The Karate Kid

On Friday we drove out to the house on the beach, down the sandy path I used to walk so many times as a kid; past Sherine's house, she's now married; past Dani's place, she's studying in Germany, past Lucette's house where we would hide and seek (walls gone up) and the big tree we loved to climb (cut down).

My cousin's dogs greeted us happily and smeared their paws all over my just-washed trousers. We opened the windows and shutters to air the damp rooms, and my mother decided to paint the balcony shutters.
She's going through an interior makeover phase; i blame it on all those Change-Your-House-In-Two-Days-And-Twenty -Pounds Tv shows that she watches every sunday (a no-tv day for me or my dad).
My father sat in his favourite armchair and tried to smoke a cigar when I wasn't looking, but I smelled it out and yelled at him, so he put it out and gave me a coy grin (he had a heart bypass; he's not supposed to smoke).
Seriously, the way these two parents act sometimes, what with him sneaking smokes, and she sneaking wine, I feel like I'M the MOTHER and they're the teenage rebels.

I wandered through the rooms looking for a t-shirt to wear so I could help with the painting, and walked into my mother's room.

I stood in front of her chest of drawers, staring at the Polaroid's of my sister and me as kids, with our grandmothers, in the garden, dusty, mud-stained, toothy smiles. I knew the left drawer was full of old makeup, perfume bottles, blue letter envelopes from my aunt in England, blue tack/elastic bands/melted crayons, cardboard birthday cards we'd made for her, scarves smelling of London, mothballs.
I tried to open the drawer, tried to slide into the cupboard where I used to hide as a kid and bury my face in m mother's clothes, and of course I couldn't.

I have no idea why, but I started to cry, staring at the photographs. My mother called out to me, so I bit it back and washed my face.
I guess every now and then the nostalgia of this house hits me when I'm not prepared, but ever since they told me they wanted to sell the place, I've been putting up these walls, not wanting to care about losing the only place that really felt like home.
Looked for t-shirts in my cupboard, but aside from the pink nightgown I wore when I was five, there was not much to cover me.
I'd painted my cupboard doors when I was fifteen, purple clouds and orange words of a lovey-dovey poem I find a little embarrassing now, and on my wall, I wrote in dripping paint "Come Here, Gentle Night, Come Loving Black-Burrowed Night and Bring me My Romeo".

I was a sappy romantic at the time, and had a brief obsession with Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet, go ahead, kill me.
My friends had left crayon messages on my mirror, ; Sherine's "whenever I get the feeling of studying, I lie down till the feeling passes", Farida's photo of a BMW and her note "If you love me, buy this", which pretty much sums her and our friendship up, and Maya's "Dumb and Dumber" doodle of the two of us.

I miss her, and I think about her a lot. Last thing I heard she was getting a divorce from a marriage I didn't even know happened. It hurt to hear the news from friends of friends and not from her.
But I guess when you live in different countries¦. I just thought, since we were friends from age two, that I would be the first to know about her wedding.
My, how people change.

But the thing is, she will always have me. We spent too many days hiding in the bushes, climbing the trees, cooking in the sandpit, to let distance and absence change us. I guess that's real.

Then i spent four hours on the balcony, painting the iron bars white, getting paint all over my dog-smeared trousers, feeling a lot like the karate kid in the movie, when he has to paint the fence for hours to perfect his karate moves.
Too bad the closest i get to fighting is spitting "Yo Mama's so poor" lines and then running the other way.
At the end of the painting, my wise karate instructor rewarded me with my first piece of watermelon this summer. You have to understand, it's a severe addiction that lasts for three months till they run out of watermelons, so the first bite is always a big-deal-occasion.

I just got paid and yet I feel broke already. How is that possible?
I've finally decided to convert to mp3's (nancy's jumping up and down with joy), after the traumatic CD loss experience, yet another expensive gadget added to my to-buy list.

I also saw a pair of purple diamond studded glasses yesterday that reminded me of Snoop Dog in his Fo Shizzle Ma Nizzle Dizzle TV show. Hey, I could be a pimp!
Ok, baby steps. First wheels, then mp3's, then pimp-my-hide glasses.

niiice.