By Jerina Zaloshnja
Did we finish everything? Maybe we have left something undone? I don’t think so.
– “No I don’t think so,” says Johnny’s dad.
He has just returned from the bank where he opened a personal checking account for Johnny and has bought him an old used bike and has measured with a chronometer at least three times how long does it take to ride from the house to the school campus.
Just to be on the safe side I am going to make a summary of my tasks: buying of two detergents, one for the dishes one for the bathroom. Buying two kinds of sponges and the gloves for cleaning the toilet, a mop for the floor. Shampoos, two kinds, liquid soaps and let’s not forget the shower brush, Johnny prefers his a little rougher than usual.
In the kitchen, buying fresh fruit, dried fruit, several kind of cheese, bread, eggs. No vegetables. I know that Johnny will not cook in the beginning but just to be safe I am going to buy a pack of pasta. Buying olive oil, Himalayan salt, fish oil. I placed the fish oil box separately, put it on his bedside. I wrote on it: two per day. In the M city, where our dear Johnny has gone to study, is way too cold. In addition to that he won’t even try fish so I have to substitute it with fish oil pills.
You can guess what happened directly after that, after we wiped the house clean and put down his fresh sheets. We just picked our luggage, which we had prepared beforehand and left. In “Wilhelminasingel,” underneath house Nr. 73, we squeezed our boy tight to our hearts. Two minutes later he turned the corner and did not look back. We held each other hands, like a pair of abandoned kids, and started in the direction of the train station. Half an hour later, the roofs of the low buildings of the M city became small, so small that they resembled flies and then disappeared altogether.
…
I met my dear Johnny 19 years ago when the hospital nurse that had assisted me during labor brought me to the babies’ room to show him to me. I went along all the beds with all the tiny little baby heads and the trembling hands resembling leaves in the wind and then without even looking at the identification bracelet in his hand (of course women know what I am talking about), I recognized my boy, my boy of 2.7 kilograms. “It’s him!” – I said to myself. That was right, it was him.
I couldn’t really tell you all the detailed story now of how it went later, how Johnny grew up until the day that he said goodbye. But I cannot resist bring up some cuteness.
Dearest Johnny was a calm one, he never made me stay up at night, he never bothered me. During those times, I was working in a daily newspaper so when I was at work he was staying with his grandpa. Whoever has worked in a daily knows perfectly well that the job really starts in the later afternoon and goes on at night until you wrap up your page. But it is equally important to use the mornings to gather up facts so that you have something to write later on in the evening. So you can guess, most of my time was spent at the newspaper and away from Johnny.
One day I found a moment to run away from the paper to my boy. I remember that I was waiting for an important phone call, from a former commander of the Albanian aviation, an old general, well-known figure. I had left the phone number of the grandparents’ house back at the paper for him since he could find me there. So while I was playing with my son I was waiting impatiently for this call. It had to be a hell of a good interview! At one point I could not resist much longer so I put my son down and told him to be a good boy for five minutes because I had to run to the bathroom. As soon as I got here I heard the ring go off: tring!
– “Oh no this cannot be happening” – I murmured to myself. From there I could hear the little one’s voice.
– “Hello this is Johnny, who are you looking for?”
From the other side I imagine the general saying: I am looking for Jerina!
“She is in the bathroom,” Johnny responded.
Apparently the General was not understanding anything so he must have insisted:
– “I am looking for Mrs. Jerina, can you pass her please?”
“She is doing her pee pee, I just told you dummy” Johnny said.
What else can I tell you?
…
His face and his behavior was all me. I was short and he was short, I had a small head he had the same. We even slept very much like each other in the same favorite position, with the same face mimic! “One person, twice” Johnny’s dad used to say for the two of us and he was right. We were two human beings melted into each other in love and pleasure.
Our favorite cartoon? Goki!
Our favorite TV series? “Friends” !
Our favorite character? Joey Trabiani
Our favorite expression? “How you doing” !
Our favorite song? “F***k You” !
Every time we listen to this song we make the same hand sign, every time the singer says that f-word… and we have promised that even when we are not together and it happens that we listen to this song we shall make the same hand sign in respect to the old times when we hanged together. Slowly, little by little and without me really becoming aware of it, Johnny taught me how to spend more and more time together until that became all the time! I don’t know what captured me so strongly, what made me leave aside all else, without even caring at all about it! My coffee dates with friends and even my work trips abroad became increasingly rare.
I once, while I was putting him to bed, begged him to let me go Vienna just for three days (two nights) since I was invited in a workshop. I had had enough with that kind of forced robot life, I wanted a break!
“And you mummy, whom do you love most, me or Vienna?” Johnny asked.
“I love you my beloved heart” – I told him and as you can guess I tore the ticket!
…
I cannot go on for much longer. I am sure that you have understood what I am trying to tell you. For 19 consecutive years my dear Johnny has kept me right close to himself, has really exhausted me, but then there at “Wilhelminasingel” Nr. 73, he set me free!
I often think now that I don’t really have much use for this freedom that my son gave me right now. Freedom is an invention for those who don’t have it. While me, I have my freedom. My freedom is to be by my boy and watch him while he becomes a man.
But his freedom is to be able to man up alone!
Go Johnny go
