The best thing about holidays is that I can sleep late. I don’t have to get up early, like when I go to school. Mom and Dad would just let me sleep away. Both when we were in Sofia or on holidays. Especially if we were on holidays. We would get up around 10, have breakfast at the hotel and only then head to the beach. Like everyone else on holidays. This is what I was thinking that morning, when Grandma woke me up at the break of dawn and I got confused, thinking I had to go to school. But then I saw her face and I remembered we were on holidays, in Burgas, that... But why is Grandma waking me up so early then?! What’s gotten into her? I heard Mom try to resist her as well, but Grandma was relentless. ‘Come on, sleepy heads, rise and shine! Come on, it’s just about noon already!’ she said loudly. Yeah, right, noon. It was hardly the break of dawn outside. But we didn’t have much of a choice, so we just got up. I did it because she is my Grandma and I have to show respect to her and do as she says. And Mom did it because she hardly had any strength to resist anything lately and she just gave in. ‘Put your swimsuits on!’ Grandma ordered. We obeyed. And then followed Grandma to the Sea Garden, which is actually just an average park by the sea, so I really don’t understand why they call it a garden here. The minute we entered that park-garden, I realised that not everyone who is in their right mind sleeps late during the summer. Unless all these people were not in their right mind. But they couldn’t have been all mad, there were too many of them. And so, mad or not, they were riding bicycles, walking on the sand or in the water, exercising, and some even swimming. It had never occurred to me that it was an option to swim at that time of the day. We always went swimming during the day. And during the day only. We got down to the beach. Grandma stopped at a place near the shore, away from the umbrellas, tossed down our towels on the sand and said: ‘Off you go into the sea! The water is as warm as tea.’ Mom refused to get in and Grandma didn’t insist. The salty water was warm indeed. We swam in the sun path which gradually faded in the increasing daylight. Meanwhile Mom was lying on her back, on her towel, looking at the sky. So far I liked Grandma’s programme. But I was really sleepy. ‘Now we will do a few simple exercises. We learnt those in yoga class,’ Grandma said when we got out on the beach. ‘What is yoga?’ I instantly wanted to know. ‘Yoga is an ancient Indian system of exercises which strengthen your physical and mental health. The exercises are called asanas,’ Grandma recited. ‘You are about to see their amazing effect for yourselves.’ And she started showing us, telling us when to breathe in and breathe out. To my joy, and, I believe, to Mom’s joy, there were only five exercises. And they weren’t hard at all. We had to repeat each of them five times. Basically, we had to twist our bodies in different directions. Mom tried to cheat, but this time Grandma was adamant. When we were done with the exercises, I thought that was it. But it wasn’t. Grandma energetically spread our towels on the sand and said: ‘Time to meditate.’ She saw the puzzled look on my face, so she was quick to explain: ‘When you meditate, you relax and think of nothing. That’s what we are going for – we want to stop the train of thought and let our minds rest. Enter a state of deep relaxation.’ We sat down on our towels and crossed our legs. I pressed my eyes really tight and tried hard to meditate. I tried to not think about anything and so I was thinking about how I should stop thinking and then I tried again and I felt like smoke was coming out of my ears with all my efforts to stop thinking that I should stop thinking. And then I saw Monica all of a sudden, her big smile and even white teeth, and I felt her stroking my hair like she used to. If that was meditation, I liked it a lot already. Pelican Feather, 2013, translation: Bistra Andreeva,trailer: Hristo Dimitrov-Hindo
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 06:39:18 +0000
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