Romance about Immigration

Few days later the neighbor is the previous cheerful old lady who jokes about eating sweets and expresses gratitude that we have saved her door. She promises to give key to her nephew, just in case, also promises to be careful. But of course, everything is fine, what is the question?! Do not forget that autumn bushes must be ordered, or perhaps we may leave them for spring? My bleeding heart does not allow me to tell her that we actually have planted them months ago. Under her supervison.

The summer comes, she goes out to water the garden less and less, the meetings become shorter and more silent as she misses more and more words. I've become an old bag, left to go to the store, decided that I had not taken the shopping list, and it has been in my pocket all the time, she says one day when everything seemes fine. Her purse is new, big and black, which is strange because my neighbor loves small dainty ladies’ bags. That same bag will be saving grace in a snowy January day when the police will find her shivering in her underwear on a side street in the downtown, with no idea who she is and how she got there looking like that. The Good Samaritan who had found her, points to the officers at the convulsively clenched bag. Her purse and a note who to call in case of need will be found intact in it.

From there on she will not recognize anyone, not even herself, and will not speak. Her doctors politely ask not to visit her at the hospital because she is startled by everything and everyone. The person is gone, a shell has remained which painfully dies down. Hopefully at least in her medicated sleep she sees those islands in green, the garden of her childhood and that ferry.

One of her nephews will tell me about the islands. Sounds like tear-jerker novels in paperback - how the young and vivacious lady went to work abroad ostensibly for a short time to be able to send money home, how her two sisters died young and she took over to elevate their children, how she worked all shifts she could, how she never ever had time for herself, how each year she was about to go home, but one by one the relatives there died and she dedicated her life to the children who immigrated after her. How when it was clear she should not be alone anymore, she stubbornly rejected their demands to move to live with whoever she chooses among them, because she did not want to burden anyone. Unique, says the young man, like her light pear cake with rum sauce. Who once tried it, had never forgotten it. I totally agree with the young man, because I have tried this cake. Even got the recipe. As his aunt said, the trick is the hand which pours the rum to be generous! Or was it the heart?

Ode to Toilet Paper

New immigrants are like new toys. At the beginning they are insanely interesting, then one gets used to them and they do not make such an impression,