Hat ( From Warm and Salty Memoirs)

I was quickly pass­ing by the old ele­gant build­ings on the Upper West Side   in Man­hat­tan. It was a cold Feb­ru­ary evening and it seemed like the strong wind tried to pre­vent me from walk­ing, breath­ing and even look­ing good. My hat felt down and my hair was a mess; all tan­gled, fly­ing toward some unknown des­ti­na­tion ahead of me. I tried to keep it together and to chase my hat picked up by the waves of cold and unhelp­ful wind. I was almost fly­ing pushed by its strong arms. One moment I was close to catch my dark Chan­nel cre­ation but the wind pulled it up from the wet win­tery ground, twirled it in front of the lit up win­dow and cast it into the darkness.

I started cry­ing. I was dev­as­tated and over­whelmed with the feel­ing of pure mis­ery. Why every­thing I love in my life always goes away?  Am I des­tined to chase some­thing I can­not get? I help­lessly leaned against the wall of some build­ing. It felt like the hard shoul­der of the man who wants to use you: wide, cold and care­less. I was never used by a man in my life, at least I hope I was not, but I heard these sto­ries from Jisel’. And who said that being used by a man is not bet­ter than to be alone?

Lone­li­ness.…. I looked around. The street was empty and the wind came down. It became warmer and the sparkling snow started to fall on my hair cov­er­ing my coat with a sil­ver lace of tiny snowflakes. ‘’ Frozen tears,’’ I thought. You can’t hold them in your hand or they will turn to rain of tears. It is the nature’s way of deal­ing with the pain, to turn its rain into mas­ter­pieces of sil­ver crys­tals with ideal dimensions.

I slowly started walk­ing, with this new feel­ing of calm­ness and antic­i­pa­tion of some­thing good to hap­pen. Sud­denly I turned into cozy, win­ter­less street and real­ized that I’ve got really far from my home. It did not seem to bother me tough; there were times in my life when I was much fur­ther from the place I used to live. So far…

The rare snowflakes turned into the sparkling bliz­zard and I con­tin­ued to walk — smil­ing.
–Excuse me,’ strangely famil­iar cadence of the man’s voice woke me up from my win­ter dream.
– ‘‘Yes?” I turned around.
-” I’ve found this on the street, could it be yours?”
The man in a dark coat handed my run-away fedora. He stepped out from the shadow of the side­walk, and the light from the unfa­mil­iar win­dow lit up his so famil­iar face. I could not believe my eyes. We were stand­ing in front of each other try­ing to com­pre­hend the ever repeat­ing mir­a­cle of coin­ci­dences that bring peo­ple together . Ten years ago, I left Rus­sia for my new life in New York. It was my life out there that I aban­doned, my love.…..our love.

We con­tin­ued to stand in silence, afraid that the shad­ows of the past will take us away from each other. The bliz­zard became stronger and I put my hat on.
-”It’s snow­ing,’ I looked at the empty street lined up with dreamy lamps cast­ing golden lines through the lacy cur­tains of the white snow.
-”Yes, it is Feb­ru­ary.
– Feb­ru­ary 14th.