Growing up

Published: January 27, 2023 / Updated: January 27, 2023 Vilma Life in Europe: Back Home

‘You are not like other parents’, – a mother of my daughter’s friend tells me.

‘But really, – I continue. ‘After not seeing her the whole day while I work, I can’t wait to pick her up from the kindergarten’.

That is so true. It gets crazy sometimes, but every day I can’t wait to see her smiley face and get a hug from her.

She is my world.

Her world, at the age of 4, if far less complicated than mine. As it should be.

‘Mama, can a wolf and a fox be friends?’ – she wonders before closing her eyes.

‘Yes, my love’.

‘But a wolf and a bunny can’t be friends?’

‘Probably not, my love’.

However, even at that innocent age there is drama.

When I ask her if she’s good friends with some of the children, she tells me:

‘But mama, one day they want to play with me, the other day they don’t. One day we hug, the other day we don’t talk. So who knows’.

Bless her, she feels rightly confused.

As do I.

In the past six months I had men come into my life who had wanted to stay. What a long awaited, surprising, beautiful thing! And what did I do? I let them go.

Why? Is that not what I wanted?

And so here we are. Back to where we started.

But now I think. Is it really the same beginning? Is being on your own the sign of strength or the sign of weakness? To let go of someone who leads you nowhere, is that not the sign of courage? To recognize what’s good, what works and what doesn’t, even if at the end of the day it leaves just you, is that not what makes you strong?

When my daughter’s teacher told me that my girl could stand up for herself and would not let anybody push her around, I said, without thinking: ‘She must have gotten it from her dad’.

I was wrong. She got that from me. I am strong. I stand up for myself. And when push comes to shove, I know my worth.

I admit that it was not always so. There have times when I stayed quiet, when I should have shouted out loud. There have been times when I let others hurt me and did not fight back.

I grew up and I learned my lessons.

We’re good, babe

Published: December 31, 2022 / Updated: December 31, 2022 Vilma Life in Europe: Back Home

I am not about the new year resolutions.

But this year I have decided to make one. It is not the usual ‘I’ll start something this coming year’ resolution. It is ‘I’ll stop something this coming year’ resolution.

In 2023 I will stop asking London boy to come and see me. Because I still do. And he still doesn’t. Although sometimes… I feel hopeful.

I beg, I try to bribe, I almost threaten and give ultimatums. Boys and girls, nothing works. That man is unmovable.

And so, I’ve decided enough was enough. I will continue talking to him because I enjoy it, but I’ll stop dreaming of him. Mmmmm, maybe not that. I’ll just stop asking him to come and visit me (while secretly still wishing and hoping). Let the new year begin.

And no matter how much I despise seeing gray streaks in my hair, obviously meaning that I’m getting older, I love the wisdom that comes with it. Some things you only realize when you hit 40.

If I’m being completely honest here, I have often played a victim. For example:

  • Growing up, I only knew 2 kinds of ice cream favors: vanilla and chocolate.
  • We never had too much money. Just enough, sometimes not enough, never too much.

I could go on and on. But this one hurt the most:

  • My partner and my baby daddy got killed, leaving me and our baby alone.

That was the biggest hit. The pain remained for a very long time. The questions laid unanswered for even longer. I was a victim. I was left alone, without a warning, without a goodbye.

But the thing is – shit happens. To everybody. All the time. Life is about that: it’s about not being pretty, it’s about not being fair, it’s about always testing you and throwing you off balance. So the way to happiness is taking that as a norm. ‘Life is not fair’ – that’s the norm. Losing a loved one is a norm.

And once I started realizing that, I started feeling blessed with moments when nothing happened. No one died, no one suffered.

I started seeing the moments of joy as extraordinary rewards.

Then and only then life started to make sense.

Of course, I’m only human, and I tend to forget deep truths and my newly found understanding often vanishes in the chaos of everyday life. Practice lags behind theory. But those realizations remain deep inside, and the seeds of wisdom keep growing.

These are my scattered thoughts as the year ends. Coincidentally, they resonated to 10 Deep Psychology And Philosophy Quotes (African history, Arts & Humanities website):

1. The world will ask who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.

2. If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.

3. Everything that irritates us about others can lead to an understanding of ourselves.

4. Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.

5. You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.

6. Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.

7. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

8. Be grateful for your difficulties and challenges, for they hold blessings.

In fact… Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for healthy personal growth, individualization and self-actualization.

9. Everyone you meet knows something you don’t know but need to know. Learn from them.

10. I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.

Where the boys at?

Published: December 16, 2022 / Updated: December 16, 2022 Vilma Life in Europe: Back Home

‘A man has two women. One he lies to, the other one he tells the truth. Which one does he love?’

‘Of course he loves the one he lies to’, I think to myself. He lies to her because he wants to protect he. So it means he loves her. Right?

Wrong. As soon as the previous thoughts come to my mind, they leave an instant later. The man loves nobody but himself.

And once again I ask myself. Where are those men that need only one woman? Where are those caring and committed men, who believe in monogamy, in love and respect?

Well, it seems they are just around the corner.

You do remember a ‘he’ that appeared in my life back in the summer, right? He was the type of a man who believed in monogamy and wanted a commitment. He told me that from the start. I turned him down. Partially because there was no chemistry between us. And without the sparks, uff, the going gets tough.

But he was offering me what I wanted – love and commitment. So why say ‘no’?

I’m sorry, but being told ‘I love you’ after a handful of dates does not sit well with me. Nor do talks about getting married when I hardly know him.

I do remember my sister telling me, some years ago, that the older you get, the faster you reach ‘in a relationship’ status. But what happened to getting to know each other well before saying ‘I do’? Who wants to get married and realize a few weeks later that you made a mistake? Been there, done that.

Back in high school I was attending ethics lessons. I remember our teacher telling us one day that one of the best ways to get to know a person is to go on a trip together. You’ll see who gets to eat the last cookie – those were her exact words.

So no, meeting up a couple of weekends and spending time in the safety of our own homes does not equal a challenge. That does not mean you really know the person.

As you know, that guy disappeared.

A new one appeared.

But the story is quite similar. He told me ‘I love you’ so early in our relationship that he put me off. How can this be? Why do men keep saying that after a couple of dates?

And so the relationship goes on. But it’s a weird one, at least in my opinion.

And if I think it’s weird, it ain’t right.

So let me rephrase myself – where are all those men that are ready to commit, that are happy being monogamous, but wish to get to know the person they are with before saying ‘I love you’?

I’ve got you, baby

Published: December 4, 2022 / Updated: December 4, 2022 Vilma Life in Europe: Back Home

She has finally learned to say it right. Almost:

‘I love you… infinity… back… infinite times’.

I had been telling her this since the day she was born: ‘I love you to infinity and back infinite times’. It’s so rewarding to hear her say it back.

My daughter is a talker. She does not stop. And if you try to explain something, ‘but why’ will never end. At night, thankfully, she does not talk so much, but the still talks. These days, in the middle of the night, she wakes me up with one of the two: either ‘Mama, I love you’, which melts my heart in the darkest and coldest of nights, or ‘Mama, cover me up’, which makes me wanna wish she was a grown up and could cover herself up.

She is my best friend. I love her to bits.

Of course, it’s not easy at times and she puts me straight with her ‘Mama, but I’m only a little girl’, when I get carried away.

Sometimes, however, she does act like an adult, when I’m the one who cries.

Like the other night.

I was pretending to be a teacher, meeting a new student for the first time. We do this kind of role playing a lot. When I asked the girl about her mama, she told me her mama went to work on work days, and did not work on weekends.

When I asked her about her daddy, she told me he had died. She said she didn’t remember much of her daddy, only that he had pretty hair.

And so I invited her to look at some videos with daddy, so she could see him and hear his voice. I haven’t seen his videos in a while myself so I was eager to re-visit the past.

And you know what? I found two videos I had only seen once before, both made over 4 years ago. And they were beautiful. Just Beno and I (with the baby in the belly).

Seeing the videos made me emotional and I started to cry. My daughter instantly took me in her arms and started wiping my tears.

‘Don’t cry, mama, I am here with you’, – she kept repeating.

How extremely grateful I am to have her in my life. How enormously lucky.

And even though I try to be as honest as I can with her about many things in life, including death, sometimes it all becomes just too surreal.

Many a time, before falling asleep, my girl says: ‘Good night. Sweet dreams. Don’t die’. I got used to the last bit by now and I assure her that I won’t.

One time, she said that and went on: ‘Let’s check in the morning if none of us died, if we can move. And if we can’t, we just stay together. Just you and I’. And that’s when I cried, again.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all doom and gloom in our neighborhood. We have so much fun together. You can often find me dancing and singing with my daughter on the trolley, at the bus stop, in the store. You can find us playing with the balloon and laughing out loud when it hits the person sitting in front of us on the bus.

We get excited about the little things.

Especially now, with Christmas around the corner, the mood in our house is festive.

We don’t have fancy decorations, we don’t have a huge Christmas tree. What we got is each other.

Friend zone

Published: October 14, 2022 / Updated: October 14, 2022 Vilma Life in Europe: Back Home

‘Have you got any friends?’

That came from a new acquaintance about a week ago. I found the question a bit strange. Who doesn’t have friends? Of course I do!

But maybe there are people among us who are alone – be it by their own choice or not. Besides, how many true friends have I actually got?

I am lucky to say that I have friends all over the world: from the Americas to Europe to Asia and Australia.

How about Africa? Not exactly, not yet. Stay tuned.

The best kind of friends – the ones you don’t have to talk to every day, but you always feel the connection and pick up where you left off.

My circle of friends is not stagnant, it keeps changing. When I needed them most, there were only certain friends that I wanted to turn to. But others, for whatever reason, I wanted to stay away from.

At first that surprised me. We were good friends, there were no issues between us. But I felt like running as far as possible from them.

Then somebody told me: ‘You have to lose some friends to make space for new ones’.

That’s true.

Good friends come through in the most unexpected ways.

I got a friend living in Cambodia. He writes poems. When I needed it, this one poem of his made me cry day and night, thus slowly making the darkness around me lighter:

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP

Beneath a simple pine box cover,

Forever missing my lover,

I lay watching grassroots grow,

Resting peacefully six feet below.

It is another wet and rainy day;

Standing by my grave,

You are the one my heart craves,

With folded hands I begin to pray.

It is difficult for you to maintain,

Tears which you cannot contain;

This is beyond my control,

Only your soul can truly console,

Tears fall in between rain drops,

Teardrops and flower tops,

Tears here, there and everywhere,

Yet I can only helplessly stare.

I cannot even dry your salty tears

Or share your everyday fears,

I cannot put my arms around you,

Or lay this body beside you.

Yes, dear, I hear you,  I miss you too,

It is cold and lonely without you,

But you are not so far away,

You have come to see me today.

– Utopia Urnsberg

I find this poem utterly beautiful and feel like my friend wrote it just for me. He did it before it happened and he was miles away, yet it found me and stuck with me.

Which brings us to losing friends.

Have you ever been put in the friend zone by the one you loved? Have you ever been said that ‘Baby, let’s just be friends’ line? It is the most disappointing thing ever when you are at the receiving end.

However, just recently I was the one delivering those words. It sucked. The guy vanished the next day.

I can’t dwell on it, though, – nothing lasts forever. I lost a friend, but I gained back my peace of mind. And that stranger around the corner may just be my next best friend, waiting to happen.

Between life and death lies love

Published: September 24, 2022 / Updated: September 24, 2022 Vilma Life in Europe: Back Home

I don’t think I have ever before thought that I had been at the right place at the right time at the exact moment of being there.

But two weeks ago I was fully aware of it. I was the right person to be exactly where I was. At that exact moment in time.

It was the last Sunday of the summer. We were on the way to the park near our home. There was a playground there (my daughter loved it) and there were a couple of ponds with ducks there (I loved those). We had bread handy for the ducks and were enjoying the beautiful morning walk.

As we were approaching one of the benches, we saw a young woman walking towards us. However, the second I laid my eyes on her, I realised she was crying. It wasn’t just a few tears running down her cheeks. She was weeping, howling and whimpering all at once. She was holding on to her chest and holding on to her belly. And she did not stop. She almost collapsed on the steps near the bench, just as we were approaching it.

‘I can’t just watch her and do nothing’, – I thought to myself.

I don’t remember what I asked her. I hope it wasn’t something ridiculous, like ‘Are you ok?’, when she obviously wasn’t. But I did say something to her. And she replied with the remark: ‘Take care of your families and of your children’.

Something was terribly wrong.

So I just took her in my arms and let her weep.

‘My husband killed himself last night’ – she said after a while. She nearly collapsed again. ‘And I have a two year old son’.

Life is so cruel sometimes. But almost 3.5 years later I felt strong and confident enough to share my story, trying to comfort her and calm her down. I held her close for as long as she let me, and I kept caressing her long hair and patting her back, repeating: ‘It’s ok, I know’.

I did know. I had been there. It took a lot of time for me to pull myself back together, it will take her a lot of time as well.

I motioned my head to my daughter: ‘Look, here she is, after 3.5 years.’ The woman looked at my girl. ‘You will be there for your son and you will be strong for him’.

I’d like to think I helped her some. And I’d like to know how she is today. But there, by the pond, we talked about moments, fights, and not getting a goodbye.

I think of Beno so often. I revisit the places, the conversations, the feelings. Everything that I felt immediately after his loss has mellowed, moved to the background.

I’m left with the immense feeling of overflowing love towards the little girl we created. The one who is my life and my biggest love.

That crazy crazy world

Published: September 9, 2022 / Updated: September 9, 2022 Vilma Life in Europe: Back Home

‘We are in prison’.

No kidding. I never thought I’d see a message like that from my sister. My sister! Who is a well behaved, intelligent lady, way less attracted to risky activities than I am.

‘You are?’, – I texted back incredulously. I wondered what on earth could a family of 5 do, to end up in prison. I did not come up with one feasible explanation.

‘Yes, the tour is about to start’, – she came back to me minutes (longest, full of tension) later.

Phew! On one hand, I was so incredibly relieved. On the other hand, just wondering, what COULD a family of 5 do to get locked up?

As you see, that was quite the start of the week.

‘She was 3, and she was pregnant’.

That was Karla, my seriously good friend, currently touring Europe with her son, a.k.a. Mia’s Mexican boyfriend.

‘I had the weirdest dream. Your daughter was pregnant’, – she went on, as if I had not heard her the first time.

Now that unsettled me. I found it…. creepy, ew, to say the least! I know we can’t control what we dream about, but, Karla, can we at least try, eh?

At the end, I did not want to hear more, and, luckily, my friend did not elaborate too much.

Truly bizarre.

‘I want to live in a tree’.

That, of course, was from the lips of my little angel.

Say what now?

‘Do you want to live with me? In a tree?’, – she persisted.

Then, naturally, I had to ask: ‘Which tree?’

‘That one!’ – she pointed to the one from the balcony. ‘Or that one’, – she pointed to another one and looked at me with the biggest smile. She obviously had it all figured out.

‘Maybe’, – that was me being diplomatic.

‘Mommy, why do you have to go to work every day?’ – my daughter suddenly changed her tone, became all serious.

‘Well, my love’, – I started explaining, – ‘I need to work so we can buy food and pay rent for this beautiful place’.

‘But if we lived in a tree, we wouldn’t need money to pay rent’, – she delivered her closing statement.

And she was so right.

Published: August 20, 2022 / Updated: August 20, 2022 Vilma Life in Europe: Back Home

Mine

‘You are not still restless in love, are you?’ – he asks me after reading my blog.

Yes, there is a ‘he’ in my life. And yes, I still am.

Although it’s been a few good months so far, since I came back, not wanting to run away, just being happy… being here. 

Then he whispers something, while gently kissing my forehead.

‘What was that?’, – I am not sure I heard it right. I thought he said the words that every girl wishes to hear. But I have to double check. It hasn’t been long enough, at least not long enough for me.

Instead of feeling like a calm sea, the way I did before he showed up, I feel gentle waves, now that he’s in my life. Sooner or later they will either turn into bigger waves, bigger still, maybe even a storm. Or they will simply disappear.

Nothing lasts forever.

The funny thing is, I don’t believe in ‘forever’ anymore.

All the times in the past when I’d get involved with a guy, I’d want us to be together forever, no other way around it.

Now, I just want us to be together, for as long as it lasts.

My daughter asks me why people die. I tell her they do because that’s how it is in this life. I do tell her too, that nothing lasts forever.

‘People are born and then they die. That’s the circle of life’, – I explain. ‘Everything sooner or later comes to an end’.

Life has showed me that there is no ‘forever’, and the fairy tale endings should be left at ‘they lived happily’, without the ‘ever after’.

She may not understand it yet, but she repeats it back to me.

‘One day you will die, too?’ – she’s curious.

‘Yes, I will’.

‘One day I will die, too?’ – she’s getting it now.

‘Yes, you will, but not for a very very long time. We’ll be together for many many years’.

‘When we celebrate death, we celebrate life’.

Sometimes at night, when I‘m stroking her hair while putting her to sleep, my girl in return caressess my  hair. ‘Sleep, mommy, sleep’, – she shushes me.

‘This is what my extraordinary life is all about, and she is all mine’, – I think to myself at moments like that. ‘I would not exchange this to any other kind of life’.

And even though in many ways I could never be like Carrie Bradshaw, I have a passion for writing just like her.

‘Maybe one day I’ll write about you in my blog’, – I tell him playfully.

‘But I don’t want to die’, – he objects. ‘The men you write about die’, – he looks a little bit worried.

‘They do’, – I silently agree. That is my story before you.

 

 

 

 


 

Ubuntu

Published: August 6, 2022 / Updated: August 6, 2022 Vilma Life in Mexico

Life is beautiful because looking back you can see the path you’ve taken, from the very beginning to the exact place where you are now. It seems that sometimes we make small, insignificant steps, but they may grow into a wonderful path, and reward with lifelong relationships.

‘Yo soy porque nosotros somos’.

It was another ordinary day, a couple of months before the tragedy. I was walking outside our house with my baby, pushing her in the pram, enjoying the slightly cooler weather of approaching evening. There was a basketball court just steps away from the house. Beno used to play there, I used to watch. And there was also a tiny park with a couple of benches, where I’d sit and just be quiet for a while.

On that day I saw a bunch of moms there. Moms, because they all seemed to have their babies in tow. There seemed to be a couple of dads, too.

‘They must be about to do some yoga’, – I thought to myself.

And as I had nothing better to do, I settled down on one of the benches and watched all those moms and babies mingling around.

Then suddenly I heard music, and the moms, together with their little ones, started dancing.

‘Ok’, – I thought to myself. ‘This is something different’.

So I watched the moms dance. I even received a couple of invitations to join them. But I felt a little bit shy, not really knowing what this was all about.

However, they seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves, and that was contagious. So when they were finished and packing up to leave, I asked if I could join them next time. The answer was a big positive ‘yes’.

This is how I met the moms from tribu Ubuntu. By accident, but I believe it was meant to be. They used to practice in a different park, but that time, when I happened to be where I was, tribu was there, ready to welcome me.

The moms became a tight knit group of friends. We had a lot of fun dancing together, getting ready for the IMAsivo of that year. Finally the steps were perfected, the clothes were ready, the baby carriers were decorated, the hair and makeup were discussed and agreed on (that was a long and heated discussion, by the way). However, just days before making the video for the contest the tragedy struck, and I had declined to participate further.

I received a huge support from the tribu. Even though afterwards I didn’t see them as often as I wanted to, and I stopped dancing, they were always there, ready to take me and my baby back.

From those days I took away beautiful relationships. My daughter now has at least two Mexican boyfriends (or brothers, as the mothers of the boys keep reminding me). With some of the moms, we cried together, we worked together, we explored together, we had sleepovers together, we laughed together.

The tribu today is miles away, but the memories are warm in my heart and the friends remain easily reachable.

Knowing that este is mi tribu, it’s not suprising, that when asked to make a presentation about myself at my new job recently, I said: ‘Some know me as a traveler, some know me as a dreamer, and some know me as part of tribu Ubuntu – a mother, dancing with her baby in her arms…’

Gone

Published: July 24, 2022 / Updated: July 24, 2022 Vilma Life in Mexico

‘I wish I had two legs like everybody else. But God must have had his plan. I am happy’.

That is the post that I had seen on Facebook. It touched me. Not only because of the person who had said it, who had no legs. But also because only recently I managed to say it myself: ‘God must have had his plan’. It took me 3 years.

I don’t want to remember the rest of that afternoon, the days to come. But some memories are extremely vivid in my mind.

  • I remember Beno’s aunt asking me if it was true that Beno was dead. Why would she ask such a crazy question, was my first thought.
  • I remember feeling fear.
  • I remember tears.
  • I remember grabbing my baby and running to the neighbors and telling them Beno was dead.
  • I remember calling my sister and telling her Beno was dead.
  • I remember calling Kristina and telling her Beno was dead.

Beno was dead.

Many things happened. So much uncertainty followed. One thing was certain, though. One minute he was here, another he was gone.

And how does one recover from something like this? How?

Talking from my personal experience, slowly. The 3 years I mentioned earlier, remember?

‘Maybe it had to be either you or him’, – somebody said.

‘Maybe it would have been all of you, or just him’, – someone tried to comfort me.

‘It happened for a reason’, – friends told me.

‘God must have had his plan’, – was sometimes the answer.

But why? What reason? What plan? Why did anybody had to die? Why would an innocent baby lose her father? How is her not seeing her daddy ever again part of some grand plan? How?

I was full of questions, and I didn’t take any answers. I know friends and family had only the best intentions, they only tried to help. But all they said bounced straight back from the wall I put around myself.

It was not fair. Not fair for my baby, who was only 6 months old, who has never done any harm to anybody in her life. And here she was, without her dad. Not fair.

After many many days I do allow myself to think: maybe, just maybe, God did have his plan.

Beno’s biggest dream was to have a baby. It was a huge desire of his. And here she was. Our lovely daughter, 6 months old. Maybe after that there was nothing left for him here. I don’t know. Nobody knows. All I know is that he’s gone.