On Nostalgia...

The very first time I went to Sweden, I walked around for two days in a daze. My brain struggled to comprehend the reality I was in because it was the epitome of everything I was taught to want and desire my entire life. Even the roadside Swedish wild flowers instantly took me back to my childhood in the 80's, growing up with my Uncle in my Grandmother's house in Johannesburg - watching Heidi on Sunday afternoons with the smell of Ma's rosemary and thyme pot roast and vegetables wafting through the air. 

He is barely 3 years older than I am, so we spent most of our lives together like siblings - often marvelling at this remarkable thing called destiny. He looked at me that day, and asked what was wrong. "Nothing" I said... because how do you explain your life flashing before your very eyes, while simultaneously feeling a nostalgia for a place you have never been to before - yet feel like you've known forever?

Three years after that day, and we were back in the midst of yet another wonderful Swedish Summer, walking home from the Public Swimming Pool. 

We watched his kids running ahead of us and I turned to him and said "Do you realise how far we've come?"...

"What do you mean?", he asked. 

I went on, turning to look at all the hills surrounding us... "Well, just look. Look at this. Look at you. Look at us. All those years of riding our bikes through the veld; and playing in that abandoned bus in Ma's backyard, and building reed houses in the fields; knocking on people's doors and running away... watching sunrises down at the airports landing strip; gazing at springbucks and zebras while going for runs on Saturday mornings... dreaming of who we'd be one day and what we'd become. We could have never, in our wildest dreams, have ever predicted that one day we would end up here, like this. It's crazy. Life is crazy." 

"Alhamdulillah", is all he said.