All my nights are little meetings with the girl who lives inside me. 🌙 She’s about six years old. She has pigtails and knees that are too big. She loves ice cream 🍦 and is afraid of the dark. Sometimes it seems to me that I’m still afraid of the dark. Only now it’s not about the lights being off — it’s about the unknown.

Recently, I woke up in the middle of the night. It was raining. 🌧️ I lay there and listened to the drops tapping on the windowsill. Suddenly, I remembered how one day in the village I was standing barefoot on the porch in the pouring rain. Mom was scolding from the window: “You’ll get sick! Come in!” And I laughed and thought: “Let all the rain fall on me, I’ll become rain.”

Somewhere there I lost this ability to be the rain. I became cautious, calculating, correct. But sometimes, in the middle of the night, I want to put on my old raincoat again and go out into the rain barefoot. Just because I can.

There are memories that seem to hide during the day, but at night they jump out of the corners of my consciousness. 🧸 I think about eating apples in the garden. 🍎 About how I first fell in love with a boy from the neighboring yard. About how I secretly read books under the blanket with a flashlight. These crumbs of the past are my quiet magic. They remind me: not all is lost. There is still a girl inside me who believes in miracles.

I know people who do not like to remember their childhood. They say: “Why? It was all a long time ago.” But it is important for me to know that I come from there. From my mother’s pies. From the smell of freshly cut grass. From the shrill cries of swifts under the roof.

When I feel especially sad, I bake something simple. For example, an apricot pie - the way my grandmother used to bake it. While it's in the oven, I listen to the crackling of the dough and smell the sweet heat. And I feel calm.

Maybe we grow up to become children again - only now we are our own parents? Who knows. I just don't want to lose this girl inside. Let her be. Let her wake me up at night sometimes and whisper: "Remember, we loved the rain." 💖