Last Sunday
after church in San Francisco the boyfriend and I drove over Golden Gate Bridge
for a small vacation in northern California.
On our
way to the house in Mendocino where we spent a couple of days for Thanksgiving
in November we stopped to enjoy wine tasting – of course!
On
Monday we brought one of the bottles we found while wine tasting with us for
lunch at Glass Beach.
It was
a beautiful day at a beautiful beach.
The
boyfriend enjoyed his time with the Pacific Ocean.
On
Tuesday we decided to go deeper into the woods. Our car looks so small next to
the enormous red wood trees along the road to the coast.
We
went for a three hour hike in Mendocino woodlands where I found such big
elements of wild nature as this one.
After
our hike we opted for a modification of our diet and had dinner at a pub in
Mendocino [the town] together with beer instead of wine.
On
Wednesday it was time to hit the highway back to Berkeley once again…
Even though I’m excited about returning work at
the university and especially about the Russian class I’m going to teach – the spring
semester starts on Tuesday here at Berkeley – I understand now that the road back is going to be just as
long as the road away was for me.
Last year was one of the most difficult so far for me and I know that it is
going to take a lot of time for me to regain my former strength, both
personally and academically. I’m still getting used to life without my father. I’ve
made some small steps in the right direction, however; I went to the gym for
the first time in almost two months on Thursday and I felt good about that. I’m
slowly adjusting myself to the work mode. I know it is not going to be easy –
for every day still feels like a small battle to get on the right track and
settle my thoughts – but I have too many things in my life to be thankful for
to let myself get lost again. After all, the small yet important things in life
are what make life worth living. Yesterday I had an experience that I will treasure
for a long time as a mark for how far I’ve come during my years in California;
yesterday an old friend of mine reached out to me in a time of desperation and
I decided to let the past remain the past but answer his letter to me through a
phone call. It was not an easy thing for me to do because this person used to
mean so much to me and he is such an old friend of mine – I met him in Siberia
when I was only nineteen years old and we corresponded through mail for several
years after that – I even visited him in the United States twice. But by making
that call to him in his time of need I wasn’t coming back to the person I was
two and a half years ago; then I made the difficult choice of ending our
friendship for reasons I cannot write about here and I’ve never gone back on
that decision. But it was nice to talk to him and to remind him that I haven’t
forgotten all the ways in which he was there for me when I needed him the most.
Sometimes old friends – when you hear their voice and realize that everything
has changed since the last time you spoke but that doesn’t mean that you cannot
respect what once was – can remind you both of who you were and of who you are
now. I will treasure that conversation just as much as I treasure the life I
have now. The life I have now is one in which he cannot be an active part but
that doesn’t mean I am not one of those people who will not respond to an
important message.
I’m grateful for that and I’m grateful for
those lovely days spent in Mendocino.
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