It makes everything look so magical.

Reading one of the stories in Dancing Barefoot brought up a memory I dearly love. I’d though I’d share it with you, as an exercise in writing.

One early summer day a few years ago, my cousin and I decided to go out for dinner. The establishment of our choice was a pancake restaurant at the edge of the Old Canal in Utrecht. The sky was occasionally clouded, but the temperature was nice so we opted to sit at a table out by the water. If there were any other people sitting outside I didn’t notice them. We talked about all the stuff girls our age talk about when they haven’t seen each other for a while. Basicly we talked about everything, no matter how important or mundane. (Which is what girls like us always talk about, even if we get on the phone after having just seen each other.) Ducks swam on the water, trying to tempt us to throw them some morsels of our food.

We were having a great time of it, eating the nice food and just revelling in each others company. We didn’t notice the clouds becoming thicker and thicker. And then when we did, we didn’t care. Our pancakes were gone and eaten, the ducks hadn’t won us over so we ate everything ourselves. Drinking sips of our wine, lounging about. There was no rush.

A drop fel into my wine, and then another one on the table. My cousin looked at me.

“I don’t feel like going inside”, she said.

“Me neither.”

We grabbed our glasses and covered them with the coasters. Our bags were on the two extra chairs at the table, we put them closer so they ended up underneath it. More and more raindrops fel out of the sky.  We grinned at each other.

“This is the time to do this, sitting out in the rain, ’cause when we get old, we won’t do it anymore!”

“It’s not even cold!” I yelled back at her over the drums of the rain on the table.

Not an inch of us remained dry, we sat out there until we had finished our wine, and then some. Eventualy we had to go inside to pay our bill. Nobody said anything about us being dripping wet, I think they could see how much we were enjoying ourselves. It was great, feeling life bubling inside you, feeling the rain dripping from your hairs to you face to the rest of you. Being a part of the concert the raindrops create. Doing something purely for the reason of doing it while you’re young and happy. I’d like to think that when I get really old, I’ll be that crazy grandmother who sits out in the summerrain with her grandkids. Chances of that are slim though. But at the very least I can be that grandmother who tells the grandkids a story about the time she sat outside in the rain with her cousin, because we didn’t feel like going inside.

Het regent weer eens. Als ik zo binnen zit is dat niet erg, ondanks dat het toch best koud is.
Maar ik moet zo naar buiten, en het is nog geen lente/zomer. Het is niet het soort regen die eigenlijk niet zo koud is, en waarna je toch weer drooggeschenen wordt door de zon. Ik denk dat ik heel lui de bus ga pakken.

Verder heb ik eigenlijk niks tegen water hoor. Ben er wel blij mee, dat water wat wij hier in Utrecht gewoon uit de kraan hebben lopen.

Niet verder vertellen hoor.
Maar gistermiddag rook het naar lente…

We kunnen bijna weer buitenspelen.

Je mag van mij wel wat eerder beginnen…
Dan kan ik namelijk mijn schattige nieuwe schoentjes aan, en mijn jurkje, en dansen in de zon!