Berenice was surprised and even though she doubted her courage to leave with excuses to the small family that expected to wait on her in repose, she did meet Clara. Their friendship solidified over pancakes and soon they were sitting with seafood under big hats and walking in saltwater, down the beach. They shared so many thoughts and feelings that went unheard for years. When young couples whispered or giggled at them dining together excitedly sharing, Clara would sometimes kiss Berenice’s hand and wave it above their heads while smiling big at the young ones, proclaiming them both a triumph over their losses.
MIRACLE
It was a long, feeble walk of strong purpose. She had a sore leg that wouldn’t heal, no matter what prayer or balm was applied to it. The village women would labor over each new remedy with alternating waters and oils, but she knew that the solutions, if they had worked, would last for a short time and not forever. Forever was what she was after, but not in this world. How in her youth her legs had danced about the flattened circular grounds of the hall in which all village ceremonies took place—times which were no longer, past events and faded memories—stayed with her no matter what misfortune visited. One summer Mr. Kepler, a bastion of health and kindness, drove them toward the short peak of Mt. Agathat, only to break down in the buggy a quarter of the way up. Mr. Kepler’s niceties shed and his impatience grew as Olga withdrew all of the intention and hope she imbued the chance trip with as she asked Mr. Kepler to turn around and coast down the mountainside in neutral. This holy mountain was both an intrigue and a fear, a struggle she couldn’t do with anyone but herself.
A young boy drowned and floated on the surface of a nearby lake with diamonds in his eyes. Koshkora, the local window washer, was discovered dead with a glaze of egg over his ears, posed upon the highest hill in town as if he never feared heights in his life. It was by both these recent events that Olga was jarred and set apart from the life she had previously lived for over thirty years. What goaded these men to be so hazardous? Only what the elders in the town would discuss over small fires in the late night gave any clue. There she heard about a subtle “mineral” near the top of the mountain, that which would heal all ills, no matter how degenerated by disease a body was. There could be nothing to lose in the ascent. No trade held her back as the harvesting of olives had passed. Cold winds were just beginning to nip the nose of Olga’s face, but her efforts were bolstered by the intervention of Nature: the next week would be sunlit as the autumn’s cold fell.
Clad with a thick felt coat over her shoulders and down her body, Olga made her way up through the gentle meadows which were beginning to brown and become vacant of the sheep who regularly dined there. Her knees ached beyond their usual pain and into a new realm of cold and cutting debilitation. Why had she subjected herself to this ascent on the basis of foolish stories? Belief in fragments would be the end of her fragile life on the slopes. Snow began to fall. Flakes piled one on top of the other, coating her in layers. Mr. Kepler’s vehicle seemed like a sliver of heaven in this weather. How would she last through the climb? Mt. Agathat was the steepest peak in the region, though not the highest mountain. Its quality of challenge was what made it legendary. With the cold drawing up her leg and overwhelming the pain, reason and justification become obsolete, unnecessary. Olga made her own luck now, and fell onto her stomach.
Crawl, Olga, crawl. There isn’t another mountainside in the world you would be on but this one. It is the only one left. The earth has fallen away and there is no longer a substrate or foundation to your being. An inborn knowledge is coming down in a warm wind—feel how it mingles with your limbs but do not pause to concern yourself with the false idea of progress. The men of your tribe never dared climb so high, never felt the corollary desire of deep pain. As you reach the crags of rock and mountain flower, breathe in the passing clouds that crest over the summit; your feeling returns to your legs. The rawness of your stomach lifts up from a shining rock. You stand, the artist of your struggle—be still and know thyself.
AN EASTER SERMON
“All of us are gathered under this roof today as brothers and sisters in worship of the power and glory of the Lord to conquer the darkness of death and rise up from His own tomb. Three days had passed since the unimaginable suffering of the Passion and the painful mourning of His followers from Golgotha to Joseph of Arimathea’s sepulchre, where he and Nicodemus laid down the dead Christ. Three days later, the stone rolled back. All were astounded when they entered the tomb to find a man, at least in appearance, proclaiming for their human ears the first time it would ever be heard: ‘He is Risen.’ Near the close of the gospel of St. Mark 16:8, there is an abrupt passage that many of our fine scholars believe marks what might have been the Gospel’s ‘original’ ending, after the messenger announces the resurrection. It is important to note that Mark is regarded by their researches as the earliest of the Gospels to be written. In the King James Bible we read:
And they quickly went out and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they anything to any man, for they were afraid.
“My own niece was jumping on her trampoline in her backyard last week. She asked it be brought out at the first signs of sun. Up and down, up and down—she was her own propulsion as the springs of the trampoline doubled, tripled the force of her jumping. I saw her from across the yard, sitting down with my brother and his wife for dinner on Palm Sunday—only local fish and greens, I can assure you. Her hair would peak out from beneath the shade of the nearby tree and alight in the sun’s rays. Out of the dark, back into the light, out of the dark; until, after going back to speaking with my brother and his wife, we heard a cry.
“Dana had fallen off, not from a terrible height, but not without its pain and tears, as she knows. We all of course sprang up and felt afraid for her, for any damage to her body. The light grace of the trampoline was taken back by the gravity of this world. With a slightly colder dinner and bandages round Dana’s leg, we continued our evening without any more fear, quite the contrary, with much laughter. Fear can be the realest thing we feel, perhaps even more than love. Love can be overly sentimental, forced, powered by imaginative thoughts, unhealthy and obsessed. A little fear for the well-being of one’s own life, soul or congregation, pinches us and awakens us from a sleep that we often seem to walk, talk and act in. If the Kingdom of Heaven is surely ‘at hand,’ the very first words we receive from Christ, then it is in these moments of ‘waking up’ to the cries of a little girl or the demands of a priest to present a sermon on Easter, that death is not and life is truly lived.
“Are we too quick to be unafraid, to rejoice, to celebrate the victory of Our Lord because of the revelation we believe it gives us under the authority of this Church—immortality as a reunited soul and body on the Day of Judgment? While we await this event, an event no man has any knowledge of, foregoing the practice of Christianity for reward, I think back to those followers who ran from the tomb. The place of His holy transcendence was the beginning of all distraction for us. They did not gawk or question the ‘angel,’ but fled toward the cries of their nation, of their people, of the life that Jesus, son of Mary (a title only bestowed in St. Mark’s gospel), taught them to study and live in. I often wonder as many of you might about ‘the mystery’ our Easter holiday centers upon. Every year, I am reminded of the iconic tomcat who passed in my neighborhood as a boy, after years of yowls and ruckus. I found him surrounded by every feline in a few mile radius, sitting there, as I focused my attention on his body, and wondered—”
LOVE LETTER TO THE HOF
Not David—Fehrenbacher Hof, a cafe in the Goose Hollow neighborhood of Southwest Portland. No, not a café, a dwelling of heart and soul! John Aaron had lived in that same two-story house the café now occupied. He still came in for coffee and later in the day ice cream as we’d be sitting in what used to be his boarding room more than fifty years ago! Mr. Aaron slowly walked in, greeting the barista, just after I’d find you there at a table with t
he wooden glaze glowing in morning sunlight. You remembered these mornings to me, how exciting and nervous they were. We were just beginning to get to know one another too. The summer was coming to a close and that autumn was one of the mildest and most beautiful I had in Portland in the last decade.
Every gesture, accounted for. All our words—completely dissolved in the moments themselves. I frankly have no idea what we talked about. I’m sure we spoke of dreams and asked questions, but we mostly shared a buttermilk bar or read or drew, beginning our day after the bus ride we both had taken from opposite ends of the city to meet one another. We weren’t living together yet but we were learning to live with one another in spaces. Time would follow soon after.
I had my own history with the place. Five years prior I had lived on the other side of the block the Hof occupied. I could see the back door entrance to the basement bakery where most of their pastries were made from out my bedroom window! After walking into the Hoyt Arboretum for a morning stroll/meditation, I’d enter the Hof to visit and speak with all the employees and find my seat along the walls filled with broken-down, rusting toasters from long ago. Coffee, maybe a breakfast sandwich, a book, some paper for notes, and my notebook for composing poems: this was my routine and my habits in an otherwise shaky and unknown curve my life had taken. Because you were the unexpected curve my life was taking then, there could not have been a more fitting context than the homely warmth of the Hof.
Mr. Aaron muttered to himself, soft and watery eyes above the fleshy bags that showed his 90 years, and walked to the front porch to sit and warm up. I’d raise my eyes to you, ever bashful and then intensely serious (though in jest with a cracked smile) to return to my lines. Your cheeks would pink slightly, smile emerge over your glorious row of teeth, and then quickly pucker and pull down again to return to your planner. The coffee kept brewing, the small oven opened briefly to release warm and savory smelling air, and the conversations between you and I mingled with the chatter and clattering that that place, the Hof, sustains and returns like a vibrating wire in the grand piano of life.
DIANA ANTHOLIS
Diana Antholis is the author of the Amazon Best-selling book, Unleashed: Live the Balanced, Centered, and Sexy Life You Deserve. She currently lives in Paris, France, devouring copious amounts of baguettes and pastries, all while inspiring Parisians to unleash their sexy.
FIRST DATE: THE SCENT
She saw him.
It was crowded.
It was hot.
He was walking towards her.
She carefully walked in his direction.
She watched him walking. Slowly. Intentionally. Her eyes moved from his face to the two buttons undone on his fitted white shirt, exposing his bronze tan.
They stopped close to one another, barely touching.
They wrapped their arms around one another just enough to say hello, but not enough to expose any feelings.
His cologne came alive in their embrace.
Chanel.
The scent drifted up into her brain.
She loved that scent.
“You smell so good.”
She couldn’t believe those words came out of her mouth.
She felt even warmer in the hot station.
He smiled. Happy. Nervous.
They began their day…
FIRST DATE: THE TOUCH
She felt tingly. Nervous. Happy. Excited.
Our first date…
He kept talking and talking.
Am I talking too much?
She listened.
He talks a lot, but that’s a pleasant change.
He gazed at her.
She’s so beautiful.
She wondered how close he would sit to her.
Does he like me?
He wondered how she felt about him.
Should I get closer?
She was curious to see if he’d touch her.
Is he going to flirt with me? Show me he likes me?
She wanted him to.
Give me a sign…
He thought about what to do.
Should I get closer? I want to hold her. Maybe it’s too soon…
She touched his arm.
I hope he knows I like him.
He wanted to kiss her.
It’s too soon…
He kept talking.
He was nervous.
She realized he was nervous.
She felt giddy.
They got closer, more comfortable, more flirty.
She wondered if he would kiss her.
He knew he wouldn’t.
He didn’t want to mess this up.
FIRST DATE: THE DANCE
Wine flowed.
So did the vodka.
But that wasn’t why they were dancing so close.
Slowly, with his right arm strongly around her lower back and his left hand cupping her right hand, they danced.
Easily.
Delicately.
Deliberately.
She held onto his right bicep. Feeling the softness of his white shirt. Breathing in the scent she loved…
Their legs touched, and moved. Touched, and moved.
They gently glided to the music.
The whole day was culminating in this dance.
Their faces touched.
She felt his cheek against her forehead.
They stayed close. But not too close.
He kissed her hair.
She wondered if he would kiss her lips.
She had wanted him to all day.
At that moment though, she didn’t. She wanted to wait. She wanted to experience him.
When it was time to leave…
They wrapped their arms around one another, closer this time, and departed separately.
Leaving the rest of the night to their dreams.
THE FIRST TIME
They had arrived in paradise.
The days were scorching hot.
The sand was barely tolerable on the bottoms of their winter feet.
The sun baked their skin.
It’s just what they wanted.
They had been on airplanes, in taxis, in traffic, in cities.
They were finally by the water.
The evenings brought a relieving breeze.
She wore a long flowing dress.
She was serene.
He couldn’t believe this was his life.
They strolled along the beach after dinner, letting the waves of the ocean meditate them.
They stopped.
They sat.
They listened.
They appreciated.
They breathed in the salty, humid sea air.
They knew this was all happening for a reason.
They felt like it was a dream.
They soaked in it.
They talked, he wrapped his arms around her, she held onto his muscular thigh. They kissed.
He pulled away, looking into the darkness of the waves.
She waited.
He said, “I have to tell you something.”
She knew.
She had felt it long ago, but it had hit her hard on the airplane that morning.
He was nervous, fidgeting with the cuffs on his pants.
She knew he had to say it.
He exhaled.
“I’m in love with you.”
WANTING
She was smiling.
He slid into the booth next to her.
His strong arm reached all the way around her, with his hand touching her thigh.
He softly rubbed her back. He buried his nose in her hair and gave her little kisses on her head.
He came dangerously close to kissing her lips.
She pretended to be interested in what their friends across the table were saying.
She couldn’t concentrate.
He moved his hands up and down her back. Lower…then higher.
She didn’t want it to end, but she had to catch her train.
&nbs
p; She only had a few minutes.
They walked together, alone.
He stopped her in the middle of the station, grabbed her face, and said, “I’ve been wanting to do this all night.”
He took her face in his hands, brought his lips close to hers, and kissed her.
She melted.
His lips…
Him…
She wanted more, but she had to leave.
He did it again.
Hundreds of people were passing by…
She felt like they were the only people in that station.
She ran to the train.
She was smiling.
TU ME MANQUES
She wasn’t going far, but it was going to be hard to get to often.
She promised their relationship wouldn’t change. She promised to be available.
She knew she’d deliver. But she had no idea what was coming…
Six hours flew by.
They couldn’t believe the time.
They couldn’t stop talking.
They were texting, as they always had when they were apart.
Back and forth. For six hours.
It felt like 10 minutes.
Making jokes. Sending photos. Laughing. Crying.
It was a long distance relationship.
But they could always talk about everything and nothing no matter how far apart they were.
They never missed a beat.
One Page Love Story- Share the Love Page 9