Summer

Even though we're getting a lovely soft blanket of new snow even as I speak, I thought it would be nice to post a happy scene from last summer, replete with trampoline. This house is such a huge part of my childhood experience, sitting as it does nex to the house my mother spent many years in at Óðinsgata 17 in the Þingholt neigborhood of the city center. Valentina, Óðinn and I live just around the corner on Baldursgata.

My grandmother Ásta lived next door to this house for, I think, nearly forty years (Mom, can you correct me here?) and for at least the last thirty this house has been pink. There were three girls around the same age as my sister and me who lived here (Sibba, Sigga and Nanna) and we played together every time we came to visit Iceland. Sigga and Nanna's families still live here and I see them every once in a while. We all have at least two kids now and have lost the innocence I see in our faces in old photographs, but we still have smiles for each other and hugs. I love watching their kids play in this yard because it brings back memories of Iceland the way it used to be, when there was two kinds of soda, Appelsín and Coca Cola and they came in little bottles and there was really only one good candy bar, the Prince Polo, that fizzled in your mouth when you washed it down with a sip of coke. And the corner store sold black licorice and peru brjóstsykur and we could pay with aura or just a few króna.

Those days are over and Capitalism has come to stay, but at least kids still play in this yard and thank goodness the house is still pink.