TRAVELING IN MEMORIES (August 4, 2020)

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I’m prostrate on a mat in the floor of my guest/exercise room following the instructions given by my personal trainer, Enivaldo, who hasn’t been to my house for over four months.  We now meet via Messenger on the screen of my iPad Mini tied with Therabands to an old tripod. “Um, dois, três, quatro…” he counts, as I work my way through sit-ups and weight exercises. “Bom, ótimo,” he continues, to keep me motivated. When it’s time for the calmer stretches my relaxing eye catches the snug grey socks on my feet. I have never noticed there’s an ‘L’ and an ‘R’ woven into the toes, by mere chance pulled onto the correct feet, but I immediately remember buying them on Kensington High Street in London last October.

 

33 Collingham Gardens

It was the day I caught massive rain on my long walk through familiar neighborhoods – if you can call them that after a fifty-three-year interval. I had found the corner house, 33A Collingham Gardens, where I lived for several months in a chaotic mess of a shared 2nd floor walk-up at the outer edge of fashionable South Kensington. I had walked through the busy Earl’s Court Road, heading for Kensington High Street, where I used to go with my flat mates in search of fun things to do and to shop on Saturdays, when the intermittent showers finally drenched me completely. 


Earls' Court Road

With my sneakers squishing with accumulated water I knew I had to do something, wet feet being a gateway to an immediate cold. I looked around for rubber boots, or ‘wellies’ as the locals call them, but there were none to be found. Finally, in a sports store basement, down a narrow escalator and into a low-ceilinged fluorescent-lit space, I found a rack of socks made for mountain climbers. I dragged off my sodden ones and with some difficulty pulled my new purchases onto my damp, resistant feet. I felt immediately better - the mountaineering socks insulated me from the wet sneakers and warmed me again. I could keep walking, looking at the stores and throwing a curious glance into the heavily guarded and treelined driveway to Kensington Palace, where Prince Charles lives, until I reached Harrods, where I lunched at a counter in the thronged food hall and sipped a delicious gin and tonic.


Fashionista in front of Harrods


My memory flight is interrupted by Enivaldo. “Sit up,” he says, “now stretch your neck.” I continue the familiar moves until we’re all done and can wish each other a pleasant weekend.


Courtesy of Enivaldo Andrade de Souza

For the rest of the day I remember glimpses of that particular afternoon, recorded only in my head. How I talked to a striking Nigerian woman lawyer, eating lobster next to me and drinking white wine, how her affluent-looking husband was shopping with a friend and came to say hello, how she told me her daughter had a song coming out on Spotify, how I later walked the many floors of the traditional luxury store and came across the largest television I had ever seen, 

Huge tv in Harrods

and how the only thing I bought was a refill for Oswaldo’s MontBlanc ballpoint pen.  

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