a hopeful morning
distant mountain gleams with snow
good omen coming~~~~~~~~It was her phone call that started it. It came in the middle of the day, right after lunch or before? He can’t remember now whether he had lunch that fateful day. The five-star hotel dining area was crowded with festive faces, limbs and trunks, meandering around piles of exotic dishes that surfaced during particular yearly festive events. It was not a place to receive her call but he had nowhere to hide as it was jam packed with heads and toes in every corner of this room. He stood still despite being pushed and crushed by shoulders and chests all around. He shouted at the top of his voice, “Yes?” He heard something shocking, he thought. “I can’t hear you, please repeat!” He heard again, clearer, one specific phrase, “Marry me.” He thought he was hallucinating. “What? Please say again!” He did not mean to be rude but it was an unbelievable phrase and he thought it had to be his own imagination. He checked himself, “Am I drunk? Or am I daydreaming?” Neither, his clear cool rational head assured him, putting a tether (alas, in vain) at the same time to thousands of hooves of horses running wild in his mind right then. “You have to marry me. I can’t stand this anymore.” This time he knew there was no mistake and it was her asking him to marry her. She was vacationing in her parents’ home at the tip of a tropical peninsular and he was thousands of miles away at the tip of a great continent somewhere, at a busy city harbor on duty indefinitely until he was scheduled to move on. “Ok, when?!” He replied. She said, “As soon as you can!” He remembered the thousands of times he proposed and she had rejected. “OK, please give me a bit of time to re-schedule my life! Meanwhile, here is the key to my heart, please handle with care!” A year later, they got married. Today, after many years he suddenly remembers this scene. Why? He is on his way up a mountain on this continent and she is again separated by another great ocean. He has never asked for his heart’s key to be returned to him. She is still keeping it, perhaps in her memory treasure chest. The snow has stopped and the distant hills are gleaming. Somehow his heart lightens and feels cheered as he watches them and he thinks to himself.
“Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get her back. After all, tomorrow is another day.” (last line quoted with a slight modification from “Gone with the Wind“)
Dictionary word:
omen noun
the torrential rains on day one of their journey were an omen of things to come: portent, sign, signal, token, forewarning, warning, danger sign, foreshadowing, prediction, forecast, prophecy, harbinger, augury, auspice, presage; straw in the wind, (hand)writing on the wall, indication, hint; literary foretoken.
sound mind journal 