Been All Around This World

She was a southern girl, she was beautiful and wild. She fled her home in the poor and mountainous canton of Ticino close to the Italian border, and she moved north. Moved to where the people spoke in harsh tongues and looked pale and worked hard. She liked it better there and she hung out and got to meet people and went to parties with them. One day she met Lali, a brilliant young mathematician who had many plans, but a hard time with his father. Oskar was a pastor, and Oskar was sad because he had lost his beloved wife and because when he finally decided to marry again after one year, it was the wrong girl he married. He wrote books about the meaning of Sunday for the family and about the innermost Christian discipline. Oskar was soulful but strict, and he reprimanded Lali for his flamboyant ideas and his freewheeling spirit and his love for Jolanda. But Lali and Jolanda stood firm and had two kids. It was only after a while that they decided it was time to move on.

And move on they did. They took a train, left their dear family behind, and set out on a long journey around the world to where people were less pale and stood upside down. It was the mid-fifties, and it was good and adventurous, but in this new place Lali met someone else and had more children. So Jolanda took her two kids and traveled around the world once more to where the sun was shining and where grown-ups behaved like children, wore flowers in their hair, passed acid tests and liked to see things differently. Jolanda met many lovely people and decided to stay. She had another kid and lived in a small colorful house that consisted of only two rooms and a kitchen and that had two doors, one in the front and one in the back. She was surrounded by her cats and her friends and her kids, and when she grew old, they brought her what she needed. She liked to watch MTV in the nineties, and when visitors came, they slept on the table in the front room. The house was always open. Jolanda loved stories, she told them and she listened to them for hours. She had a mischievous grin, and she knew everything about you, even if you hadn’t told her. She knew.