Al picked up a toy cup in wonder. “I don’t believe it.”
“It’s so tiny,” said Simona, pleased and happy.
Regina broke down in tears when she saw Magda holding her precious tea set. When she stopped crying, she could only shake her head in wonder at life’s strangeness. “Imagine, this is what survived from our past life. Magda’s little tea set that Jurgis gave her when she was five years old. He had brought it back from a trip to Konigsberg. Jurgis would sit with her and drink tea from the tiny cups.”
Al had never known Magda as a normal little girl. He had only known her as a slow and confused older sister, who used to embarrass him. He sighed for all the things that might have been.
They went outside to wash up in the murky pond. Afterward, Violeta went to the minibus and brought back a bag of food. She spread a blanket by the pond and passed out thick sausage sandwiches, while Linas sliced cucumbers with a penknife. The whole group sat at the edge of the pond for the rest of the day. The bees buzzed lazily over the dandelions. The sky was the color of cornflowers with clouds like delicate lace.
Magda sat at the edge of the pond with Simona happily washing every tiny dish, while Regina and Violeta sat under an oak tree feeling perfectly at home, as if world wars had never happened. Regina picked a cattail, brown as a cigar, spilling its seeds like down. She blew the seeds over the water and watched them float away. Violeta told her sister that she felt as if their ancestor spirits were happy at the return of their seed to the earth from which it had sprung—to the earth it would eventually return, like these cattail seeds, as if the natural order had finally been restored even if only for this brief moment of grace.
The light was golden as Al stood and slowly walked over to the murky pond. He, too, could feel a certain nostalgia for a way of life he had never known, the one his parents had summoned up for him. This simple life tugged at him and made him wonder how life might have been different had he grown up here and his parents’ war had never happened. His life would also have been very different if his war in Vietnam hadn’t happened. What was it in men’s hearts that made them fight wars every generation?
In the late afternoon light, he leaned against a birch tree and thought about Irene. Taking the amber heart that she had given him from his pocket, he held it like a talisman, marveling at how strange it was to finally find her again in Lithuania, of all places. As he held the amber heart up to the sunlight, it shone like honey with a dark streak running through it. He smiled, wondering if all hearts were darkly flawed, yet, by some grace, still able to love.
Acknowledgements
The following stories have appeared in different form: “Blue Tango” in Spectrum, “Southside Miracles” in West/Word, “Secrets of Life” in Story One, “Sunday Dinner” and “Trains” in Amoskeag, “The Boarder” in Lituanus, “Carnival” in Storyglossia, “Those Chicago Blues” in R-KV-RY, “Frozen Waves” in Banyan Review, “Lachryma Christi” in Citadel, “Becoming American” in The Smoking Poet, and “Lucy in the Sky” in the anthology, Bless me, Father. Both “Carnival” and “Lucy in the Sky” were optioned for film by Columbia College Chicago. This collection was a finalist for the Sol Books Contest.
The road to publication is sometimes long and winding. I would like to thank those who helped me on that journey. I owe many people a debt of gratitude, but I would like to especially thank those in my writing groups who gave me such valuable feedback and who listened to countless versions of these stories. A warm thank you to Ausra Kubilius and Violeta Kelertas for their invaluable help and tireless support and to Vilija Karalius for her helpful contribution. I am grateful to my wonderful family for letting me bounce the stories by them, and especially my children, Max and Anna, who patiently watched their mother write over the years, and to my late husband, Algirdas, for his unflagging love and encouragement.
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