Slice Of Life

Preface

Someone, surely, will ask: “Why does she write all of that? What’s the point?”

Point is very simple, actually. Not to forget.

As time passes, we forget the events, which seemed so important at the time, people, we loved till the end of our days, sounds caressing our ears, even smells tickling our noses, and feelings, so deep and so true, too.

How did those “pirozhki” smell like? The one my grandma, my dad, and me were making, sitting that cold night late in fall, in our tiny kitchen, so warm and light. I don’t remember. Grandma is long dead, asleep somewhere, her old bones rotten. That city, Leningrad, doesn’t exist under this name for years by now. My dad’s hair, the few left, turned gray. Me… Sometimes I am ready to give up anything just to walk into that tiny kitchen, but I cannot. I live across the ocean, nowadays.

That’s the whole point; to remember the colors, the smells, the sounds; to remember myself in a state of being I am not to live through again, to fill my very flesh and blood with it, to lock it in, not to let it go.

* * *

Love is like a small pox, the younger the age one gets over it, the better.

That wasn’t her case.

Until she turned 32, she never loved. Reasonable and mind driven, that feeling was beyond her wildest imagination. It passed her by for years and then, in a flash, it knocked her off her feet.

It is fall in Southern California.

Raindrops, cold and heavy, are parading on the little patio. A lamp is throwing it’s golden glow into the darkness outside the window; an illusion of life out there. A Morning Glory is leaning under the weight of its leaves full of water; its flowers are sadly looking down.
It is the first fall, nobody greets her when she gets home at night. The first fall, there is no light in a window. That fall, there is no one but her and her dog, sleeping on her enormous toy puppy on the floor. The first time, she finds herself in an awkward state of being of not being alone yet, but not being together with someone, either. Is it the fall? The night? The rain? Or is it something else?

She isn’t sure but it seems to her there is yet a lesson to learn and she knows exactlywhen hers started: that Saturday morning in the end of August, the one she will remember till she’s gone.

6.30 am. August 28th 2010. Laguna Beach, CA.

The vast waters of the Pacific for as far as she could see. Cold and wet sand underneath her feet. Heavy gray clouds above her. Cool, salty air, so unusual for the end of August.

She came here to give in to something so much greater than she, little she with her little thoughts, feelings, and fears. She came into this grand presence to lessen and to persuade herself that all of those meant nothing compare to the superior sufferings of the world. She failed. Her pain was greater than that to her. Even here, miles away, seagulls crying over her head, breeze playing in her hair, but still, she was back into her tiny empty apartment. She was back into that Saturday morning, just a few hours ago, into waking up into loneliness. Did she cry? She didn’t remember. She might have, the moment she realized the simple truth: there would be more mornings like that to follow this one, the first she didn’t meet with the man she loved next to her in almost a year. Or was it a thousand?

A short, light trip to the ocean. Crystal clear sadness. Her mind, so reasonable, so cool commanding to get a grip on reality. “It’s all over, now.” A harsh unappealing verdict of her head. Her heart, squeezed in pain so much she couldn’t breath. Nothing in reply. Her hand on the wheel, her foot on the gas, speeding, just to get to his place a few minutes earlier.

She pulled into the garage and turned off the engine. She stayed in the dungeon light and silence for a while, before getting out if the car. She walked the sixteen steps up to the second floor, opened the bedroom door, undressed, silently, not to disturb his sleep, and got into the bed. She closed her eyes and smiled with a quiet pleasure; familiar room, soft pillow, warm linen. In his sleep, he squeezed her hand. That simple unconscious motion moved her. For a moment, she believed that nothing changed, that he still loved her. But this feeling escaped her for that fragile sensation of being with him was gone. Just one tear. One bitter tear ran down her face and died into the pillow.
Her head was resting on his shoulder, she felt his presence with every particle of her body, he was so close but he was not with her. Sometime, she even didn’t know when, something happened. Her unwedded husband turned into a grantor, graciously granting a few hours of his time to her, which she took. Gratefully.

She gave up on falling asleep. She just laid down on her side, her hand, a pillar to her head, bent under its weight.

She looked at the blank white wall brightened by a daylight sneaking into the room through the narrow gaps between the shutter blades, the gray shadows across the only color spot, an old blue and yellow print. It was almost 11 am. It was cool as if it was fall. She couldn’t escape thinking that everything was exactly the way it was a year ago. The same white wall and black dresser. An old blue and yellow print. Even the sounds were the same; a noise of a TV next door, a garage door rolling up; the rushed steps. A chase? A game?

Then, it was her first morning with him. She was looking at his face, just like she was doing now, so new, tiny wrinkles around his eyes, hair, all messed up in his sleep, profile of his face, so close to hers. That’s then, while looking at him, barely touching his shoulder, outlining his silhouette with her finger, she knew that her life the way she lived it was over. She knew she would never be able to return to what she used to be; to whom she used to be with.

Did her troubled thoughts wake him up, then, last year? Maybe. He opened his eyes, looked at her and held her just like he would for some many nights and mornings to come. It was that hug, she surrendered and confined to.

The following evening, a year ago, she was back home, no, not to her old life’s, his. She walked up the stairs to the kitchen, a suitcase in her hand, jeans, sneakers, sweater and scarf, untidily wrapped around her neck. It was late November and it was dark and cold outside. They sat across the table, she, so weak and fatigue, couldn’t stop smiling looking at him. She didn’t love him, then. He loved her. He never told her that, she just knew it.

Waiting for him to get home at night, she could do it forever, just to know that he would; listen to him playing his old, beaten up guitar until the dawn; looking at him, chanted by his voice taking her back through the years, imagining her walking narrow streets of Moscow hand in hand with him as a twelve year old, blond, blue eye Jewish boy. Breathing tenderness, making everything about him sacred.

She loved.

It is fall in Southern California.

Almost a year passed by, but still, every time, she hears his voice, every time she sees him, every time she recognizes his footsteps on a narrow walkway, her heart beats against her ribcage so hard, her body is struggling to hold it in. Every time he rashly leaves her in the mornings, a bare fly kiss on her cheek, just like an injured animal, she crawls into a corner daylight can not reach and sits there for hours. She dies a little, then.

Still, she loves.

Love, once happen, never ceases to exist.

Some burry it somewhere deep inside, anger and sorrow tossed on top of it; she choused to keep it intact in all its purity and wholeness.

The most blissful and painful point of reference of her life.