Hello friend,
I found something I wrote months ago, and maybe I should have shown it to you then.
In my parents’ House I chose my room at the age of six when we moved in. As if I could remember, but they told me that the moment we were over the threshold I walked into that room and declared it mine. And did I go to lengths to make it my own little kingdom.
Little did I know that years later I would not feel at home anywhere unless I knew I was going to travel off the next day.
What I loved the most was the view from my window. The birches outside leaned their sleek bodies towards each other and let their Branches fall into shapes that my fantasy running 500 miles an hour would imagine into animals. I used to love the autumn. That’s when the thick blanket of green leaves would fall off and uncover all of those skeletal characters. The bird, the whale, the dolphin, the rude parrot. The lone street light shone through the branches and into my room and in the darkness of winter, I was not scared and I was not alone.
The view behind my window has changed. It is no longer restricted by a ceiling of naked branches but opens up to the yard below. It is the view from the place I have hesitantly come to call a home. Now I gaze at the sunsets from the third floor up as I finish up an essay or a translation or an irrelevant assignment, and yearn to go to places I can almost see from up here. One day I noticed that planes fly over my house on their way to wherever.
What a timing. I had already almost felt satisfied to stay.
Love
Elina
Love
Elina
Filed under: Europe, Finland, postcards
