When my husband was invalided home, he shuffled through each day like a man already defeated. His mood was as dark as the grave, his face worn beyond his years. Even his voice had changed. It carried the harsh, hollow sound of a cold wind. He seemed like a stranger to the man I had married.
He was only thirty-six, yet life itself no longer seemed his element. Shadows from the past lingered over his face, and his smile, more than anything else, betrayed the depth of his suffering.
The war had erased every memory of a happier existence. Fighting and killing had buried the goodness that once shaped him. Nothing I did could awaken the affection or joy that had once come so naturally to him.
Our nights were the hardest. Nightmares ruled his sleep. He woke with angry cries, then sat by the window until dawn, unable to rest.
As a boy, Grant had grown up in a small ranch house in Colorado. His childhood was poor and filled with hard work, but never cruelty. His closest companions were wet morning grass, cold mountain air, and the animals he cared for. He believed in goodness and honesty until the battlefield stripped that faith away.
After a year of trying to rebuild our life, we realized the only thing left to do was return him home.
Only after coming back to his old, weathered house, his forgetful mother, his simple-hearted father, and his ancient horse did Grant begin, little by little, to recover.
The goodness of that tiny mountain village surrounded us. Every sunrise over the fields, every quiet evening, every familiar path softened something inside him. He regretted leaving that life for war. I reminded him that one good thing had come from those terrible years—we had found each other. He needed something worth carrying forward, and that something was us.
His remorse did not disappear overnight, but it slowly surrendered to the brightness of wide skies, green fields, and mountain silence. Nature did not erase the memories of war. It simply moved them into the past. They stopped haunting every waking moment.
For the first time in years, we felt truly alone together, without ghosts standing between us.
Then I saw it.
His boyish smile returned.
It was the smile that had made me fall in love with him.
I prayed I would never lose it again.
The earth, wrapped in its brightest green, welcomes wounded hearts with a quiet serenity. It gives permission to weep until today’s grief joins yesterday’s and is carried away like a river after rain. Nature cannot erase pain, but it reminds us that healing is possible. Sometimes that is enough.
The feeling of love comes to the chosen lucky ones and gives them an almost painful sensation of being alive.
Rough creatures cannot be fit for this emotion. Rejoice at being exquisite, gentle and beautiful. Do you want to know more about it? Let me postpone the explanation for a few delicious moments. Dive deep with me into the freshness of this feeling by reading this short story.
It was still drizzling outside. I had nowhere to hurry. I was young and upset. The strange night charmed me, and I was no longer angry at myself for a stupid mistake of missing the train.
I saw a covered bench and noticed the silhouette of the person sitting there. I soon saw it was a boy. Despite the canopy above the bench, his umbrella was open, and it was difficult to see his face. I went to that bench, looked at the boy and asked, “Goodnight. Can I also take refuge? I don’t have an umbrella, and it seems my clothes are starting to get wet.”
The boy raised the umbrella. He had beautiful eyes, made of kindness and silver. His curly hair was wet with rain.
Saying nothing, he moved slightly to the side, making room. I sat down nearby without looking at him. After a moment he told me in a soft, gentle voice, “Do you love rain?”
I felt a mixed sense of surprise and confusion. I did not know what to say to the boy. But it seemed that the answer was not important to him, because after a brief pause he added, “I love it!”
I said, “It’s quite noticeable, that you love rain. You are sitting with an open umbrella, but your hair is wet. This means you’ve been walking with a closed umbrella.” I noticed from the side how a smile appeared on the boy’s face. But he didn’t look at me, “How smart you are! Like a famous detective!”
“I had a terrible day. But rain makes me forget everything. Under the rain, you can hide your sadness. Rain is my weakness. I will get totally wet, but I will continue to stand and enjoy every drop that is falling.”
Ihad been looking at the boy for a long time, being unable to take my eyes off him. He interrupted the pause, “You’re silent.” I shuddered as if waking up after hypnosis, “No… Sorry? I got distracted. I do not know. The rain brings slush and I don’t like it. But judging by your words, it’s as if you were born in the rain.”
The boy voiced his thoughts, “If it hasn’t started raining, I would not have appeared here, and you would sit here alone.” I picked up the topic and expanded it, “Yes… If I didn’t go to my friend’s party at the other end of the city, I would not be late for my train. I would not have come here and would not have met you.”
“Do you regret it?”
I looked at him again, looked away, and lowered my head.
“I don’t regret I met you. You are a good companion.”
Ilooked at the boy, admired the beauty of his hair, his nose, and then interrupted the song of the rain again, “We’ve been sitting here for some time now, and you did not even look in my direction.”
“Why look? Sometimes it is enough that someone is near.” The boy stopped smiling. He closed his umbrella and was about to get up. I asked anxiously, “Are you leaving? Has something happened? Have I offended you?” The boy straightened his coat and tightened the belt. He was holding an umbrella in his right hand.
“No, everything is okay. I just have to go home. It’s too late. And you have to go home too.” I did not want to let him go.
The stranger got up from his place. He touched the ground with the tip of his umbrella and knocked on the asphalt and moved along the sidewalk in slight steps.
Mycousin Sveta and her husband Kostya loved each other very much. The history of their relationship was simple and unpretentious. They met at the birthday of a common acquaintance and immediately felt a mutual attraction and got married almost right away.
When Sveta discovered that she was pregnant, there seemed to be no happier people in the world than that married couple. The young woman humbly tolerated all her morning sickness and Kostya made repairs in the room, which was to become the kid’s bedroom.
Sveta remembered each minute of the Sunday, when she felt labor pains. Kostya took her to the hospital. The nurse showed Sveta her baby only for a moment and moved the newborn to the table a little further to carry out the necessary manipulations. Euphoria from the joyful event filled the woman, and she was ready to sing with happiness, without recalling the pain.
When the nurse told her, while she was still lying on the delivery bed, that they transferred the baby to the intensive care unit, Sveta’s joy and strength alike deserted her. Her voice broke when she asked, “What’s wrong with him?” The nurse only promised that the doctor will come the following morning to tell her everything she needed to know.
In the morning, Sveta was listening to the doctor, not understanding half of his words. From the unbroken stream of terms and names of pathologies, only ‘cerebral palsy’ sounded familiar.
When Kostya came with flowers, he found Sveta crying in the hospital hall. Pressing herself against his broad chest, she was sobbing uncontrollably. She recounted the conversation with the doctor, but Kostya, not wanting to believe in the nightmare’s reality, went to the doctor’s office himself. He listened for a while as if in a doze, then squeezed his wife’s arm encouragingly and they left.
The apartment sparkled, but the joy was gone, giving way to anxiety. The baby, whom they named Denis, did not sleep at night, forcing his parents to rock him. He was crying constantly, bending his back, and nothing could help to calm him down. The visiting nurse showed Sveta the basics of massage. The pediatrician prescribed some drops, but relief did not come.
Sveta’s life turned into running with the baby through hospital corridors, visiting doctors’ offices, the swimming pool, churches and even folk healers. Kostya, who almost had no time to sleep, was trying his best to earn more money. The spouses quarreled often. There were a lot of reasons, but there was only one explanation — eternally screaming Denis.
Once the quarrel over a cup which Kostya did not wash turned into a scandal. With emotion, he threw the unfortunate piece of tableware on the floor and fired off, “You’re at home all day, and I’m struggling to pay for all these classes, which are of no use. And… it’s your fault. The guys told me that the woman is fully responsible for the health of the newborn. Was it difficult to be careful during pregnancy?”
Sveta was standing and watching the small shards scatter around the kitchen floor. But what she actually saw was her family breaking apart. The anger distorted the face of the man, whom she used to adore. Everything blurred before her eyes. A dangerous silence followed. Sveta fainted, and this state of unconsciousness saved her from thinking about her husband’s betrayal.
She woke up in the hospital bed, and asked the nurse, who was preparing the syringe, “Where is my son?” An elderly woman answered, piercing Sveta’s vein, “Both your son and your husband are in the corridor. They have been here all night. You scared your husband a lot. Should I call them in?” Sveta nodded. She told Kostya about her decision to divorce.
Three years passed. The child grew, but was lagging in development, despite all their efforts. Denis could not walk, eat and drink on his own. It was impossible to put him in kindergarten. Sveta did not dare to hire a nanny — this service was so expensive that it was pointless for Sveta to work. She studied medical articles and could communicate with any of medical luminaries in one language, but nowhere could she find the answer on how to help her son.
Once Sveta and her boy were going home on the bus from the market. She felt that the surrounding people were looking at them with pity. Sveta wiped the drool which was flowing from her son’s half-open mouth. She plunged into her bitter thoughts and did not notice that she passed her stop, and the bus was almost empty. Like in a terrible dream, she got up and left the bus with a heavy heart and blurry vision. Denis was looking out of the bus window at his slowly retreating mother.
The woman was walking along the streets with heavy bags for a long time. Sveta cried bitterly but stubbornly walked home without looking back. Her steps softened as her heartbeat grew unbearably louder, pressing at her ribs, making her choke with every gasp for air.
When she closed the door behind her, Sveta sat down on the floor and sobbed aloud in a fit of desperation. A few minutes later Sveta jumped up and ran to the street from the house. She noticed nothing around. She ran to the last bus stop and checked every salon. But her child was not there. She wanted to ask the drivers, but her voice refused to obey her. Sveta tried to catch her breath and cope with the pain that was spreading from her belly all over her body.
An elderly driver understood everything from somehow said inconsistent words “my child, my baby”. “Don’t worry, he’s all right. He is in the control room. Let’s go.” Sveta ran the distance to the control room in a moment. Without greeting, she ran to her son. He was sitting on a chair, holding an apple in his hand.
A woman dispatcher with thickly painted eyelashes, examined the early gray hair, dark circles under Sveta’s eyes and said, “Our driver Stepanych brought your child and I gave him an apple. He didn’t cry.” Sveta grabbed her son and whispered some inaudible words of gratitude. The dispatcher touched her shoulder, “One of our guys will drive you straight to your house.”
Every time Sveta hugged her child and felt the throbbing of his heart against her chest, she called to mind the moment of weakness on that bus. The canker worm of remorse secretly gnawed at her, and she expressed more patience and made more efforts in the boy’s treatment.
When 14 candles were burning on the birthday cake, Sveta was feeding her son every piece of the treat with a spoon herself. Denis walked with difficulty and mooed instead of speaking articulately.
Being the only guests at this birthday party, my family was witnessing a life of toil and unpretentious beauty. My two-year-old son was wandering through the luxurious dark curls on Denis’ head, and both boys laughed with pure and innocent joy.
Life is equally charged with love and destruction, with growth and death.
My mother and I approach the house in silence. Her sharp movements, the way she opens the door loudly ringing her keys, her strained back — this all promises an unpleasant conversation.
I took off my shoes slowly. She sat in the armchair and looked straight at me.
“Well? Explain this to me.”
“Ivan and I just—”
“Ivan. Again this Ivan.” She sighed. “Every time I hear his name, I wonder what he’s made you do now. How many times have I told you not to follow him?”
“Mom, we only wanted to free the pigeons from the school attic.”
“And if you’d fallen? I know it was his idea.”
“No. Ivan is good. He always helps people.”
“The teacher says there are no pigeons.”
“There are.”
“Enough. From now on, you’re not to see him.”
The next morning I found Ivan before class.
“My mother forbade me to talk to you.”
“My mother was angry too,” he said quietly. “They don’t understand. I just wanted to help.”
“I know.”
Later that day a doctor arrived at school for routine examinations.
“I don’t want to go,” Ivan whispered. “I’m fine. Maybe we should check on the pigeons instead.”
“No,” I laughed. “My mother really will kill me.”
We followed everyone else.
That evening my mother asked why I was late.
“Ivan and I visited Kostya.”
“Kostya?”
“The homeless man. I gave him my lunch. Ivan gave him some change.”
She frowned.
“You and Ivan invent people now?”
She looked at me for a long moment before unexpectedly saying,
“Go next door. Spend time with Ivan if you want.”
I stared at her in surprise.
A few days later she sat beside me at dinner.
“Olya… I don’t know how to tell you.”
She struggled to continue.
“Ivan is very sick.”
Everything inside me froze.
Snow began to fall.
I stopped eating.
I stopped speaking.
The school called.
“The psychologist can help,” my teacher suggested.
“We’ll manage,” my mother answered quietly.
When I finally returned to school, I fainted on the way home.
A stranger carried me into our house.
“She has a fever,” he said.
After helping my mother lay me in bed, he turned to leave.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Kostya.”
The door closed.
My mother stood motionless.
“Kostya…”
She put on her coat and hurried to school.
She climbed to the attic.
There, tangled in an old rope net beside the broken window, was a frightened pigeon.
She freed its wings carefully.
Then she kissed its head and released it into the winter sky.
Some lessons arrive too late.
Adults often judge a friendship before trying to understand it.
Children see goodness where experience teaches adults to expect trouble.
When a child loses a friend, he loses part of his own world. What he needs most is not explanations, but love, patience, and someone willing to grieve beside him.
Happy memories become the only part of a friendship that death cannot take away.
I found gratitude in the thrashed around pieces of my world
I was armed at all points. It was a pleasure to be so completely equipped for the life battle with my gratitude weapons being polished steel.
When It Costs a Heart and a Dime
Misha, a son of my stepfather, was distressfully dying all those years we knew each other. There seemed to be a happy symmetry in this unhappy depiction of his life.
In the last two years of his life, Misha had a clear taint of death, a flavor of mortality in him—which is exactly what I needed to shake my world to the bottom and have a chance to find myself in the thrashed around pieces of it. I hung on every syllable he uttered and received, as oracles, all he said.
Misha died at thirty. When I saw him last, he evidently found great difficulty speaking. He waited long to collect himself, and then he murmured simply, “Take this,” and handed me his gratitude journal. That book had a voice that dropped deep into my soul. The words would fail me if I tried to describe the unconditional love he shared. But I will fight the tears and try to convey his last beautiful message to you.
The first few sentences in Misha’s journal explain a lot about his personality:
“Of parents extremely loving and extremely honest, it was next to impossible that I could paint my life other than in affectionate colors. Our family considered the most troublesome hardship an occasion to express our love and gratitude.”
“I often was bruised and felt scant of breath but never ungrateful. My mother died when I was twelve, and I never fully recovered after that loss. I caught a violent cold right after the saddest day of my life, which fixed itself on my lungs and stayed with me for the rest of my life.”
Misha was weak and often ill.
“I had good winters and poor winters. I basked in the sun and went to bed when it rained. And I never forgot to spend a few moments a day reflecting on the things in my life I was blessed with.”
My mom schooled Misha at home so he would not need to go out when the weather was cold and damp. But he never was bored. Misha was always so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve, and caprice that the experience of knowing him for a short while had been insufficient for any person.
Misha was determined to live longer, although the doctors professed the limit until only twenty. Imputing it to nothing but grateful feelings, which for ought I knew prolonged his life, he was able to make it to thirty.
I love this excerpt from his journal. I reread it each time I feel gloom coming over me:
“When I was in pain, I more often smiled than scowled. That was the foundation of my beauty, despite my many limitations. I had love enough but not too much; I had loss a lot but not unbearable. Had I lived my life again in every detail of desire, temptation, pain, and surrender, I would have chosen the exact life I lived to the very aspect of sickness and every element of loss.”
These words still make me smile with delight.
“The fervency of my personality trembles from sunlight and fragrance. Gratitude creates a barrier that guards me against cold and cheerlessness. Like any freezing temperature, these kinds of feelings can preserve but never let life develop.”
“Every now and then I put my thin forefinger on my lips and remind myself of many blessings in my life that I am sincerely thankful for. I kiss it with a smile and imagine embracing myself tenderly. This sets every nerve in my body quivering with happy vibes.”
Misha exposed me to the goodness of the world around. He could describe delight, peace of mind, and soft tranquility on paper, voice it to his friends, charge with it our family, and radiate it to the objects and atmosphere around.
Thanks to my brother, I learned to wrap myself in happy memories, grateful emotions, and generous hopes. I let gratitude excel every other quality.
The last page of my brother’s journal contained this message:
“Pain passes, but love remains. We suffer so much sometimes. I’m very old when I think about it, but I grow young again when I believe in generous mistakes that hurt, happy tears that burn, and deep adoration that squeezes the heart till every drop of love is revealed. And the only way to see the beauty in life is to open your eyes every morning with extraordinary gratefulness. Only this feeling will take you beyond the reach of pain.”
Here is the mind, suffering from insomnia, not dead, and yet not alive.
I suffered from sleeplessness and profound distress. My life hung limply over my shoulders, my eyes were red with reading and exhaustion, my face was wet with tears of desperation.
I decided to consult a specialist. This man was not a doctor, but he was an expert in insomnia. Not a person who got a degree on this subject, but a victim of seven sleepless nights. He found a way to cure himself and offered advice to those who cared to ask for it.
Many lessons hid in his wrinkles. Wise thoughts lingered in the oldness of his eyes. He accepted everyone without distinction. And now the intensely unhappy, the certainly suffering — the little doll-me.
I spoke wearily,
“I tried to exercise. It only added muscular fatigue to the mental.” I rubbed my forehead and resumed my speech. “The inertia of my dull body, the heavy inconvenience — I can’t take drugs anymore. It takes too much of my time, my mind, and my life.
“I live in patches. I eat and digest — then comes irritation. I take the air in and out — with irritation. My thoughts grow sluggish, stupid. I seem to live for sleep and it never comes to me. How little I need for happiness. A long slumber without dreams.”
He understood perfectly. This person read everything in my eyes. He somehow knew about my loneliness and grief. Those days I felt that death was worth living, rather than life was worth dying. My father was terminally sick. My mother was grieving. My boyfriend was painstakingly unjust, demanding my full attention during the most strenuous exams in my life.
I suffered from continuous nightmares and prayed to stop the torturing cycle. I got into the habit of killing my sleep with coffee and reading. I became too good at it and didn’t know how to stop the process of self-destructing insomnia I’d triggered.
For a little while, we remained silent.
Then he said,
“I can imagine the craving for rest that you feel. Your mind is a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive, and incessant. Your thoughts are spinning round and round. They lead nowhere.
“You must sleep.”
He drew his chair closer to the couch I was half sitting, half laying on. His deep voice had a coarse richness. Winking gravely at me, he put his hot palm on my forehead and continued,
“Guilt, my girl, robbed you of your sleep. Imagine: you are sentenced to death and have only three days left. What would you do? Who would you spend those days with? What would you say to those people?”
He stroked my hair gently, waiting for me to contemplate the meaning of his words fully. I suddenly felt dead tired and, at the same time, inexorably and colossally young, absolutely and fearlessly alive. I smiled, then laughed loudly, with energy and a certain rough power.
Then I woke up.
I was sitting at my desk with half a dozen books opened and staring at me with their soulless small-print pages. I’d fallen into a tired slumber while studying.
I leaped to my feet and made for the wardrobe. I packed a few necessities and called a cab. In three and a half hours I was standing at the bedside of my father, holding hands with him and my mother.
I was granted academic leave and spent the rest of the year with my family.
Insomnia Surrendered
When I couldn’t sleep, I was sitting by my father’s bedside. I was listening to his breathing when he was asleep and to his talking when he was awake. I left my phone in my flat in the city, forgetting it in my flight. That was the best thing I’d ever done. It left more space for quality time with my family.
I made my bed comfortably on our wood-lined, vast-windowed veranda. I had full access to the beauty of the night sky. It was dark, quiet, and warm. The sounds of night lullabied me to sleep.
A dreadful hullabaloo of nightmares subsided when I found peace with my conscience. I knew long before that awakening dream about the need to be beside my dying father and my suffering mother. I erroneously thought if I put myself in a position of complete, indescribable mental suffering, it would be easier to accept the inevitable truth.
That dream was a benevolent intrusion upon my despair. It was the best cure for my self-inflicted insomnia. I fell into the arms of Morpheus when I recognized that even suffering could enhance personality. I felt my self-pity slip away and an unspeakable ease came in its place.
I still looked and felt poignantly sad, but now this feeling was rejuvenating. It nourished my longing for life and for love.
Crossing into this world through your body is a miracle
How great a privilege is yours to carry this proof of giving birth.
I am determined to be naughty, to tease you, and put in a passion, so you don’t give a second to fruitless lamentations about lost smoothness and vanished firmness. Your looks, as they are, are precious. Forget all negative expressions, voicing none. You should not regret the aftereffects, which helped you become a Mother.
I was not in the least put out by these comments
These exclamations burst from strangers often, “It is huge. You’re having twins, aren’t you?” “Put me wise. Your due date is quite soon, isn’t it?”
This is my favorite, “Looks like you are going to have a bi..i..ig girl? I know it by the shape of your belly.”
“All other people seem quite dwarfish to me nowadays,” I used to say, smiling with every tooth in my head.
Although these noises were accompanying me everywhere, they could not prevent a thousand lights to play about my face. I accepted them with charming grace.
I don’t mind admitting that when I was pregnant, I felt as if I was born to have this experience. I went about with a sense of champagne in my head. Every day was mine, forever mine. The cheerful, happy smile was made for my lips.
I was the song of life and life was dancing inside my womb. My entire being shone with the glory of having created, with a sort of ecstasy which redeemed all silly comments.
One day during lunch my coworker smiled deprecatingly and whispered, “I have half a mind to have a baby. Hm… Can I ask you something?”
“Say away.”
“Now seeing you, how is it to carry such weight every day?”
How about a compliment, “You are so darned pretty with this enormous belly of yours.”
This one came from a close friend, “I’d just love to give you a hand with this baby you carry. He will get out three-year-old right away.”
It was intended to be funny, “It just tickles me to death. How are you going to get back in shape?”
I used to respond, “That remains to be seen.”
I was so skinny all my life. People saw the still slender frame, when they looked at me from the back, and couldn’t guess I was pregnant. So when they saw my lovely, rather big bump in front, they were in quite a shock.
And I felt refreshed, delighted, and invigorated. I walked, feeling as if I had wings to my feet, experiencing a sense of exhilaration. I was selfishly, shamelessly happy.
I am lost in self-love and half-delirious self-admiration
Although I used expensive lotion and reasonable moisturizer, I could see neither rhyme nor reason in it after reading scientific articles about the genes and inevitability of stretch marks if those were destined for me. I saw fit to take extra care of my honorable baby bump. It deserved the daily rubs and caresses.
I didn’t think about how I was going to fix up the ruined tummy business. I didn’t care two straws about the way it was going to look like, as long as my baby was happy there and healthy when outside.
I’m well rewarded for my pains and pleasures
The discovery of my beautiful belly being all covered with drawings of rivers, streams, cascades, tides, and torrents didn’t make my eyes gush out with water of self-pity, rather made me proud. Big happiness swelled me from inside, and every stretch mark strengthened my love for my body.
There is a stamp of heavenly poetry about my tummy, no doubt I will die without ever having known even a passing feeling of embarrassed timidity. I look at my body with an air of conscious triumph. My fortune is enormous, it has no bounds — I am a Mother.
Your body is well worth the honor of looking at and admiring.
Crossing into this world through your body is a miracle.
Say only positive about a body that felt the dancing of life from inside.
I know in my heart that ‘I cannot promise’ and ‘No’ is worth saying
Photo from the author
Spiritual topsy-turvydome is released when you pull its ugly nose and rejoice at the universal lack of activity.
Of late, I witnessed an urgent need to educate myself in all the riff-raffs of the art of promising nothing.
We were married for only a year, and we were comic in a tragedy of our incongruities. I was all the unconscious and elementary promising and planning. He was an utter superiority in relaxation, passionate leisure, and relief.
My husband needed to get clear of the whole poisonous atmosphere of ‘must-s’ and ‘have to-s’. He wanted to say “I don’t know” to any question involving the exact timing of any activity.
“Your talk is a torrent of nonsense, love, you and I can change our minds whenever and whatever reason might be or with no reason,” I could trace curious hilarity in his voice.
“But, hun, we planned this vacation with my sister’s family for three months now. It will upset them no end if we decide not to go.”
We both dreaded the occasion because by that time we realized that we would hate my sibling and her husband if we spent together over three days, not talking about a fortnight.
My husband offered to have a wonderful two-week retreat instead.
The vacation was fantastic.
My sister couldn’t toss away her wounded pride. She didn’t talk to me for almost six weeks.
I said to my coworker I loved kids, and she asked me with so much feeling in her eyes to watch her two-year-old a couple of evenings a month.
A mischievous two-year-old boy changed this rosy picture.
I was forced without pussyfooting around to say,
“I cannot devote another hour of my life to this laborious task of taking care of your sweet boy. He pulled my hair, broke every smashable thing in my house, and stealing my pen, left his immortal art on my walls.”
The truth is, I should have told her right away that I love kids in general and seldom get well with a particular child one on one.
“You see, I didn’t notice at the time of my comfort or discomfort.”
“I said I will take care of it while she is away with her boyfriend.”
He almost roared,
“It is much worse than that. You didn’t notice MY comfort. I have an allergy. Do you want me to swallow pills now for an entire week? Why didn’t you even think to call me and ask first?”
I responded,
“She was so insistent and agitated. I felt somewhat confused. I will call her right away and tell her I couldn’t be of help.”
My friend was rightfully drowning her disappointment in complete indifference.
We lost intimacy in our conversations and only much later regained it fully back.
On another occasion, I had a horrid headache but had a line on my schedule that I couldn’t crisscross.
My girlfriend had a baby shower that evening and I was an honored guest.
I swallowed a painkiller and went, but had to go away in the middle of the fun.
My husband’s speech was incurably tragic,
“What the deuce did you go? You have no end of a head on your shoulders, love, but you are quite incompetent for simply doing nothing. Why the internal blazes should you want to please everyone?”
I admitted,
“I just was thinking how upset she would be with me if I didn’t go. You don’t know how I’m tired of always thinking how to make everybody happy and forgetting about myself.”
I attempted to smile, but my grin suddenly went wrong and I bust out with tears of self-pity.
My husband always had that daring disregard of public opinion.
“You should take no notice of what others think about you. Put yourself first, love. You’ll have more happiness for us if you save yourself from constantly making others happy.”
“Oh, you are preaching to me again,” whispered I with the right smile this time and the right kiss that followed it.
I prepared myself for a plunge into cold waters of hesitative “I cannot promise” and definite “No.”
I always lived more for others than for myself.
I promised things in a bantering way, only to discover later on that it put me and my family in all the turvydome of inconveniences.
I positively agreed to take my niece to her karate class every Wednesday.
The polite answer would’ve been a magic “I cannot promise.”
I told my girlfriend I will edit her papers.
I should’ve used the same doubtful “I cannot promise.”
I lent money, which was often my only means for paying bills and buying food, to help my super stylish girlfriend buy new designer shoes, dresses, and jewelry.
The simplest solution was to give her my explicit “No.”
I discovered the gratified satisfaction of promising nothing and getting no one upset.
There is a hungry, wolfish look about a person striving for approval from everybody.
You are born to experience the world and adore your ineffable presence in it—not to please others.
Recognize your own capacity and feel the paternal protectiveness of hesitative “I don’t know,” “I cannot promise,” and straightforward “No” that makes you the master of your life.
She had acquired only delight from the perusal of the years together
Photo from the author
When the despair of death eats into your soul, the only consolation left is to live in a fool’s paradise of happy memories.
My father was aggressively cheerful and terribly charismatic. He began every conversation with passion and ended it in an obsession.
Women always had conceived for him a dog-like adoration. My mother accepted it rebelliously, but it caused her pain.
Only after his accidental death ten years ago, the memory of his loving nature became a source of happiness to her instead of misery.
With my father passing away, my mother’s life altered. It became calm as a river without the cascades and waterfalls, the eddies, whirlpools, and rocks, which my father had always created.
She had time in abundance to reflect and remember.
She had time in profusion to cry. But her tears were partly tears of happiness.
She loved her husband now with a new love because in her memory their life together was a complete felicity.
The visions about their love oozed from my mother every time we found each other alone.
She used to say,
“He had a knack of saying beautiful things, which caught people on the raw.”
With loving power, she added,
“He told things to me with his voice, and he laughed at my jokes with his heart. I loved every minute of our conversations. With him, I felt such happy freedom of being myself, of talking my mind.”
Time is a perfect artist.
It can craft your remembrance into poetry.
One quiet evening my dear mother and I drank champagne, and the conversation about my father bundled us invisibly.
After the third glass, she whispered,
“I shrank, I tried to make myself smaller still as I cuddled up against his body.”
“There was so much wrathful beating pain in her voice.
“I had expected so much, and that is why I secured so little of the beautiful, emotional moments we shared. Now I pick up every piece with so much care. When he was beside me, I was too often tired of love and hate, tired of my expectations. My life seemed to overflow into his life. I complained of being his shadow, of not having enough of his devotion, and of having too much of his intimate longing. I just needed to enjoy his passion, to thank heaven for the gift of making love every day.”
I was devouring her with my eyes and learning a completely unknown side of my mother.
I had a notion she had more than a grain of truth in her words about expectations.
Our energy is superabundant when we use it on nursing our assumptions, trying to read the hidden meanings in every action, predicting the worst from little coldnesses that pain us.
When my father died, my mother stopped expecting anything from him.
And this change propelled the recollections of how much he had to offer when he was alive.
How death can heighten all memories and dissolve all irksome recollections
Imagine that your memory is a form of storage with many chests, boxes, and strange cupboards full of beads, stones, and crystals.
When someone we love passes away, delightful remembrances strive to take all the room in our head.
Every relationship has its moments of utter despair.
The inevitable disillusionment always happens at some point but pooh-poohs itself when death is taking charge.
Usually, we are able to taste this kind of love only when it is too late.
We cease to demand anything, and the lack of expectations gives us the blissful equilibrium that we all are craving.
The ghastly distinctness of painful memories is lost amid the full vent of a passionate desire to commemorate the best.
I wish we could adopt the same attitude when the dear person we care about is still beside us, warm and soft, kind and loving, gentle, and often pathetic.
Loose and misguided young fellows look for fireworks in love to continue. It is exhausting to look for a long time at the multitude of colors with your eyes open.
He was a forest, immeasurable, pathless, and enchanted. He was luring me to a lifelong adventure. Being close to this person made me feel intoxicated with passionate joy. No other handsome man had ever cast this spell on me. Was he my passport to happiness?
I didn’t have an agenda for my love. I didn’t form an idea of how it should turn out. I just wanted to feel intensely alive, glorious, and independent.
One day I raised my eyes and looked at him — and I was aware of love as it is, and not how books describe it. It ambled in my life, taking me in, sizing me up. It altered the way I experienced life.
I arranged my ideas and asked myself four questions.
Is he someone who will be honest with me?
One can look at me and see womanhood so unmixed and vigorous, so sure of itself. But I am ready to brace my frame and plunge into cold waters of sincerity. I want to talk to my lover with my all personality, with unguarded emotion. I don’t need guesses, suspicions, and inferences to swarm me.
I need honesty to dream my dreams and think my loveliest thoughts. I want the person I love to be possessed by the moral habit of telling the truth to me.
My nature is sensitive to the little pricks of falsehood.
The honest person has clear open eyes and moves naturally. He is relaxed.
The one whose love is genuine can follow the dominant desire to never harm.
Beside a truthful person you find your mental house in order and your thoughts obedient and calm.
Is he someone who will not promise the impossible?
I lived in an agony of bewilderment, remorse, and longing. I wanted him to release my life from the tension of unpredictable. I groaned inwardly when I was promised moon and stars. He did the opposite and won me with these words,
“You often will be broken with fatigue, depressed, chilled, and aching. But you will never question the intensity of my love and devotion, my respect and tenderness.”
We talk about real and possible. Everything built on impossible will fall away from us. We structure our relationship on love and respect.
Nothing in the texture of the family life should be scented by disillusionment.
Impossible makes us feel edgy, afraid, and anxious.
In a fruitful relationship, we should always feel accomplished, deserving, growing, encouraged, and — that is very important — winning.
Love cannot be acting, it should be confoundedly genuine.
Is he someone who will choose a quiet life with me or drama and dysfunction?
Our tête-à-tête time seldom reads like some wild melodrama. I moon away my time with the person who makes me feel comfortable, cozy, tranquil.
Sometimes we feel carried away on the current of our excitement, passion, and hunger for adventure. And each time when the storm of those feelings subsides, we hurry to the embrace of our quiet harbor.
What I do know is that love is boring.
Do not wait for love to feed you with wild emotions.
Quiet happiness is a manifestation of genuine love. Storming emotions cannot last.
Family should tread the solid earth. Calm weather is filling the wide world of two loving people with invisible sweetness.
Is he someone ready for deep, calm, and everlasting love?
I had a strong sense of relief when I met this person. I discovered in him a happy pride at the lasting force of our love. We are tasting sensibly the sweets of living without the bitter feelings of envy, greed, lust, and jealousy.
Family has the nature of the common road; you know where you are going.
Temperance, moderation, quietness, health — all agreeable diversions and desirable pleasures, all the blessings you should pray for.
You will have a taste of the misery in the sequel of your love story. But you should not stop, you should go through every misfortune hand in hand.
The abiding truth of love
You notice first a throb of expectancy, a slight quiver, a concentration of emotion in the air. You feel the splash of passion. It won’t last long and this is good, this is normal.
These fireworks come and go — and you always have a place where you can rest, getting ready to repeat the little adventure later, when you both have gathered enough strength and imagination.
Olya Aman 