I went last sunday with Valentin and Fanny to the Christmas party of my company. The afternoon started with a fantastic circus show : "Moscow's stars". It just reminded me a recent mail from my young cousin Sophie, who lives in Berlin and works on an european program for circus pedagogy. When I was in my eighteens, this nice young lady was a baby who I sometimes held in my arms. Usually at this age, boys are not that found of babies. But she was so pretty and smiling that probably this close contact created deep emotions which I only experienced again with the birth of Valentin and then Fanny. I remember that a photograph of Sophie, baby, was with my id card more or less until I got married.

24 years ago.

The year before I graduated she was my best friend. It was psychologically a very difficult period for me with a bad relationship with and between my parents. For her it was even worse. Her father was in jail. As he was working in a bank, he was abused by fake customers and the bank was suing him. Sylvie was sent from the south of France to her grandmothers house in Normandy. At that time, my selfishness and my own problems were such that never imagined that her problems were immensely more serious than mine. We were very very close to each other, but only friends. I never saw that Sylvie had all I expected to build a relationship. After graduation I left for Lyon more than 700 km from home. Before leaving, I gave her my most precious book as a gift and a remembering : Don Quixote.

3 years later her father was freed and she had joined her family again in Toulouse with her brother and sister. She was attending a nurse school. I went to visit her spending most of my money for the train. It was delightful. We spent three days chatting without quite any sleep. She had a boyfriend who was working in a garage. I asked her how she could accept that somebody could touch her with dirty hands. I went back to Lyon. We started writing letters. Some months later she came to visit me for some days in the flat were my sister was hosting me in Lyon. We had a lot of fun discussing and going to the restaurant as well as starting what I wrongly understood as a love affair. The night before leaving she went with another boy and came back in the morning. I was so sad that I couldn't stand to see her any go with her to the railway station. Three months later she was dead in a bike accident. When her mother phoned us to tell it, I cried during a whole afternoon. I didn't understood that she was just having some fun after difficult years.

Since this day, I have great difficulties to leave a loved person after angry words or a dispute.

Written in Paris - France