A Small, Good Thing

Because at the end of a horrible, endless, unforgettable day, this is what keeps us moving:

" "You probably need to eat something," the baker said. "I hope you'll eat some of my hot rolls. You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this," he said. 

He served them warm cinnamon rolls just out of the oven, the icing still runny. He put butter on the table and knives to spread the butter. Then the baker sat down at the table with them. He waited. He waited until they each took a roll from the platter and began to eat. "It's good to eat something," he said, watching them. "There's more. Eat up. Eat all you want. There's all the rolls in the world in here." 

They ate rolls and drank coffee. Ann was suddenly hungry, and the rolls were warm and sweet. She ate three of them, which pleased the baker. Then he began to talk. They listened carefully. Although they were tired and in anguish, they listened to what the baker had to say. They nodded when the baker began to speak of loneliness, and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. He told them what it was like to be childless all these years. To repeat the days with the ovens endlessly full and endlessly empty. The party food, the celebrations he'd worked over. Icing knuckle-deep. The tiny wedding couples stuck into cakes. Hundreds of them, no, thousands by now. Birthdays. Just imagine all those candles burning. He had a necessary trade. He was a baker. He was glad he wasn't a florist. It was better to be feeding people. This was a better smell anytime than flowers. 

"Smell this," the baker said, breaking open a dark loaf. "It's a heavy bread, but rich." They smelled it, then he had them taste it. It had the taste of molasses and coarse grains. They listened to him. They ate what they could. They swallowed the dark bread. It was like daylight under the fluorescent trays of light. They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving."

(Raymond Carver - "A Small, Good Thing") 

Note to Myself: Happiness

Sometimes I feel that I live in a country where 30 means already “old”. Until you are this age, you have to have your own house, your own family, your child or at least planning one. I don’t have any of these. Not even that “steady” career that I have been working for so many years to achieve, and I have given so much to it, doesn’t seem so steady these days.

“What have I done in 30 years? What have I achieved?” – questions that are impossible not to ask yourself. “Am I too old already for the things mentioned above? Is there something wrong with me?” – again, haunting questions that you cannot avoid if you are a human being living in a society full of stereotypes.

I believe happiness, and some achievements, can be measured in small things, in the fingerprints that you leave somewhere on earth and on a soul – either they are remembered or not. I feel that those moments are in small hands rubbing your forehead when you don’t feel well, in friends who are stubborn to let you go and promise they will stay, no matter how bitchy you can be with them, in long walks, orange benches, books that change your perspectives, trips, long or short, in places you find your peace, students who tell you “thank you”, or achieve their dreams with your help, in all the people, all the friends, to whom you showed kindness and helped their dreams come true, in people with whom you shared some smiles, and build new memories, even if you let them go, too afraid of distances of different kinds. Memory, with its maze, is definitely my identity.

Call me Ray. Not because in my soul there is always sun and no storms, not because I am an optimist, not because sometimes I do not have power to believe in something/someone, but because I choose to remember the nicest memories, to see the goodness in people, to forgive more than maybe I should have. There is not a big thing that defines us, that we did/accomplished until this age, but the small, the tiny ones, that shape our wholeness so far.