To linger here or to feel that you belong… – Olya Aman
My sister Tanya is a lean, long-backed, large-headed girl, with surly tones of her voice and coarse features of her face. We scour the country together now and then: I — on my feet and her — on her wheels. Her wheelchair is a speedy little beast, accelerated by her mighty hands and skillfully maneuvered by her flexible torso. You would never believe, looking at her expressive and full of exhilarating energy face, that death had been hovering over her just four years ago.
A rushing torrent of grateful feelings.
The dark night in my sister’s life started from an unfortunate fall from a high staircase. Her brain stopped triggering signals responsible for the muscle movement and she didn’t feel her legs anymore.
When starting to sit down to her meals, still dispirited and sad, she used to say to me, but truly to herself, “Nothing happens without reason. There should be a higher intelligent plan and purpose in it.” The fairest consolation came in disguise of a prayer. It was holding her tight, not letting her slip into that despair completely.
My sister didn’t feel her legs anymore, but strains of overly agitated nerves of her arms and spine substituted that missing sensation. She strengthened her torso every instant she felt the need to hue-and-cry to the missing control of her limbs. She got herself out of the bed and on her wheels with surprising speed.
Elbowing hard upon goals.
Before the accident, my sister used rambled at her pleasure, mostly spending time in the gym listening to her favorite music. Being 32 years old, she still had trouble finding her place in the grownup world.
It seemed a matter of impossibility to center her life around fitness and body healing strategies now when she lost control over almost half of it. But she couldn’t get rid of this idea. Tanya became transfixed with the desire to achieve the heights she didn’t even think possible for her fully functional, healthy past-self.
Tanya set her heart firmly on a goal to become a physical therapist working in amputee rehabilitation. She learned with passion about specific strengthening exercises that flex and tone the muscles. Her own experience gave her a psychological advantage to motivate people.
Issuing forth with a mentor beside.
She adopted this impressive stateliness from her mentor. The simplicity of her mentor’s life stirred her profoundly. Tanya used to preach to me, “This person is happy, chasing his dreams and loving his family. With neither legs no arms he is shining with heart strength and will-power.” Every trace of my sister’s essence strove to bring purpose and happiness into her life.
Power of giving others the heart to live.
My sister still has a sense of weakness and captivity sometimes. But she is recovering her life-balance by an effort of willpower and a desire to set an example for others.
Tanya always says to her patients that whatever happened to her was not a run of ill-luck but a fortunate wakeful blessing. She teaches them to accept the condition and devotedly love their past and present selves. People in her clinic see a humble person just like themselves, never repenting on her helplessness, but being powerful enough to uplift her spirit and inspire others to do the same.
Consider hardships as blessings, rejoice at the opportunity to exercise your patience
I found patience at a crisis in my life… the blessing that greeted my nature – Olya Aman
Only three years ago I used to be so mild and gentle, so sweet and good-humored that earth seemed not my element. My cheerful, happy smile was always present for my beloved husband and baby, my firstborn child. Every minute lived in our home seemed delicious.
All vanished gradually like a breeze, leaving a sign of warmth in the frosty air. I decided to work from home on some company projects rather than going to the office every day. I was delighted to spend more time with my growing family, a second child being on his way.
1) Stay strong when marks of quietness and uneventfulness color your life.
Our third son was a piece of happy, unexpected news. I didn’t fully recover mentally from the merry sensation of being with my second baby, only a year at that time. In the beginning, straggling to be everywhere: keeping the kids nice and neat, the house cozy and welcoming, the food tasty and nourishing — I reduced my restful, sleeping hours to about four a day, comforting myself with thoughts about excellence and perfection of my life.
In three months I felt as if I was groping forward a few steps in my daily life and strolling backward with increasing speed. The little one cried almost every night with no obvious reason. I often lost my temper with my four-year-old, expecting him to be always handy and ready to help in any possible way with kids and with things around the house.
The growing family forced my husband to accept an offer of higher pay and longer absence from home, often being away on his business trips for weeks in a row. Left alone with kids I could not find energy enough to keep my old acquaintances and friends. I was busy and very lonely.
Patience — a lifelong spiritual practice. Do not let time rob you of your brightness, but let it add depth to your personality. Get skilled at pulling the ropes and handling the ribbons of your emotional strength, so you can control your life with all its waiting, watching, and knowing time.
2) Fight snappy conduct that is stealing out with noiseless distracting footsteps.
I kept reproaching myself for lack of attention to my husband and kids. I knew that I needed to be careful about how I dealt with those about me. Too often I ended up snappish in my manner.
The atmosphere at home became suffocating. I and my husband took what seemed to us a strict line of duty: him — providing for the wellbeing of our family, and I — devoting myself fully to the kids. And although our generous impulses had the best intentions, the outcome didn’t provide lasting happiness.
Patience — a way to transform frustration. In this blissful state, you grow familiar and confidential with your beloved people. You have a larger and more loving view when determining the right word and action.
3) Withstand frugal life and hardships.
I was aching to the distant time of those happy days when my husband was at home every night, lifting the weight of troubles by his help and loving support. The tears I shed on the occasion of his coming home from another business trip caused the sacred emotional transformation. A feeble stream of our family life needed to be revived anew, and the only solution was to reunite our family, sacrificing some pleasant but unnecessary luxuries on the way.
My husband decided to go back to his old employment with lower pay and higher healthy, meaningful time spent with his family. With each day at home and each family dinner, the healthy and benign atmosphere was coming back to the house, the chores hanged lighter on my hands.
Patience — a re-attuning to intuition. It is a way to be happy when alive and breathing, even though life may seem hard and frustrations pressing. Without patience you feel like the little tottering, stumbling, clutching child that cries bitterly when left without promised candy.
4) Feel radiance from a disappointing fall.
We abandoned our expensive car for a cheaper and a trifle less comfortable one and our pompous yearly vacations for a lovely countryside escape. When a chain of unlucky events at my husband’s work culminated in his losing the position, we didn’t despair. We lived out of our humble savings and occasional company commissions that I still received now and then.
My husband freed up from the necessity to go every day to the office finally could devote his time to his music experiments. He used to compose wonderful pieces when in college. His hobby didn’t excite much approval from his parents, and he abandoned it almost completely during the years of his company work.
Patience — a way to respond to setbacks and failure. It teaches you to turn your thoughts swiftly upon every blessing in your life, so you stop pitying yourself and fight for your place under this sun. You gather waiting, watching, and knowing skills — and reflect the wise acceptance of the inevitable, and respond to disappointment with grace.
5) Attempt to get to a distant glimmer of perfection.
My husband was shutting himself up in his study at night, interrupting his work for rounds with our crying son. The little creature grew quieter with time, sensing my increasing tranquility. I had my full night’s sleep thanks to my husband’s loving help. Our older son got much attached to his father with his bedtime stories and childish fighting games.
Sometimes the artistic progress was dishearteningly slow. Producing music, though, became more familiar with each failing attempt at reaching the desired effect. I believed in his talent and future success. I encouraged his persistent work.
Patience — a high tolerance for delay. You feel perfect timing for implementing your ideas. For people deprived of patience, it is hard to begin any project, the prospects seem vague, tangled, chaotic and the entire process exceedingly disturbing.
6) Delay gratification. It’ll make the achievement sweeter.
The daily treadmill of our home life was sweet and enchanting, notwithstanding the portioned to us hardships. I liked to see my husband, to hear him about the place and at his music work.
One year left us with a feeling that we’ve accomplished a lot of good for our family, which no money could buy. The second year brought the first small yet increasingly delightful music projects. My husband and a few of his college friends got back together and created a small-movie company.
Patience — an ability to delay gratification. Once you find enough of it within yourself you develop a sensuous susceptibility to timing. You recognize the perfect moment for each important step in your life, and if you feel that time is not right — you can wait without frustration.
7) Avoid procrastination and lend yourself to fulfilling your dream.
All three of their movies presented at the festivals didn’t gain recognition. My husband became an instigator and a powerful motivator for his small company lot. They often got together at our family dinner table to discuss future projects and share the inspirational vibe between them.
His music grew strange, turbulent and insistent, soft and plaintive — and the movie they produced with not much money but with great blissful inspiration became a winner.
Patience — a way to greater inward wisdom. Take the wiser part of grasping at every opportunity to use the capacity to tolerate suffering, and with steady tread go to every trial on the way to your dream.
Conclusion
Patience — active, powerful state. Life without patience is an eternity of torture. Patience thrashes reason into you and evokes absolute devotion to the life itself with everything that makes this experience fascinating.
This is a great practice of compassion. With it, you can always find a way to a non-irritable and non-hostile place within yourself.
Never be entreated to leave this peaceful place. All fears, and hopes, and wild emotions subside and do not jostle and chase each other through your mind when you redeem your ability to tolerate and endure.
“Unique personal style, dear friend, depends on what lies between the core of your heart and the inner essence of your soul,” said G. gleefully.
When it costs a heart and a dime…
G. at her 47 seemed to have something of a girl whose life was a sponge that was thirstily absorbing every drop of friendly sentiment. She gazed about herself with a saddened eye but swelled with smiles at the first bead of love.
Her face had that unmoved serenity of Nefertiti by Thutmose when in reverie, and that was the state I most often found her in. Regular comely features, glistening chestnut eyes, strict rather big mouth, and graceful cheekbones – her face whispered about flexible elegance and luxuriant beauty. Tall, robust, well-built, but rather disproportionally big in comparison to the head, G’s body would have been regarded as fine-looking by one and quite overweight by the other.
She was one of the most conspicuous women in Paris or even in France itself, and that country supplied so many excellent ladies. One would feel almost giddy with cheerful sensations seeing the splendor of color and exquisiteness of accessories. G. was a merry person and her joy would overflow, not in facial expressions, but in fashionable ejaculations.
Her handmade garments were supplied with an invoice for a bond of friendship to the ones she loved. I was flattered to be given the most beautiful garbs by her hand. Wearing those I strolled around with a bit exaggerated swagger because I knew that I was irresistible.
1) The Timing Scent in the Air
G. always rushed to the attack of a difficulty, and when the top 7 fashionable schools said ‘No’ to her inquiry to be the chosen one to master the craft of couture dress, she didn’t repent. After studying the Design Route very closely, she saw that there was but one alternative for her – to start her own business at new luxury couture in knitted women’s wear.
She was deeply versed in learning the fashion world since she remembered herself. Her dream was fearfully big – to become a world known fashion designer, the one that might proudly take place beside Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, and Jean-Paul Gaultier. That passion of hers condemned her to be the butt of all boorish jokes of her classmates, but she didn’t repent, growing astir, more from the opposition than from good encouragements.
G. hunted for related material in every French magazine, she went through all available case studies from leading fashion companies with the top-notch education. G.’s goal was to sharpen her senses, to overcharge them with delicious fashion flavor, and develop a plan of a step by step image building technique.
To thrive and prosper under this sun one needs a united care of a great idea and a suitable time for its realization. The balmy days for a particular dream make the fulfillment of it speedier. All things and people should be glad to meet this newness that one has to offer and flourish with its gradual achievement.
2) Industry Intelligence
G. had greedy teeth behind her fashion obsession. She saw her success in every direction, her imagination had a free play and she started her research full of delightful excitement. She was a whippersnapper in terms of color, having no idea about the existence of four color seasons that coincide individually with a particular facial hue, and each subdivided into four subtypes. G. found the colors that did justice to her cool complexion, emphasizing her beauty rather than concealing it by pupping up instead.
G. strove to change simple color presumptions that she had into certainties, so she could call up before her mind’s eye the right combination for any person. In a perfect frenzy of passionate interest, she tended every piece of relevant information, filling in her notebook and her memory.
When the predictions about some problem that majority of people is facing and looking for the solution is but too well verified and you have the answer, make sure that nothing is omitted, and little is undone in terms of research in the very industry you want to step into. You should not feel the task too difficult of performance, devote enough time to it so that nothing is forgotten, and not a thing is regretted.
3) Great Listening Impulses
G. got into every conversation that could take a convivial and improving turn. This way she learned about the magic of proportionately enhancing looks by knowing body expression. To craft a better-looking silhouette, she went into every free seminar that ready-to-wear groups generously provided. One of the students of Louis Vuitton luxury fashion house agreed to share her class notes for the benefit of ordering some accentual work for her collection, G. gladly exchanged her time and made a beautiful handmade lace for her friend’s dresses and got treasured information in return.
She didn’t think long and hard to determine her body outline. Five types left not much to be confused about and pretty clearly told their story. She was a piquant apple and was in love with that shape. After all, that was the easiest topic to master in fashion design. Now she had the tools to tweak an outfit to emphasize her personal style and to help others to get the understanding of their body structure.
4) Unique and Expected Over Head and Toes
Since five years old G. found herself over head and ears in a pack of yarn whenever her mom’s watchful eye was distracted. She loved that sensation of different textures on her tiny hands. The heart of a girl, whose life was circling around the lovely scenes of her mother always at work knitting all kinds of garments for local people of her little town, was forever given to this crafty art.
G. could live frugally but happy on the proceeds of her skillful hands. Her dream, though, was big and she sometimes feared the heights she wanted to reach. But her belief was strong and sturdy, and the energy with which it was expressed was impatient of delay and suspense.
Competition is healthy only to a particular extent. If the problem that people are facing is solved in too many similar ways, the chance of success is proportionally diminished. Your solution should to all appearances stand out and be unique, better in many ways than whatever others have to offer. Ease the people’s minds by your discovery, give them the most poignant bliss with the answer you provide.
5) Hunting for Branding and Presentation
The horizon was beginning to crimson when French magazine L’Etudiant featured G.’s first collection. She worked hard to turn her passion into profitable business. It was not easy to find her niche but she managed to make a successful living by doing what she loved. She found her own signature style and the patterns she designed were original and caught attention. G. was able to access key forces to assist her in achieving her dream and every succeeding collection she presented was better than the previous one.
6) Fruitful Partnership
G. collaborated with many talented fashion designers and learned a lot during their mutual eclectic teamwork. She tenderly cherished each encounter and became close friends with many interesting people in the beauty industry: photographers, makeup artists, models, and of course brilliant designers from outstanding schools.
One will well advance in life if cooperates with the right people on his way. The very intelligence, that a few brains united together under one mutual concept, can deliver will for sure shine bright enough to light up the sky. In faith, I believe one great person can substitute an excessive monetary capital. So engaging yourself busily in finding worthy business partners is a path for exultation.
Conclusion
G.’s work considered by many as the great art in haute couture designs. And being on the top of her career she continued to revert her thoughts to her old friends. I’m a proud possessor of a few signature garments that G. gifted me with. And ‘haute couture’ or not… I feel the love of her generous soul and that is the most precious and priceless.
Let your dream grasp you with an iron hand. The path to it should be remembered even in old age. A life of persistent and not fleeting pleasure is dearly paid for by tenacious movement to the desired. And fear often is a companion to the assurance on this way – fear that the dream is too big and assurance that it is for sure reachable. Your cleverness and your soul capital are on the service of it. Make it sensational so people will have a daily renewed appetite for what you have to offer.
Regret made me goofy. Sorrow gave me an enigmatic flavor. – Olya Aman
I was out of heart
The existence of conscience makes the claws of regret sharp. And the stronger one, the deeper the other can penetrate a sensitive flesh. The depressing influence of this feeling creates the sensation of a jail in a living body. This emotion casts a grim look on life. The damp atmosphere that regret creates is suffocating. We need to learn how to dispel the smog from the past and at the same time to keep our hearts from being dried-up.
I was out of humor and out of heart. It has been almost two years now, but my grief grew fast and furious with every succeeding year. My best friend, the one I was secretly in love with, died from heart failure. Miraculously, we were at the stop sign when it happened, the horn of a car announced the death. His innocent and pathetic face was radiant with new happiness. I couldn’t help wondering how he could be so glad to leave me alone. Sitting on a front passenger seat, I unconsciously called to mind a portrait I saw in a gallery some years ago. The painter neglected the background, reserving all the magic of his brush for the quiet, happy face of a man. My friend at that moment looked just like him, as if he had caught the golden glory of heaven on his countenance.
Arm-wrestling with the past
The catastrophes of previous days can darken with a shade of remorse the future ones. Some deeds are done impetuously, others are out of our control. To weather those storms of life and not to be worn out is the actual purpose of their existence. There is no way to change what’s done, so no need to stamp life with the print of past adversities.
He felt discomfort in his chest for a few weeks before the terrible culmination on that day. I mentioned to him several times that he needed to see a doctor. I blamed myself for lack of persistence. And the regret I felt had a sensation of almost maternal protection. Its watchful eye never left my side. It didn’t let my mind wander elsewhere. Some days I could feel the throbbing of his heart as if he was pressed in an affectionate embrace close to my chest. Those days were worse than others.
I would do impossibilities to bring him back. I owed my happiness to him. It felt like an explosion now when he was gone. And I could not pick up the fragments with all the care of an antiquary I applied. I became stifle. My mind and soul were on fire, and that blaze seemed to gleam from hell. There was no space left for new emotions.
That dark, evening power that dominated in my life had some magnetic energy that attracted empathetic people. There are some ways of looking at you that seem to penetrate your soul. I looked at people and made them feel as though they had nothing on. That irritated a lot and captivated many. After all, that sorrow I endured gave me that Renaissance’s ‘Juliet’ flavor. And my gloomy voice could talk the language of enigmatic gallantry of that time.
I often was behind handed with my work, but my senior manager closed his eyes on every mismatch in my schedule. The tension was growing. I could not see the outpouring lava of affection that I excited. My handsome boss was on fire, like a human volcano he loved me with the fierce of unchained nature.
But I was a different person after 2 years of mourning. I gazed about me with a saddened eye, paying attention to the dim side of life. That desire to expand every misfortune in daily life and minimize the impact of many little jolly things was roasting me alive. I needed thunder and lightning to wake me up and transform that death-like, sepulchral look into my regular prior-to-the-fatal-day features.
My heart finally spoke to me, and I happened to take to it. The blow of losing a job served as a curing disaster that shook my essence. When enough time was given to self-wandering, I realized that there were still pages in my life book that I had not read.
Let me tell you what I’ve found on those pages
Arm-wrestling with the past is an exhausting and worthless process. A positive view on days-by-gone creates a profusion of loving energy that motivates a person in his life. Occurrence in the past, bad or good, is a wonderful lesson that builds personality. Everyone is unique because every experience is individual. The way one interprets it determines his success or failure in life. There is no way to change the past, but altering your attitude towards it is magical.
Give a new turn to your thoughts
To be more ardent, more eloquent, more entrancing is a process of growth that often goes hand in hand with ill luck and pain. For the sake of my future happy life, I’ve decided to respect my past. That experience was a tombstone that kept the castle of my unique personality firm and steady. In the enormous mileage of the past, everything is a blessing. Tears poured over some broken expectations should teach a lesson of breathing through the pain and moving with a renewed and re-skilled hope.
Revert the importance
Life is cooler when sometimes less weight is given to the important and more value devoted to the trifling little jolly things. So, in other words, performing a blah with sarcastic importance and taking important for a mumbo-jumbo is quite a good key to a lighter step in life. Various pieces of information assemble the personality and it just happens so that misfortunes give a more positive outcome in terms of helpful life tools than merry experiences could have done.
Let the past be your capital
Trudging timidly through life was a punishment that I inflicted on myself when consciously dwelled on the past with disappointment in my mind. I decided to consider my past experience as a capital that can help me to take the right turn in the right moment in the future.
The result proved to be magnificent
I do not have greedy teeth for blessings, but always remember to be grateful for every little merry moment. That is why life is good-natured to me now. Happiness is the poetry spoken in a woman’s voice. I had my second chance to hear the poem of my life.
Now I and my ex-boss listen to those delicious sounds together.
Here is a conundrum indeed! How soon can you solve it?
Olya Aman
My object in parading this private affair before the reader is to commemorate the remarkable series of events and convey the evidence of what love can build and what it can destroy. – Olya Aman
I present to you here a true story with written evidence that came to my possession through the hands and words of the primary witnesses, who happen to be my friends. I intend to preserve everybody’s incognito in this tale, so let me reveal no names, no places.
Imagine a tiny town where everybody knows each other. If you think this place quiet and unremarkable, you cannot be farther from the truth. People here invent the most mysterious crime affairs to amuse themselves. The outcome of this tale proved to be the zenith of one family’s happiness and, hopefully, the nadir of their troubles.
Mother
I was asked to exaggerate nothing and suppress nothing from what happened more than thirty years ago. My imagination tends to people the darkness of those days with additional terrors sometimes. I’ll do my best to restrain from it.
I used to be a night-club, knock-about-city young girl who was determined to teach herself a lesson by marrying a simple police officer and moving to the smallest town ever existent. After the hubbub and bustle of a big city, I hoped to find soul-soothing serenity in the three-story walls of ancient buildings, corner grocery shops, wooden benches close to every threshold, and the grand loving eyes of my man.
Calm and quiet were showering upon me thick and fast. The monotony of my existence started to grind me away soon enough. I managed to hold the rapture of boredom and adventure starvation for the first three years, and the three that followed were hell for both of us indeed. My husband should have known better than marrying a woman like me.
We were living in constant gnawing anxiety. The real reason for my unhappiness was in my allusion to pain. I was sure that my relationship was lacking the spark. I was longing for emotional suffering and physical agony. It seemed to me that only torture could make me feel alive. The grim orchestra in my head was playing about the passion I lacked and the pain I craved. My tumultuous thoughts were driving me nuts.
I droned my days away in that gloomy town. Household chores: cooking, cleaning, a little bit of reading, and dreaming about some other man beside me, some different life endured. I should have found something to do in that dreary place. But what could I find with my political science degree? Too sophisticated for that place I was.
Oddly enough, only fear still kept us together. My husband, I suspected, feared loneliness and to set everyone’s tongue wagging about our private affairs. I feared my son rejecting me for breaking the family and my inner desire to inflict pain on myself and my husband. Trouble was brewing; I was asking for it.
I anticipated some unfortunate event for some weeks before that day. It started as always with a silent breakfast. Both my husband and I were tired of keeping the picture of a happy family for the sake of our six-year-old son. Mind you, we never as much as raised voice to each other. We simply didn’t talk but for hateful ‘good morning’ and ‘have a good day’.
My husband made his lunch, put a few apples in a bag for our son to take to his grandma, and both of them were gone with the usual ‘see you tonight’. At half-past six, my husband came home. I warmed up his dinner and said, “I will call your mom and ask if they are home by now? I will pick him up and take him to his karate class at seven-thirty.”
I picked the phone and dialed the number. Our son was not there. His mom thought we had some other thing scheduled. My husband grabbed the receiver from my shaking hand and pushed me gently aside. “It’s ok,” he said to his mother. He told her we forgot about some other arrangement and that he was at his friend’s place. What was he talking about? What friend? What kind of arrangement? Those questions were whirling in my head.
This done, my husband looked at me in a strange way. The intensity of his gaze silenced me. It was a look of a hungry, watchful reproach. “I’ll find him. Don’t you worry,” he said, picked up his jacket, and was gone.
Father
My family was always unspeakably precious to me. There was nothing I couldn’t do to save it. Bare it in mind while reading this narrative of mine. I loved my wife more than anything. I knew from the very beginning, she was not the woman a simple chap like me could catch and hold still in his hands. She needed drama, and drama was a rare coin in my native town. I had to mind that currency myself.
It was a custom with us to take our son to my mother’s place, so my wife had a day to herself. She said she needed that time alone, and I submitted. I seldom could say ‘no’ to anything she wanted. I usually drove to the parking lot of a three-story apartment building where my mother lived.
Our son used to get out of the car, give me his ‘see you later, dad’, enter the building and his grandma’s flat on the second floor all by himself. This brief trip gave him a sense of maturity, something to add to his list of ‘I can’.
What was wrong this time? Why wasn’t he at his usual place?
When home again, I said to my wife that I knocked at each and every door of this building, asking about our boy. No one as much as saw him that day. She blamed me, and I, half-expecting such reaction, didn’t object.
She was out of all sorts, now saying in her querulous, rattling whisper how she missed her son, now flinging distinct words of hatred into the air, now shedding a gust of tears and scratching her face, now heaving convulsively barely able to talk, imploring me to do something.
That was her niche in life, her long-awaited drama. So much feeling in every gesture — that was my beastly little girl again. I had to slap her on the face to bring her back to senses.
What an outcome from this insult! I never as much as raised a thought against a woman not talking about a hand. She caught my hand and pressed it to her burning cheek. She kissed it, then higher. My arm, shoulder, collarbone, ear lobe — what an electric shock was going through every little cell of my body! It had ceased to be my own.
The desire we both felt expanded into a series of scenes with pain and pleasure united, angry kisses, throwing each other against all surfaces. Bruising her flesh, she was getting the unsettling inner feeling out, releasing her emotional distress. When all was over, she was lying on a couch in dreamless slumber. I went out into the night to look for our son.
Grandmother
My old, cast-away husband was out of our lives for twenty years. He left us when our son was twelve. Not that he planned it. They sentenced him to three years for a drunken scuffle in a local bar. One man almost died from the severe beating my husband was to blame for. He got out of jail and out of our lives.
On our son’s thirty-second birthday, the old beggar brought his shaking frame to my flat and pleaded to have a chat with his son. I was beside myself with indignation, to say the least. I hated my husband for leaving us. Over a year, he was patiently asking for permission to be a part of our family.
My son and I agreed to see him now and then, with one condition, he had to keep it a secret. My son didn’t mention it to his wife. I never openly met him outside. Were we ashamed of him? He WAS a dosser, after all. Or were we punishing him in this way? I don’t know for sure.
I was angry with myself for being silly and liking, I couldn’t admit at the time, but LOVING was the right word, my husband, during all those years he was away. I couldn’t shake off the inveterate distrust which weighed for all those years on my spirits.
That is why when this alien and strangely familiar person asked to see his grandson, I could only stand rooted in the ‘No’ and ‘Never’. It was a very trying time for me. Eventually, he had tamed me. One day my son and I submitted to his pleadings and promised to arrange everything.
Grandfather
I was old and sick and tired of my lonely life. I had reasons of my own to leave my family. The rods of iron with which prison surrounded me were ever-present in my mind. At some point, I felt that my life was at its lowest ebb. Then and there, like a pitiful mongrel, I crept back meekly to my family. For the first time in my entire life, I humbled myself to pleading for forgiveness with all the patience I still had left in me.
I went to my old hut near the lake. I used to go there in the glorious old days when fishing. This shabby place was creepy, just as I was at that stage of my life. But still, those walls were much better than any bench I used to call home. For over a year, I waited for my wife and son to soften for me. I didn’t put my mind in total blank with the drink. I abandoned this degrading habit because I knew it could force me to lose every inch of the ground I had gained.
The day my son patted me on the shoulder and promised to let me see my grandson, my heart gave a great bound. This news almost turned me giddy. The thought half maddened me with delight. I spent the following couple of days getting ready, putting things in order at my lonely cabin. The little chap needed a cozy place to stay. I exhausted myself with plans for the future rendezvous with my boy. I knew just then — I’d lived through all misfortunes to see my grandson, to get things straight with my son, and to pray for my wife’s forgiveness.
I didn’t remember myself being as tender-hearted as at the moment my son brought this boy in his car on that day. I was fool enough to shed a couple of tears. I wanted to wipe away the wrongs my family suffered through with this last effort of submissive affection. All the gold left of my wasted nature, I poured at the feet of my grandson. I keep the memory of those two days in my heart of hearts.
Son
The air was close and stagnant in that hut. This old man was kind but rude, and he looked almost cruel. I liked him right away, though. How can it be is clean past my comprehension even now, thirty years since? He said, “Don’t middley-coddley, there a good boy. Nothing to be worried about. We’ll have a rattling good time fishing.” The old man said I could call him grandpa, and I did. I knew by my childish instinct, that was seldom wrong, he was my friend.
I remember as if it was yesterday that I never felt myself so mature, so bold and courageous, so skilled and manly. I stayed with this wrinkled weather and life beaten person for two long and memorable days. What a blast! Running in the fields, making birdhouses, playing with the shabby little dog, fishing, and cooking our fish soup over a riverside fire.
My father came with the haste of happiness in his feet in the evening of the second day. I haven’t seen him like that before. I was happy to see this change, and perhaps a little piqued too.
Mother
My husband could not sit down alone to wait through the crisis of our life. He left the house that night after we had the most sensual experience. He remembered that he was leaving an anxious heart at home and phoned me a few times, updating me on the progress of his search. He called me tender names, and I didn’t humor him as I used to.
On the second day in the early evening hours, he came home. I met him with my entire being, imploring for some uplifting news. He didn’t have any. Then I gave him a defiant look, and with mockery, I eagerly blamed him again for what had happened. I should have gone to look for my boy myself. Why did he persuade me to stay at home and wait for some developments? Oh, how my heart sank under a dread. It was beyond words.
Then he confessed. He said he didn’t plan it. We barely exchanged a few words those days, and he simply forgot to tell me he’d arranged for our son to spend a day with his grandfather. I didn’t even know the man existed. My husband never mentioned him. I assumed his father was dead. When he came home and saw my worried look when I was talking on the phone with his mother, only then he felt a plan forming itself in his brain.
He wanted to enliven my love for many years now. He didn’t know how to shake that lethargy I seemed to live in. He said that the pretense of searching for his son, the common disaster he invented, the tears and worries that both of us shared for almost two days brought us together. We were a family, at last, a mother and a father struggling to find their son.
Oh, how mad with rage I was. I called him nasty names. I was storming through our house, smashing the furniture. But in the midst of all those turbulent feelings, there was a glow of hope in me. Hang it all; he was right. I deserved the shock and shake I’d got. I was alive with burning emotions. I breathed passion in the air.
The strange march of events during those two days changed the course of our lives forever. Happy life ever after? Oh, by Heaven, no. But eventful, for sure. We made it a rule always to break the monotony and to meet our passion half-way. When our boy enjoyed time with his grandparents, we had our hurry-skurry adventures. I used to tell him, “Remember it doubly and trebly to make me FEEL your love.”
Olya Aman 