Round and round

My parents’ divorce was finalized on my 10th birthday.  I don’t know the details of their marital demise.  I would venture to say I’ve blocked a great deal of it from my mind for whatever subconcious reasons.  As a life experienced adult, I have my own theories about their downfall, but don’t really want to know.  Some things are just  better left forever unsaid.  All I know is that the day after the deed was done, my father got on an airplane and flew away to Europe where he picked right up where he left us off.  I didn’t see him for a year.  (Again, as a life experienced adult, I also have my own theories as to how that affected and continues to affect  my relationships.  But that is another post.)

My mother, left on her own as a single mother to deflect and absorb all of my misplaced anger and despair did what I can only assume was her best, but I know I didn’t make things easy.  I missed my father horribly in that first year.   Finally, the next summer he came back, and swept me away, escorted me off to what I imagined, in my still developing, overly imaginative tween mind, would be nothing short of three months in Camelot.   We touched down in Amsterdam, after enduring 8 hours of  in flight, last minute Dutch lessons, and finally together again, we undertook the two hour drive to his new, mysterious life and my new summer home.  Having spent my entire memorable life in the brown New Mexico mountain desert, I could do nothing but silently stare, wide eyed and awed, out the window at the passing windmills, tulips and endless, flat, green country side. 

After a mandated nap intended to catapult me out of my jet leg, we ventured out for a local street carnival.  Mesmerized, I wandered the brick streets  with the man in my life, straining to hear and process unfamiliar sentences, doing my best to make sense of letters in store windows that were put together in odd fashion to create words I had never seen.  I ravenously consumed what instantly became an obsession, the staple of my summer diet for years to come, a tasty meal of frikandellen & frites, wrapped in brown paper and topped with mayonnaise.  And then, in the midst of all things new and curious, we rounded the crowded corner to the town square and there it was.    The one thing children the whole, industrialized world over can relate to.  A carousel.  Three towering tiers of glittering horses and mirrors spinning around and around and around with smile inducing Euro-pop blaring from five foot speakers. This was not your run of the mill, everyday merry go round.

Now I suspect that eleven year olds of today’s generation would roll their eyes in abject boredom, too cool to be bothered with such silly endeavors.  But in 1981 children were still children and I was no exception.  I couldn’t climb onto that ride soon enough.   I stood anxiously in line, carefully studying the new and different fashions of the local youth surrounding me, making mental notes on how to not look like the weird American kid, as I waited for my turn.   And then it was time.  It wouldn’t have been the summer of 1981 in Europe without ABBA and, as we started to spin and slowly gather speed, the simple, sing song, melody of Super Trooper began to chime.  For the next four minutes I was no longer a despondent, forced to grow up too fast child of a newly broken home, freshly reunited with my father, absorbing a new culture into which I had fully been emersed in a matter of hours.  I was just me.  A kid from no were specific.   My hair blowing in the breeze as I went round and round.  Smiling.  Happy.  Free.  It is hands down, the single most, happiest memory of my childhood.

To this very day I can’t pass a carousel and not take a ride, get on and let it all melt away.  That kind of peace and bliss – shining like the sun, smiling, having fun, feeling like I’m number one – does not come with an age limit.   And, as happened this morning, when I am fortunate enough to go up and down and round and round with the N-Man giggling next to me, it is all I can do to hold back the tears of simple joy as I travel back to the summer of 1981 and glow in the realization of just how blessed I am in this world.