Memories...

I have diffuse memories of my childhood. I was a happy child with a huge interior world and nature was a playground for me, in the countryside near Paris where I grew up and in the South West of France where we spent our holidays. I more remember flashes of moments and details than things like who was my teacher when I was nine and what year we moved to our new house. I remember smells like the fig tree that we had in the South, sounds like this song my sister used to listen to or this one, toys like my orange rocking horse and my peluches (I had a hundred of them) or things like the sardine sandwiches my mother used to make, and the tongue of our dog that looked like a slice of ham, and when we used to eat corn on the corb from the field behind our house, and when I saved birds, feeding them in winter and when they were wounded - saved in extremis from our cat's teeth - I used to take care of them, putting them in a shoe box with cotton and feeding them until they got better and flew away. I loved nature and animals...


The other day, I was on a website specialized on vintage toys and furniture for children and suddenly I fell upon this:

But this is my dog!!! My good old dog with his sad and sorry eyes and the paper of his body coming off a little and the leash almost torn because it had been my oldest sister's dog and my middle sister's dog before it was mine... The exact same dog that they are selling today on line to parents who want to relive their childhood through their children and make them happy with the same toy that they used to love...
A picture is all it takes. I look at this dog and suddenly I am a baby again, carrying my dog everywhere with me, with my very blond hair and my peluches that I loved so much already...
I am so happy that pictures exist. I am so happy that I fell upon this blog and that, for a moment, my childhood came back to me, inside me, in my heart, and for a moment, all I need to do is close my eyes and I can meet the little girl in me and watch her play joyfully...