Looking out over my past

My mother sold her country house in January and after two month in the tiny studio appartment she always had inthe city, was lucky to get a bigger appartment next door. My first appartment was in this building as well - a long time ago. I love her new appartment, it is not big, just 2 rooms, kitchen, bath etc, but the view is just wonderful. We are on the seventh floor and are overlooking a beautiful part of Hamburg, the area where I lived from age 6 to 23. It feels funny, I have not really been here in such a long time - we always visited her in her house 50 miles outside of the city - and now I am looking out over my past. Houses were friends have lived, places I have worked at, all the different places I have lived, the park I played soccer at every day, my childhood library, the church I got married in... and so forth. I am not sure if this feels similar to other people, but it is almost like it was not me or my life, it all seems so far away that I don't feel the connection any more. It is like meeting and old boy friend after many years and one feels bewildered and awkward at the thought of having been intimate with a person feeling so estranged.

We walked a lot today, since we had to run errands downtown and then we needed to run even more errands, so basically we walked all day. I smothered my knee in arnica now and took some advil and hope it will do alright. I am using the cane and have found that people treat me so completely different with a cane compared to crutches. With crutches everybody offeres help and asks what happened, with the cane people probably think I have some disability, which would be rude to notice and so they try to ignore that it is there. This evening I went to a salon to have my eyebrows and lashes dyed dark, something I cannot find in MA, and I took an old bike my mom had. Actually I had it from an old boyfriend and gave it to her in a trade over 20 years ago. It was so wonderful to bike in the evening light on the bike paths that are everywhere. This is definitely the best mode of transportation ever and I miss it so much. The kids have expressed a desire to bike around as well and I had to console them with our bike reservation for the island and that we are taking an awesome train tomorrow to see all these aunts and uncles and cousins and their children. It is going to be interesting.