Understanding

Understanding

     I made my way to my grandmother’s house, tears running down my face.  I had never been in such a dilemma before in my life.  For this dilemma concerned love and I had never found myself in such a position before.  And to be sure, dilemmas concerning love are the worst ever to arise.  I was in love with David.  But he had nothing to offer me, and my family wanted me to marry man, Aaron, for whom I felt no attraction.  But David had asked me to marry him, and upon telling him my parents’ objections to the marriage, he asked me to wait for him until he could find better way to support us.  I wanted to wait for him.  In truth, I was willing to marry him right now.  But my parents were against it.  They felt that love had no part in a marriage arrangement.  This was obvious in their own marriage.  I did not want to take their advice because they had never been happy in their lives.

     At the same time, I wasn’t sure why I was going to Grandmother for advice.  The old woman who lived outside of town was not really my grandmother, and was old enough that she could be my great-grandmother.  She had never been married and had no children.  But with the absence of a grandmother of my own, and her with the absence of grandchildren of her own, we had adopted each other.  I loved her as dearly as though we were related by blood, and she loved me the same way.  She was also my closest friend, and the one from whom I most readily accepted advice.  So I suppose that it was out of habit that I walked to her house when I was posed with a problem so great that it left me in tears.  But she had never married.  How could she help me?  How would she ever understand what I was going through?

     I knocked on her door frantically upon my arrival and brushed the tears from my face with the sleeve of my coat.  She called me in, for the door was never locked.  She had long ago told me to simply walk in whenever I arrived, but I had never gotten used to the idea.  It had been ingrained in my mind that you did not walk into someone else’s house without first knocking and being admitted.  I entered her quaint little house and it looked the same as it always did: the little entryway dimly lit by candles, for the old woman had never liked the idea of electricity and had kept her candles long after everyone else had stopped using them.  This led into a brighter kitchen with white walls and a cheery blue flower pattern that she had painted herself when she was younger.  There was a window above her little sink from which the light was coming and an old wood stove sat to one side of the room.  I walked into this room, for I knew it was where she would be on a cold day like this – sitting in her kitchen in front of the stove, reading a book while waiting for her stew to be done, or perhaps trying to sketch or paint as she used to, becoming frustrated that she couldn’t hold her hands steady anymore.  We had had many discussions about this and it was then that I felt the most sorry for her.  She had such a passion for something for which she no longer had a talent.  It made me so sad.

     When I walked in, she was there in her rocker, reading, just as I had imagined.  It made me smile, despite my sadness.  She smiled at me and offered me a seat.  I sat down at the little table in the one and only chair.  She stood, placing her book on the table and retrieved a pan from a cupboard, filled it with water and placed it on the stove.  She was making me tea.  She always did that if I was upset when I came to visit.  And she always knew when I was upset.  Tears sprung back into my eyes.

     She didn’t speak to me until my tea was made, but the silence was not uncomfortable.  It never was.  When it had finished steeping, she placed the tea in front of me, sat back down in her rocker and looked at me.

     “What is it, Erin?” she asked me.

     I sipped my steaming tea and did not reply for a moment.  How could I explain this?  But at last I spoke, telling her what was wrong, telling her of my extreme dilemma, as I gripped my hot cup of tea in my cold hands and tears blurred my vision of the old woman sitting across from me.

     She reached across the table with her shaking hands and put them on top of mine around the cup.  “You love him, don’t you?”

     I nodded my head, unable to speak because of the sobs that racked my body.  She held my hands like that until I quieted, all the while not speaking a word, her presence alone being enough comfort.

     At last I looked at her through eyes free of tears.  I had done the right thing in coming.  I would drink my tea, and go home.  I would be no closer to a solution, but I would go with the knowledge that someone cared, whatever option I chose.

     “I’m going to tell you a story,” she said.

     “Alright,” I replied.  I loved Grandmother’s stories.  I had heard some of them multiple times, but it never bothered me to hear them again.  She told me of all the happy times of her life, and of the sad ones as well.  I wondered why she felt the need right now to tell me a story, but I did not ask.  Instead I settled in my chair as she let go of my hands and sat back in her own, pulling a knitted blanket onto her lap to keep out the cold that seeped into the house from outside, and began her story.

~~~~~

     There was a time when I was in love.  James was the man of my dreams.  Or so I thought at the time.  I had been enamored with him from my childhood, and as I grew older, I was sure that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.  When we were younger, he paid me no attention, for he was the recipient of every girl in town’s affection, and he knew it.  He was the handsomest boy, and later man, that my town ever saw.  He knew that as well, I suppose.  And he was one of the richest men as well.

     But one summer, the summer of my seventeenth birthday, I caught his eye.  I’m not sure why, for there were plenty of girls prettier and of higher status than I.  I guess it was ingrained in all of us poor folks’ minds that the girls had to marry someone rich to have a good life.  And James was certainly rich.  We never officially courted, and I suppose I should have seen that as a warning.  But he spent his every second with me and told me every day that he loved me.  I should have seen it then the way he looked at other girls, the way he talked to other girls, the way he let his hand linger in theirs as he helped them out of a carriage.  Although I saw it with my eyes, I couldn’t see with my mind, or rather denied, that I really was not anything special to this man who had everything and knew it.

     At the end of that summer, he left for college and before he did, he told me he would be back for me.  I was so happy, thinking how proud everyone would be that I had found someone with money and status for myself.

     Around this time, Peter came to our town.  He wasn’t a very rich man, but he was hard-working and was pleasant to be around.  He began spending time with me and I found myself attracted to his personality, for to be quite honest there was nothing else attractive about him at all.  But he was poor and I could not get out of the mindset that I must find someone rich to have a happy life.  And besides, my James was coming back for me, and he was everything that everyone else wanted me to have.

     James came home for Christmas and brought with him a young woman from his school.  My heart was shattered as I saw the disgustingly beautiful girl descend from the carriage, holding his hand.  But he released her hand and ran to me, smiling, telling me how wonderful it was to see me and that his classmate, Colleen had returned with him because she wanted to see the town.  He insisted they were no more than friends, and my hurt and anger melted beneath the gaze of his stunning blue eyes and I smiled back at him.  I told myself I had to not care about it, because he was what I needed.

     On Christmas day, James asked me to marry him, and I was surprised at the hesitation in my voice when I replied yes, and it ran through my mind, do I really want this?  But I assured myself that of course I did and returned his loving embrace after my acceptance.  The entire town was happy about our engagement, except for several jealous young women.  And except for Peter.  But I hardly noticed either.  I was too consumed with thinking about what I wonderful life I would have and all of things I would have that I could never have were I to marry someone any less rich.

     In January, after James had returned to college and I to my life, Peter left town.  He moved with hardly a word to anyone.  I was surprised at the emotion I felt when I heard he had left.  I missed our deep discussions we had had, all those conversations where we had seemed to connect so well and understand exactly what the other person meant, and I realized that I had never had that with James.  All of our time had been spent in flirtatious behavior and proclamations of love – a love I had never felt.

     I was very confused over the next week, when it all came to an end.  I received a letter in the mail from James telling me that he was very sorry, but he had to break off our engagement.  He told me, “It turns out that Colleen and I have more in common than I originally thought and we think it would be best if we marry.  I’m sorry if this is in anyway an inconvenience.”

     Inconvenience.  It was much more than that.  My heart was shattered.  The one whom I had thought loved me and whom I had thought I loved was no longer a part of my life.  And even worse, because of my distraction with him, and my desire to live up to everyone else’s standards, I had let slip away the one who really did love me and whom I now realized I truly loved as well.

~~~~~

     Tears had come to my eyes again.  But this time they were not from self-pity, but for sorrow for what she had suffered.  Out of all the stories this wise old woman had told me, this was not one of them.  She had mentioned no love interest in her life.  She had never once mentioned romance.  I wondered if it was because it was too painful.

     “Grandmother…” I whispered, but got no further.

     “I know, you never thought I was in love,” she said knowingly.  “But I never felt the need to burden you with the story.  And it isn’t something I enjoy thinking about.  But sometimes the things we enjoy the least are what someone else needs to hear the most.  Just as you needed to hear that.”

     “What should I do then?” I asked.

     “Don’t try and live up to what everyone else expects.  David is a good man, a better man than Aaron could ever be.  Ultimately it is your decision.  But marry for nothing less than what is right and for love.”

     “Thank you,” I whispered.  “And I’m so sorry about Peter…”

     “Don’t be sorry,” my grandmother said to me.  “I have regretted those decisions for years.  But you needed to hear that story.  If it was only for that reason – to see that you do not make the same mistake – that I have lived with my regret all these years, than it is worth it to me.  Do not be sorry, my beautiful granddaughter, for I no longer feel regret.  You have given my mistakes a reason.”