Hava Nagila

When I was a little girl I lived in (what I thought of as) a big house in the suburban Stockholm. We were quite a few living there. My mom and my dad. Me and my three sisters and sometimes a brother and my sisters boyfriends and apparently foster kids too. (didn't know much about them)

Anyway, it was a house that should never be empty. But it was.

From my first class when I was barely 7 I went home alone in the early afternoon and spent a lot of time on my own, in that house with all its shadows and scary monster in the closets. (weirdly enough I always pictured the monsters to be heroin-drug-lords who went around sticking innocent girls with needles that we'd directly turn in to drug-users and having to walk about on the streets feeling awful. (I've sneaked in a couple of times when my family was watching the typical 70's movies and films, with their social reality "feel":)

Unless I wasn't with my friend Nettan or that my sister, Maj, was early home, I was all alone.

So, a girl have to have some safe places right? For me it was either in my sister Maj's room, where I wasn't allowed to be. Or in the basement where there was a "playing" room that not many people used. My mom had her big loom in there, which she might have used twice or so.

But in there, we had this awesome tape-recorder. Here is the one I mean.

We only had one tape, with one song on it. (from what I remember, it might be all wrong, but this is the one)

The song was Hava Nagila and I sang it over and over again. It was a huge safety feeling to make as much noise as I could.

For me the language of the song was pretty much the same as the music my sister Lisa used to let me listen to. I was completely in to the song Shlavsojäjäjäää. And Hava Nagila.

Quite a few years later, when I was a young girl still but not as young as in the days with the tape recorder, I saw a tv-show where MY song was played!!! People dancing so happily and singing along. It didn't look at all as I would had expected though.(with cool dudes in leather jackets and girls smoking by the car as in Grease which was my new favorite at the time) Still, for me, that's the one song that kept me safe in my childhood. Together with Shalvsojäjäjäää (which turned out to be She loves you yeah yeah yeah with Beatles)