A Snail in a Child's Memory

I may look like a two-metre oak that you'd have to ask off the road with an axe. But today I sit by the counter and wipe two foolish tears from my cheeks. Not from grief. From the smell of grass. The children were romping about outside the inn, laughing, falling into the dust, getting up, running again. And suddenly I saw little Ivan - saw my own small self.

I was sitting in the tall grass by the house. The grass was warm on top and damp underneath. It smelled of earth, of sun, of pollen, of scraped knees and of that green sap that stays on your fingers when you pull up a stalk. I didn't remember it with my head. I breathed in - and I was already there. Little Ivan had spotted a snail then. Slow, glistening, with a little house on its back.

It crawled between the blades of grass so solemnly, as if it were carrying not a shell but a whole kingdom. I lay down lower, parted the grass with my fingers, held my breath. I only wanted a closer look. Maybe to touch it. Maybe to make friends. And then my hand slipped. I leaned my palm in the wrong place, my body swayed - and it all happened in a single instant. The snail moved no more. A grown-up would say: a trifle. The grass is full of all kinds of small life.

But for little Ivan it was such a grief, as if the world had suddenly cracked right under his heart. I sat in the grass and cried over it. Whispered: "I didn't mean to." I covered it with a leaf, like a blanket. Nudged it closer to the shade. Scraped out the earth with one finger, made a small place, because it seemed to me: if I had taken its life, then I had at least to honour it somehow. The grass smelled so strong.

Feelings were different back then. Juicy and rich, like a first kiss. A little snail could weigh more in the soul than grown-up troubles weighed later on. Not because I turned to stone. It's just that with age the heart grows bark, so it won't crack at every touch. But sometimes the bark crumbles away. I'll step out onto the porch in the evening, when the field is already darkening and the inn is already warm.

I breathe in the smell of grass, of earth, of distant hay, of stove smoke - and suddenly I have those same scraped knees again. And again there lives in me the boy who cries over a snail. Then memory pulls me further. Mother smelled of linen, of milk, of smoke and sometimes of pyrizhky. In my heart she has a smiling face and hands that were tired but still stroked my head softly all the same. There was something in her smell that a child cannot name.

You just breathe in - and you know: you are home. No one has lost you yet. I had a granny too, and she smelled of dried herbs, of an old chest, of apples and a little of old age. Her palms always seemed warm, even when the frost outside nipped so hard your teeth turned angry. She could hand you a pyrizhok without a word, but in that silence there was more love than in a long speech.

Father, now, smelled of wood, of hay, of sweat after work, of cold air from the yard, of leather and of smoke. He spoke little. But when he laid bread on the table or straightened my shirt, I felt it: the world still holds. Not because he was strong. But because he was near and did not step back. In granny's pyrizhky there was one ingredient you won't find in any pantry. The warm crust, the cherries, the potatoes, the butter, the smoke of the stove - all that can be named.

But the taste of being waited for - that you cannot name. You can't buy it at the fair and you can't borrow it from a neighbour. Only those who were once loved without conditions can recognize it. We think we live separately. But in truth we grow out of one another, like branches. A mother passes into her daughter in a movement of the hand. A father - into his son in the silence by the threshold. A granny - into her grandson in the smell of pyrizhky.

A branch may stray far from the trunk, but the sap in it is still the same. Little Ivan never went anywhere. He is still in me. He reaches for granny's pyrizhok. Recognizes his mother's smell. Hears his father's footsteps. Fears the dark. Cries over a snail. And maybe that is exactly why today I wiped my tears and was not ashamed of them. Because that is not weakness. That is the grass in me turning green again.