A beautiful young woman rang my doorbell. She had just returned from a kibbutz, laden with presents for friends. Mine (for she knew me well) was an elegant little brass hash
pipe with a wavy stem. She helped me christen it and then, for the first time, shared my single bed. She was nineteen.
Today, some twenty-eight years
later, I noticed a crack in that wavy stem, big enough to render the pipe useless. What's that you say -- cracked and useless like its owner? That's cruel, though not, of course, as cruel as time.
We lost touch, Julia and I, and for all I know she may have children who are older than she was then. It would be astonishing if she thought of me as often as I think of her, but I like to imagine that occasionally,
in her busy and fulfilling life, something might cause her to remember that day and smile (or, for that matter, the time her mother caught us having a naked popcorn fight, but that's another story.)
Does this story have a "message"? Only this: don't ever say,"Oh well, it passes the time." Time will pass quite fast enough without your encouragement.
Of course, I shall never throw the pipe away.
Julia is a pseudonym
23/11/2012