Not everyone likes to look back to their childhood, bad or good, our past is the biggest influence in what we became today.
Here is my mum at the age of 4, such a cutie, still in Spain. She moved to Holland at the age of 17 to the unfamiliar... See the dutch windmill at the photographers? A sign, maybe? LOL
And this is me, in Holland, also at the age of 4, we moved to Turkey when I was 14. We both grew up as the only child without our fathers and in strange countries.
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And who is this cutie pie? One thing she still has is a naughty look hi hi, this is Judit aka
Vadjutka from Hungary. She lives two lives: A professional one: as a sociologist, specialized in media research, and a freelance journalist. The other one is a crafter's: making jewelry and photography (she studied to be a photo journalist). Here is her story:
''This is mini me: can you imagine, that I was born with blond hair, became red by the age of 3 (as on the photo), and after that my hair started to be darker and darker, until it became totally brown. (For a long time I was longing for blond hair so much, that I took of the long blond hair from the head of one of my dolls, and put it on my head....well it did not suit me.) As far as I remember that time, I was a rambunctious little kid: always doing something. My main "attraction" at the age of 3 was, when I cut my palm with a Coke-bottle: I was running down on stairs (after a boy!) with the bottle in my hand, but fell down and the bottle broke cutting my palm so deeply, that it had to be sewn together. I was frightened, but more frightened of the huuuuuge injection needle they wanted to push into my arm in the hospital. My mother always said, that this accident did not stop me at all from anything: next day I was climbing on fences like nothing happened.
Please meet my bear, named Mimi. I dont have a photo of him as a new bear, because I got him when I was half-year-old from my grandparents. He was babyblue colored, and had plastic eyes, but at first I was frightened of him, since he was much bigger than me. He has been with me for 33 yrs now...quite an old bear :-). I remember all the patches I sew on him (parts of napkins, socks, T-shirts) to prevent him from falling apart. For this reason I stopped washing him at least 15 yrs ago: he would fall apart to atomic levels. I cannot imagine the times when he has to retire from me...I hope he has a few years more.
We have a game with my friends, called "Friends and Luxury". Every two month we visit a 5 or 6 star hotel's cafe or restaurant, and we drink a coffee/tea there, or eat a little cake. While we do this we test the place: first of all the staff, the toilet and the dinner service and cutlery. It is quite fun: imagine us going into the most luxurious hotels! This picture was taken (with mobile) in Hotel New York, which was our first hotel. In the picture you see me as the model of the British saying "to be born with silver spoon in hand (mouth)", because the soup I was eating was served in a Rosenthal china with a huge silver spoon!
See the
series on my
blog: it is in Hungarian, but there are some pictures as well.''
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Dawn aka
LaTouchables who makes gorgeous bags is originally from the US and is now living in Germany, here is her childhood story:
''I grew up on homemade bread and books, some forbidden, in the walk-in closet of our home in the suburbs of several American cities. It was a great childhood, spent traveling ‘literaturally’ around the world, sharing train compartments with spies, hobbknobbing with the likes of Jo, of Little Women, and Laura of The Little House series. I buddied around with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, two great punks of literary reknown. I was best friends with Jules Verne! I struggled with Moby Dick and graduated rather quickly to Camus and Upton Sinclair, Henry James and the great Bronte sisters, among others.
We moved around a lot, from small town to big city. For me, it was normal and always exciting. I believe I was never bored—there were so many things to do, and since I had a sister and three brothers, there was always someone to do things with—explore the woods, play games, harass each other. We were always outdoors doing sports, playing with the neighbourhood children, testing our limits beyond the borders of our suburb. In those days we didn’t have malls, as they are known today, and we didn’t have electronic games. Our big family didn’t have allowances (spending money for the kids). Our television was out-of-order, most of the time. I never missed it.
My parents, coming from the rural midwest, wanted their children to have access to the arts. We all played instruments. I played the violin and practiced drawing and painting. I learned how to sew at nine, and memorized poems by heart.My dad was a physician, and there were a few skulls, literally sitting on our shelves. My interest in arts began with anatomy books and art books. I could recognize Degas, Gaugain and Picasso before I could read their names. I never did fingerpainting—that was for babies. I remember it like yesterday, Mom handing out sable brushes and waterpaints. I couldn’t even read yet, but I was painting my first paintings with a sable brush. ''
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Here you see Alecia aka
Arctida from Sweden still sweet and innocent here, has also two lives, read her story to find out:
''I was born and grew up in the North just above the Polar circle (Arctic circle), in the land of the midnight sun and polar nights. I spent a lot of time out in the nature with my grandparents and I think those trips were the happiest moments of my childhood :) The nature shot (this is as dark as it gets in August) is taken close to our cottage up in the Northern Sweden, where we spend lots of our vacations. It brings back memories from my childhood when I went out to the river fishing with my grandfather. Off course he would be the one fishing and I would just sit there close to him, feeling safe and happy and enjoying the color play in the water.
I live on the beautiful and dramatic East coast of Sweden with my loving husband and our sweet little princess in the 750 year old city of Stockholm. I’m a molecular biologist and work as a cancer researcher during the day and a jewelry designer/digital artist by night :) The beautiful northern nature and science are the main inspiration sources for most of my art. ''
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Erna aka
Dindi who makes beautiful jewelry from found objects, shares a lovely story from her childhood:
''One day the travelling photographer visited the kindergarten where Arjatun’s eldest daughter played and told the children he would come back the next day to take photographs . Erna told her mother so and that she needed to wear her new cardigan, she wanted to look pretty on the picture.
Arjatun didn’t believe her, ‘cause Erna was famous for her fat fibs and fables. She fibbed about almost everything, and then fibbed to get out of a fib. About her age, (she was 6 when she was 4), about her sex (she was a boy), about her roots (she was abandoned by her real mother and found in a rice field by Arjatun). The scar on her right leg: bitten by a boeaja (crocodile), when she lived in Java. The flowers she picked from a neighbour’s garden on her way home for her mother: a gift from a passing stranger (just like the strawberries she had stolen from the nice old lady living next door). She had even explained an absence from school by inventing a new born baby brother (she had spent all day in the woods collecting and eating beech nuts).
Arjatun didn’t want to give permission to wear the cardigan, she had saved so long to buy it and wanted to keep it for special occasions and Erna , the tom-boy she was, always came home with holes in her clothes. Erna cried and cried her eyelashes off (they never grew back, btw) and finally told her mother the “true” reason behind her wanting to wear the cardigan: the queen is coming to visit the school! Arjatun finally gave in. Erna came late to the kindergarten that day, the queen was already gone, but she was in time for the photographer. ''
Next peeks, next week!
Thank you Judit, Dawn, Alecia and Erna for sharing your photographs and little bits of your lives!
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