Day 239 – Once Upon a Time….

Once Upon a Time...

Day 239

Celebrate by Anna Akhmatova

Celebrate our anniversary – can’t you see
tonight the snowy night of our first winter
comes back again in every road and tree –
that winter night of diamantine splendour.

Steam is pouring out of yellow stables,
the Moika river’s sinking under snow,
the moonlight’s misted as it is in fables,
and where we are heading – I don’t know.

There are icebergs on the Marsovo Pole.
The Lebyazh’ya’s crazed with crystal art…..
Whose soul can compare with my soul,
if joy and fear are in my heart? –

And if your voice, a marvellous bird’s,
quivers at my shoulder, in the night,
and the snow shines with a silver light,
warmed by a sudden ray, by your words?

Once upon a time, there was a girl who said she would never get married.  She went to college, then went to work.  Her work consumed her and long work days, multiple transfers to different cities and days off spent driving to see family left her no time for a social life.  And she was happy.

This girl humored her mother by joining a dating service and going out on a few dates with men she never wanted to see again and stayed married to her career.  She transferred to her final location with the company and as luck would have it, it was a short 30 miles from her parent’s home.  After many years of living far from them, she decided that she would move home.  She worked long hours and spent her spare time with her mother, her best friend and as a change of pace, even spent some time with her co-workers.

One Sunday, one of those co-workers invited her to come to church with her and to have dinner afterward with her family.  The girl started to date the co-worker’s son.  The son did not want to share the girl with her family, though she did not realize it at the time, and convinced her to push her values to the side and move in with him.  She saw her family less and less and saw his family more and more, however it happened so gradually that she did not see it.  Her parents were very worried about her, but she did not see any cause for this worry and she withdrew from them even more.  They became engaged and he thought to control her more.  She broke off the engagement and moved out, content to be alone again.  As fate would have it, their paths crossed again.  The girl decided that she actually liked the son, but did not love him, so they became close but platonic friends.

They spent time together, playing pool and going out dancing and socializing, as friends will, and even tried to play Cupid for each other.  One day though, the girl looked at the son and said, “I am holding you back from finding someone else.”  He said some hurtful words to her, telling her that she would never find anyone as good as him. She walked away.

She did not want to date.  She did not want anyone in her life.  She just wanted to be alone.  But first she wanted to show the son that she could find someone better than him.  Then she wanted to be left alone.

The next weekend the girl took her best friend to a local hot spot to spend some time with her.  She looked up and saw a man looking at her.  He was standing at the bar and he seemed to have the physical qualities that made him the “better than him” candidate.  The man was invited to sit with the girl, her friend and the group of people they were now with.  She did not want to date this man.  She just wanted to go out with him one time.

The girl married this man one year later.  And fourteen years later they are living happily ever after…

Happy Anniversary to my sweet Baboo.