Theloopylululog

Ok.

So first things first.

Are we reliving the day or reliving and revising it as we go through the day?

Because that variable changes the equation entirely. And that means I have very different days from very different years to blast off to.

Option 1: Relive WITH the power to revise

If I could relive one day from my past with the power to tinker and revise it as it dies down to dusk, I would go back to the day I was sexually abused as a kid of 12. I would give anything to sleep in a different room that night. The one with the lock.

Ofcourse that also means I wouldn’t be the person I am now, typing this but that’s ok. I would have had a different life to live without the elephant in the room staring at me begging me all my life to make peace with it. I am curious how that life turned out for the little Lulu who had no clue her life was about to take a very different turn that night.

Option 2: Relive. Plain and simple WITHOUT the superpower to revise.

If I could blast off into the past to just relive a day, I would go back to this day and be the Lulu I was that November.

Although I write nostalgically about missing my childhood, I wouldn’t go back there. I lived every moment to the fullest as a child which is also why I remember those days with uncanny precision.

But this day in that forest with Judah for company deserves another run. Nothing extraordinary about it. Just an ordinary day under the big gorgeous African sky with trees for company.

It was the first time we were out together without any plan. 2 weeks into my visit to Kenya, this was probably what you would call our first date.

Yes. Our love story began with a rush of online love. The dates and getting to know each other better part only came after I landed up outside his door.

This day began with bread and tea for breakfast, followed by a ride in a matatu( local bus) to Karura, assumed for a local Indian and handed a ticket reserved for locals and the walk through the trails till it was time to leave at 5 pm.

Put me wherever there are trees and I rarely look at the ground beneath me. Every photo of this day and there are many he took, I am found staring into the skies looking in awed wonder at the treetops. Hearing at the bird calls and gazing at a native species of monkey with a bright blue bottom.

I am not one to follow a trail. How could I if I barely look down? Turned out he was too. We were both geographically stunted! Nice! So all day we just walked around hand in hand going wherever our feet took us.

It was the first time I let myself wear my long, long hair down. He asked me to experience the freedom that I never thought I should allow myself before.

I don’t know if we talked much. I know we laughted a lot. Mostly because we lost our way, way too often.

I remember our poha (flattened rice) lunch. I had never expected a Kenyan to love poha as much as I do. Judah did!

I relive this day often. It’s a memory I keep revisiting. It wasn’t a perfect day. It didn’t end well. We had our first argument when I gave him my classic silent treatment. The poor man didn’t know what hit him!

But it’s a day that gets the most air time in my memory palace. It gets fluffed like a cushion far too many times to count. Why? I wouldn’t know.

Maybe because it had us experience each other for the first time. He took me out to a place he knew I would come to fall in love deeply. Maybe in some weird way he knew he wouldn’t be around in my life for long…so he made sure he left behind something precious he knew I would treasure till the end of my life.

So if given a chance to go back and relive a day again…I would choose this day; a day I began to fall in love with a man I was already in love with.