thursday-meetings for those staying home, in Prinsdalen church – all of the sudden I saw myself from the outside.  Sounds like a postcard… In church, eating waffles. A pleasant sight.  Not too bad for  a woman not attending church to often.  Surrounded by other mothers. Being social.  But it wasn’t about the instant image.  It was the whole picture – where was i?  Where did Rikke Soligard go?

The woman eating waffles in the church had changed drastically, from being the girl who bounced around in Nordby (the small place I’m from) in the 80’s.  Thinking she was to be someone. SHE was the one who should push the world.  As soon as she just grew up.  The woman, eating waffles, didn’t push anything else than baby carriages, shopping carts, lawn movers and quarreling closet doors, that liked to stay open, no matter how many times I closed them.   The little time I had spare after changing diapers and spending time with my family was used on anything else than pushing the world in the right direction.

I read those glossy, pink magazines for woman.  I loved the interior magazines, with their shiny interior dream homes (free from rotten garages, dust and dirty dishes) I let myself hunger for everything I did not have. And most proably would never get.  I used hours on early hour soap-trash-TV, totally missing both purpose and soul. And on Thursdays, attending church coffe, I discussed things that did not matter. I am not against TV-entertainment or smalltalk.  Sometimes it is pleasant to relax, log out, with activities that does not require the brains full attention.  By the way, smalltalk can be used as to build relations with new people.  But the ability to smalltalk is not my finest asset.  Everybody that knows me knows that: Rikke. Sucks. At. Smalltalk.  It’s ok for you to know that, in case we meet.  Bigtalk on the other hand, that’s one of my talents, but I didn’t know that back then.

So there I am, on the churchbench (eating waffles) and the hordes of not-interresting-at-all words, and between to pieces of waffles I suddenly realize: Either, I did not grow up. Or I grew up to fast.   

Where was that stubborned girl with a master plan? What did become of the drams? The big visions on life itself? I know you probably don’t have the answers to my questions.  Not to sure I have them myself.  What I know is that much of what is lost, can be found again.  If you wanted.  And i: WANTED.  The strange part is that as soon as the thoughts formed in my brain, I could feel that girls heartbeats over my own heartbeats.  All of the sudden, on the inside, the girl was there, with a plan.

The problem was that the plan was not to ready for me, to begin with. It took years before I figured it out.  That it would take me on a long journey filled with the possible impossibilities.  The “dept. of enthusiasm”, pink dinosaurs and “The Dream Bank”… I didn’t know what was to come… Well, you don’t, either.

To make you understand how you are a part of this, I will have to take you back to the stubborn angry girl, the way she was before she was forgotten. But, that will have to be tomorrow.  It late night, and the “Big Dipper” has parked on my roof.  I’m thinking to climb aboard it… is a good idea.

Good night Bruce. Talk to you tomorrow.
Rikke
Posted in Norwegian February 2. 2012