I sat on a stone with my feet up on the low tide, someone had told me
that everything is possible if you absolutely believe and I was trying to
walk on water. I concentrated mightily and sweat broke out. Put my feet
down as I got up and sank to my knees into the sea. So it wasn´t possible
and I was gullible believing what adults said; and, anyway it isn´t much
fun to walk on big waves in a storm. Last night I had been with the gang
stealing apples in the garden of a rich man, mainly because he got angry,
when he came running, calling us whore children of the Nazi occupation.
We laughed because we were born before the war…except a little boy who
was born in 1941, we saw him, he looked down and said nothing.
He had no father we knew and we gave him extra apples because
his pockets were small. I knew how he felt, I had a father but he was always
absent, sometimes I saw him in the street and on the bus and sometimes
I stood outside the factory where he worked and waited for him to come
out, then I followed him to his home at a safe distance, saw him kissing his
new wife and talking to his children. I never told my mother and now that
I´m old I think it might not have been my father, but just picked this man
because he looked father-like. The little boy whose father was an enemy
soldier and I who tried to walk on water, must accept that some dreams are
impossible, and get on with the business of growing up.
