One of the questions I asked of everyone was ‘What was Gaia like as a child’. Some of the memories people had have been incorporated into earlier posts and shared, such as Kim and Talia mentioning the magnetism of the twin roly-poly games in their parents’ lounge, but this post speaks to how Gaia and Maya (and often Clara) spent their time.
Clara reflected coyly:
‘When I was little apparently I used to boss them about quite a lot, force them to wake up at crack of dawn, force them to go outside and do an obstacle course.
Except the obstacle course hadn’t actually built yet! I remember myself wanting to do an obstacle course so intensely. We had to climb through a kitchen window in basement flat in London to reach the garden.
I don’t remember doing the obstacle course, but I do remember them not wanting to and forcing them to do it’.
Clara also recalled ‘forcing them to do races in the living room’. I’m not sure how much forcing was required for the races because Maya’s memory was as follows:
‘There was a lot of banter, a lot of chasing each other around the house. Actually I broke my leg after falling down the stairs when we were playing tag in the house’.
Maya also remembered an intensity to her and Gaia’s relationship:
‘We were each other’s alarm clock, Gaia and I, up until our teens. The first thing we’d do is wake up and get up and wake the other.
We shared a room until we were 13, it was pretty intense.
[Maya laughs]
If one was up before the other, the other would get a very rude awakening’
I asked a little more about childhood, about the sorts of things they got up to.
Clara recalled Gaia and Maya as a mischievous double act:
‘If we were on a journey, we’d all be in the back of the car on a motorway and they’d switch places in the back seat, you know, to see if our parents would notice.
[I asked if they noticed]
Of course, they’d always notice, but they always tried to do stuff like that. They were really mischievous and funny’.
When I asked Maya about childhood holidays and trips she recalled spending lots of time at the beach. She also recalled going on winter walks with Gaia, and how she was always very temperature sensitive:
‘Gaia would get wind blasted, her hair would be windswept and she’d have these really rosy cheeks… she’d be rosy all over’.
Maya also recalled trips out with their Mum:
‘Mum would take us on long days out, we’d be in the car for ages, and then there’d be a long walk, maybe we’d stop at a café. If we did Gaia would always get a hot chocolate, I don’t like hot chocolate’.
Maya recalled that they had a JVC camcorder and how and Gaia had tried to do a creative project together
‘a film…. it failed of course because we were arguing. I watched it a couple years ago with Gaia… it was ridiculous, we would run around, treat it like a journal and pass the camera around.
Watching the footage back, filming us talking, it was really embarrassing’.
Despite her discomfort Maya continued, and recalled the following memory which I’ll end on today:
‘There was this one film of Gaia on camcorder, she kept zooming in and saying ‘I’ve had a lovely day at the beach’.
She was about 10yrs old, she continues talking to the camera saying ‘we’ve just stopped and had a hot chocolate, it was really lovely and I think that everyone should just love themselves… some people might think that I’m chubby but I think I’m gorgeous’.
Maya chuckles as she recalls the film
‘She’s there zooming in, with hot chocolate all around her mouth and then she says ‘my Mum says I’m really pretty and I think everybody should just love themselves, I’ll kiss myself now’ and she zoomed in and kissed the camera’
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