Sunday 28 August 2011

Blue Lights

Today as I sat visiting with Hannah, I suggested that we should have a Girl's Night once a month, and the following month she could have a Daddy Daughter Night. She wanted to know if she could pick the venue, because if so, she'd choose going to the movies. Extricating myself as gently as possibly from the possibility of huge financial galas, I suggested it might be a date that involved just going to a shop and choosing a pastry to eat while drinking some chai. Wisely, she nodded, "Like the blue lights."

?

Of course, I had no idea what she was talking about and asked her to explain. "You know, like in Bosnia when we went to the blue lights," she reminded me.

If you have watched Disney's Ratatouille six and a half dozen times like we have in our home, you'll remember food critic, Anton Ego was taken back to his childhood home after one taste of Ratatouille. That totally happened to me; except instead of going back to France, my mind time-traveled to Bosnia. I couldn't believe Hannah remembered something so small from so long ago. "You remember the blue lights!" I asked excitedly. She told me what she remembered: If she was well behaved in school for a period of time, Daddy would take her to the blue lights. She reminisced how in the evening, if you looked out the window of our apartment in Vogošća, you could see blue lights upon the hill. She continued, "I remember when we went to the blue lights, looking into my cup of cocoa, and when I looked up, I remember seeing Daddy's face." Then she asked, "Mommy, what are the blue lights?"

The blue lights could indeed be seen from our apartment window back in 2005 when Hannah was only four years old. They beckoned from the hill and were as enticing as fairy lights to see. Dan and I drove out there once during the day to check it out and found it to be a nice hotel on the hill. So when Hannah had behaved at school for whatever was the required time, we took her to the blue lights one evening. The waiter had on a red jacket and there were white tablecloths and candles on each table. We had no idea it was going to be so posh and weren't really dressed for the occasion. Nevertheless, we sat at a table by the window in the nearly empty dining room and ordered hot chocolate, which, by-the-way, is aMAZing in Europe. I think they actually USE chocolate to make it. And real milk. Plus you get to add your own sugar to taste. MMMMmmmm....

So, go forth and make some "blue light" memories with your loved ones. If they happen to include chocolate, all the better!