Walking with Y

TUESDAY, 8 JANUARY 2008

Curious how the brain works isn’t it?
How memories are entwined in such a way, that a single word can bring back a whole event, or experience.

A call
A drive
A pastry

A memory of walking to college.

“We are counting on you” he said, “we have a full quota of guys for the teams, but if you two do not train we will lose out to the team from the second year, their girls team is very good”.

I knew A from school, and having competed on her side I knew exactly what we were up against.

I also knew I was totally out of shape.

But having tried to summon some interest in others and failed (some girls were just too conservative, others too pretty to be seen competing) I “volunteered” Y and myself for the team.

We would train together, and in addition to the general training at college, with the coach and the consultants, we cycled at the stadium closer to home.

We also decided to walk to and from the college together.

Even after the competitions were over, we would walk this route, spending time together, and in later years pat ourselves on the back for the exercise we were getting alongside our recurrent attempts to shed a little weight.

I would make my way from home, more or less in a straight line, beyond the bookstore, to the square corner where her bus from across the river would stop, and then we proceeded together.

In the warm morning bustle, the shops busy, the roads full, the commuters rushing for the buses.

As we walked thorough this particular stretch we would look longingly to the shop across the road, being very careful not to cross, lest we fall pray to the delicious aroma, forget all our good intentions, all our vows, and lose any chance we might still have of success in the race or indeed the diet.

We never succumbed to the temptation.

I remember those walks

Whenever I speak to her on the phone.

When N in an attempt to explain how things are better, tells me she can now drive from near our home almost to gre3at, but no off course she couldn’t get to the college.

But mostly I remember those walks and that road when anyone mentions Kahee (a fillo pastry filled with cream and drenched in syrup) that we resisted on those mornings on our way to college.
POSTED BY 3EERAQIMEDIC AT 22:48 0 COMMENTS