When the evening comes I stand by the window. I push the slats of the blind apart with my fingers and look at the evening sky behind the buildings on the other side of the road. It's still getting dark early. The year's not even a month old and already it feels long and hard. Mind you, there's not much work at the moment. We all complain in January. I just want to catch one last sight of the sun and the last ray of light. I leave for work at eight in the morning; it's still not really light then.
Everything's better in the summer. I bet everyone says that but on the other hand, in summer I think of holidays and I often don't feel like working. And I think things go best in the winter, if you leave January out of it. Mind you, lots of us probably see that differently. It's a shame the flat doesn't have a balcony. I could sit out there in the summer and sunbathe, better than the stupid tanning salon, and in winter I could stand out there before sunset and have a smoke and watch the sky, watch it turning red. I like to look at the moon on clear nights. It always reminds me of that song.
My mother used to sing it to me before I went to sleep. 'The Moon Has Arisen'. When I hear it now, and that doesn't happen often, I don't know when I hear it at all, so. I can't really describe it. Sometimes I sing it in my head. Magda always used to say: 'I'm getting feelings,' when she meant she was feeling sad. But it's rubbish actually, that thing about the seasons. Summer or winter, autumn or spring, the phone always rings.
Just not that much in January. When I was a child I used to think, when I was very little though, that there was a fifth season. And once I asked my mother if the year starts on the first of January every year and if New Year's Eve is always one day before that. And if it ever snows in June. She laughed and hugged me - that's why I haven't forgotten it. Just like the song. I've often thought about the white mist in the song, before I go to sleep. When I have a child one day I'll sing them a different song.
One that's not so sad. I'm more of a cheerful person. 'Alert and lively,' they wrote in my school report. They always had these assessments by the teachers. And Magda always used to say: 'Don't get so hyper, girl, you're as fluttery as a bird.' She'd say so many funny things, and sometimes they were fitting and sometimes they weren't at all, and I miss that. She's in Hannover now. She sends me cards sometimes and she always remembers my birthday.
She always used to say letters and cards are more personal than text messages. She sends me these really cheesy postcards, puppies, giant hearts, roses with glitter on, and sometimes cards with music. I still write her emails and texts though. My mother's the only one I send postcards to. The last one on New Year's Eve. That was for Christmas too. We don't see much of each other any more but my New Year's resolution is to go and visit her more often. Because she doesn't like coming here to me, to the city.