A generation Since I grew up, I have a clear impression of summer. It’s not diving into the waters of the Norwegian fjords, or grilling with my parents at the campsite or enjoying the view from the top of the mountain I just climbed. But I am alone in the city and everyone is on holiday. I was on the school playground, and now everyone is gone, it feels like a strange place. There are no children on the gravel field where we play football all year round, even in winter on ice and snow; when there is a quarrel between two boys, or when someone puts a frog into a girl’s tights, there is no echo Cheers. The only echo came from the ball, as it hit the wall below the teacher’s room over and over again. Suddenly, everyone disappeared. I have heard a lot about car trips to Sweden, cabins in the south, grandparents in the country; but this synchronized evacuation feels like a betrayal.
I opened the back of my foot and kicked hard, imagining that the wall was the goal, and the teacher’s room was the corner of Wembley Stadium. In retrospect, it was still like a year ago. And the one before that. Summer is lonely. Summer is creating your own world with what you have-a football, a school playground and a theater in your head. All you can do is take the opportunity to improve your weak left foot and wait for the time to pass. Let people see the feeling, then come back and restart the wheel. Or at least there are enough people to play the three-player system until it gets dark so that we can barely see the ball, and my mother called from the balcony and said it was dinner time.
Now, about 50 years later, I am sitting on the balcony alone, with my shirt open, watching the sun fall over the hills around Oslo. I listen to the summer silence of the almost empty city. The bell of a separate ice cream truck. Then I walked towards the warmth of the evening and walked along the familiar street to my favorite restaurant, where I was one of the few diners, and the waiter asked me if I would be as usual. When I got home, I passed a park where young couples were sitting on the grass and kissing on the benches. I walked through an open window. Girls and boys were having a party. Above the sound of music, I heard the voices of myself and my friends; the girls were ecstatic and full of enthusiasm, so they had confidence in themselves. Memories. Oh my God, what a night like this is full of memories, the best one of them, despite their embarrassment and mistakes, you will never exchange anything in your life.
I walked through a school playground. It’s not mine, but I stopped and went in on a whim. It is empty. There is not a single boy playing football on the wall. I suddenly realized that as the years passed, even this bittersweet memory would make an adult choke in the throat, and I didn’t want to live without it. Even on the last day, when I decided to kick the ball as hard as possible with my now greatly improved left foot, I didn’t catch the ball correctly and saw it broke the window of the teacher’s room. I heard footsteps running on the steps leading to the penthouse of the detention house building, and realized that he and I were the only two people who did not leave the city during the summer vacation.
I ran away and ran in the sun, feeling the strange mixture of guilt and joy, and the taste of freedom I have been trying to find. Summer is okay. But the best thing is that it passed.
