Szilvia Beylik
Stories (1/0)
The Lizard
She liked Spring. Could hardly wait for the first warm day, when it was comfortable enough to wear only a knitted pullover and stay outside in the sun long enough to find the first snow flowers poke their little green fingers through the snow without her toes starting to ache from the cold. She still called them snow flowers, because that’s what her grandma called them when she was a little girl. Nobody else calls them that here, she learned that over the years. They are called Lilies of the Valley in America. Which is silly. They are obviously Snow Flowers; they grow right out of the snow. What other flower is resilient like that? SO many other flowers grow in a valley. Fragrant, colorful and flamboyant… But can they survive and break through snow like these plain little white flowers? That’s not the only thing Americans got wrong... She learned that over the years too. She’s been here for 25 years now. It’s home, sort of. She doesn’t belong in the old country anymore, everything has changed and left her behind. But she never truly felt like she belongs here either; her soul felt homeless. She worked as a night shift nurse in a hospital and hated it. Not because of the work, but because of the people. She was a great nurse; sharp, knowledgeable, dependable and efficient but… she didn’t like people much, which is pretty unfortunate when one is a nurse. It wasn’t always like that, but time broke her. Time spent with people broke her. She couldn’t understand why people were so demanding, self-centered, cold, superficial, empty and deaf to truths. That’s not what she remembered from the old country, but that was so long ago… Maybe it’s not just the people here. Maybe people are just different now, everywhere. Or… maybe she became different. She didn’t know, but she grew tired of having to contemplate it often. She noticed that she forgets to think about all this when she is in nature. So she surrounded herself in it as much as she could. It was rejuvenating, liberating and the only time her soul felt at peace.
By Szilvia Beylik3 years ago in Wander