It had been two years since she had gotten divorced in
1991 and gone back to her parents´ home. It was quite comforting and just what
she needed after going through a rough seven years. However, her parents were
getting old and they knew that in the future they would end up being taken care
of by her as an imposition of her siblings. Mom and dad were afraid that she
would have to sacrifice her life doing that and end up alone with an elderly
parent or two and not being able to travel, study, go out with friends, in
short: live life as she wanted to or deserved to.
One evening the couple came into her room and told her
how much they loved her and all the reasons mentioned previously asking her to
move out. It was time to move into her own place before they got older and her
siblings would force this obligation onto her because she had no family of her
own.
A huge mix of feelings filled her mind and heart. Besides
feeling loved, touched and blessed to have these parents, she also felt
abandoned, scared and lost. The time had come when she would have to depend
only on herself. It was time to grow up. That night she cried herself to sleep.
Bright and early the next morning she decided that she
would go and look for a place to rent. She asked her baby sister to come along
for it would be comforting to have a loved one’s opinion. She chose to check
out apartments at a neighborhood inbetween her workplace and her parents’ home,
just in case they needed her during an emergency. They saw many apartments. She
liked several, but the cost was a bit more than she could chew. On that very
same day, she found the perfect apartment. Her sister loved it too.
It was in the downtown area. It had a bedroom,
bathroom, kitchen, living room and service area for the washing machine. It was
64-square meters approximately. When you walked in there was a small corridor, however,
the first thing you saw was the bathroom; to the right there was the bedroom
and to the left the living room. It was perfect, no garage though. It wouldn’t
be a problem because there was a parking lot just down the street which she
could afford and leave the car at overnight. It was all going to work out; she
could feel it deep down inside.
That afternoon when she and her sister returned home,
she told her parents about the apartment. They were surprised. They never
expected her to leave so soon, after all they had just told her the plan the
night before and within a week or so she´d be moving out. Everything was
happening so fast.
The only pieces of furniture she owned were her bed
and night tables, which she had bought when she moved back in. She also had a
TV, which she brought with her when she left her husband. She couldn´t afford
to buy a lot of furniture at that moment, so she decided that kitchen cabinets
and appliances would be her first purchases. (In Brazil, when you rent a place,
sometimes let´s say most of the times, it is empty. You might be lucky to have
wardrobes and kitchen cabinets, but no appliances whatsoever. )
So after getting all the paper work in order and
closing the deal, she went shopping for the kitchen appliances and cabinets.
Her mom said she´d buy her a stove and her dad said he´d buy her a washing
machine, which was very thoughtful of them. She also bought a small mattress
and put it in the living room to take the place of a sofa. The store attendant
said they would be able to deliver everything in a week´s time. She was
thrilled.
She couldn´t move out of her parents´ before they had
installed the kitchen. She had to go there and wait for the delivery men and
also wait as they installed everything. It was all new to her especially being
completely alone for the first time. She was a bit sad. She had to depend on
herself and this scared her a bit. She would have no one to talk too. She knew
that eventually she´d get used to it. Change was always a hard thing; but as
they say, necessary. She couldn´t control the tears. Lying down on the
mattress, she slowly cried herself to sleep.
She thought she was sleeping but as she looked towards
the kitchen floor, she noticed a pair of feet walking towards her. She couldn´t
budge. The feet were not bare, but
rather in leather sandals, Roman style. They were a pair of man´s feet. She
noticed the roughness of the soles and the veins standing out. As she looked a
bit higher, she noticed that he was wearing a white tunic. It looked like it
was made of silk. Strangely, she was not scared. She felt at peace for the
first time in a long time. The thought of how he had gotten into the apartment
or who he was did not even cross her mind. There was a vibe of mercy and love
flowing in that room.
Slowly the man walked towards her and he sat down on
the mattress beside her. He gently picked her head up and softly set it down on
his lap, like parents do to their children in distress or a shepard does to a
sheep who has been saved. She did look at his face; she just stayed there and wept.
Her cry was coming from deeply within; coming from her soul as if she had finally
found a rock to base her life on. Love, compassion,
mercy, peace came along with this man´s caress. All she heard was “You are not
alone. I have always been and will always be with you.”
Having said this, he vanished as the intercom rang,
and she scrambled to her feet to let the delivery men in she was at peace and
knew that everything was going to be fine.
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| Google Images |
(May 5, 2014)
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