Or: When you discover that while you may take a more mature approach nowadays you actually haven’t changed one bit since you were a little child.
Getting back in touch with my aunt also meant reconciling with Boy X, the kid I once was. Seeing more and more that Boy X was yet the blueprint of who I would become, it also made clear that the universe isn’t enough for me.
“And the joke is rather sad:
That it is all just a little bit of history repeating.”
Propellerheads feat. Dame Shirley Bassey – History Repeating
A new chapter
I had already closed the book a few years ago. After spending over a decade debating if there were any chances in reconciling with my family, the adventures of Boy X were permanently over. It simply was impossible. And likely for the bigger part it always will be impossible.
I don’t feel connected at all to my parents and sister. Sure, they are the ones biologically closest connected to me and the people I shared a home with for 13 years. But if the house were an universe, it had 2 planets. My dog and I living on the other one, he possessing the powers to travel through space when his food got served at ‘planet parents’.
My dog was not the only one being able to cross the void though. My aunt and late grandmother were also quite the space travellers. My grandmother used tea and cookies, my aunt pink tracksuits, purple cars and plush panda’s.
If it were the circumstances or if it was unavoidable at some point in time, I felt a need to reconnect. With my aunt, but also with Boy X.
Spending that day searching for guts, consulting a friend and after many tears I took the phone.
“It’s your nephew calling.”
“Boy X?”
The voice of my aunt was like the hug I always tend to avoid but was now so happy to get. And a new chapter had begun.
The Why Issue
After a lot of catching up, which still continues, we speak a lot about the family, about the values treasured and why things were as they were.
Many things I suspected, but I also keep being surprised. A lot I never knew of or had forgotten. Even about Boy X.
With a tiny bit of frustration left in her voice, my aunt told me about ‘the why issue’. I believe many kids tend to ask ‘why’ every now and than. I did it every now.
“Why?” It is apparently my nature. Today I can not accept that something is just as it is. I want, or better: need, to understand it. I had war with my math teacher as I could not just accept that x+y=z. And apparently it has been like that since the day I started speaking.
My aunt was the smarter one here. Having no kids herself, after another ‘why’ of me, she used the argument “How should I know why you have to do that, it’s not like I have children.” And for some bizarre reason I accepted that as a valid argument and got the task done. Something I likely will never understand.
When I studied Norwegian I more or less refused to speak it (and yes, I was yet in my twenties here) until I could really make myself understood. Make full sentences and write more than ‘how are you?’. And it was the same being Boy X.
My family was apparently about to get concerned as I still did not speak a word and suddenly Boy X showed the world his capabilities. Not just the word cookie came out, but ‘I would like a cookie, please’ (or, knowing me: ‘I need a cookie or I die, give it now!’).
Another example. I have always been hell to shop with. When I need new stuff I strut around 5 cities before I find perhaps one shirt and some ice cream. As a kid I was no different.
So, my mother took my aunt along to share her frustration (so I think), but to my mothers surprise my aunt had a smart trick up her sleeve.
I still know what they look like, it were blue, green and yellow kinda checkers meets tartan trousers. And I loathed them. No way I was gonna wear that.
Until my aunt told me it were ‘executive trousers’. Suddenly they were the hottest thing on the planet and Boy X even wore them for the school pictures. Man, was I proud of them! My aunt had done it in such a way that until today I thought it was my own stylish executive vision, a dream she scattered during our last conversation confessing she made it up.
And while I am not that sensitive for arguments like that anymore, people can still fool me with stuff like this. Moral though: I have always been hell to shop with and knew very well what I did and did not like. Something which present friends will agree on that hasn’t changed one bit.
More and more of these stories make me realise that Boy X was pretty much the blueprint of who I am today.
The corner of the universe
So I know now Boy X was someone who had a need to understand and had a very distinctive taste.
Boy X also wanted to become a beautician with his own shop in Paris (ha! entrepreneurial ambition! wanting to go abroad! and let us never talk again about the whole beautician thing... though I have done some things as a stylist and spend over an hour on my hair daily...).
In many things I discover lately how much of Boy X is still inside of me. I may take (most of the time) a more mature approach or place it in perspective a bit more, but the basics are still pretty much the same.
So, I am Boy X. And I think I finally start to come to terms with that idea. Once I was a little kid, and though Boy X has had to fight a lot, without him I would not have been here today.
I have a thousand things to learn still and likely always will, but Boy X paved a path that I will gladly continue to follow.
As my aunt said it today: “The universe was never enough for you, you always had to look around the corner of it.”
And if you tell Boy X or present me that there is no such thing as the corner of the universe I will simply respond with one word: “Why?”
I’d like to thank two people. First my late grandmother. A woman that I always have and always will adore. With tears in my eyes I can say you have been my rock and one of the very few who believed in me. While you have a steady spot in my heart, I do miss you. I wish I could have been there for you.
Second, my aunt, I am so glad we have reconnected and that you help me understand the past again. You have never ignored Boy X. Even while he was yet gone, you have kept him alive.



