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PoetryIn-e-Motion

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Poems and short stories ©   by Arno and Anna unless differently stated (Disclaimer).

Before my sister was born and my mother quit work I spent the days in daycare at a family one floor up. The mother, Anita, took care of me and her own children, a boy two years older than me, and a girl, five years older than me. We had a great time together. They had all kinds of exciting toys and games I marveled over, and they were wild and inventive. The father was a sea captain, so he spent a lot of time away from home. The first time he arrived and met me I'd already got accustomed to the situation, but when I saw him, a huge man with a dense beard, I got so scared that he had to spend his first day home in the bathroom.

I remember all kinds of small things that fascinated me there. The goldfish, Blub-Blub, a big bowl with music tapes of which I could choose one to listen to, and a situation where the boy allowed me to choose if I wanted to drink cold or hot water. To me it was a forbidden thing to do. Mom had told me that hot water comes from bad tubing and isn't clean.

From these times at home before the age of four I remember jumping contests with my father from the bathroom treshold, a special kind of chocolate pudding that I still can taste but not get anywhere, boat ice creams, trips to a stable nearby and when I first learned to say please, could I please get a glass of water.

It is funny how close I still feel to that little girl. I never thought of myself as a ghild that's unequal to grownups, that my opinion doesn't count. Not even when I seriously proposed my sister to be given the name Pippi, as in Pippi Longstocking. I could get mortally wounded if someone wiped me off, saying I was only a child, and I hated to hear the words "when you grow older". I was just as sensible as everybody else, and still today I believe the same. No matter how childish those things now seem to me, back then they were serious and true, and I meant what I said with all my heart.