My Hometown Named Love (from collection My Hometown Named Love)

That warm year, I stopped escaping my life. Settled down. Started getting ready for the rest of my life, with or without anyone. I thought some day I'd find that someone special. I was right. How heart-wrenching it sometimes is to find the meaning of life. It happened sooner than I had ever thought. 

After years of searching, I had finally found a suitable place to live, a small village by the water. With lots of small cafes and restaurants. Pretty like a jewel. Idyllic as the utopian village in a fairytale. 

In the first couple of years I considered moving away. I didn't really miss any other place. Maybe I just wanted to escape my life, which didn't feel happy anywhere. 

Then I divorced and understood that behind that discomfort had only been the huge rock inside my head, the shaking house of a bad marriage, which had felt more like a prison full of power games and manipulation than a warm home full of the scent of freshly baked buns. 

I tried to remember when I had been happy the last time. I ended up going back around twelve years before I stopped counting. 

After the divorce I stopped considering moving away. Soon I didn't think about it at all anymore. I had met Her. Made her eternal as a picture in my memory, a snapshot of a woman standing in a crowd by the market place in the middle of the village. 

She was wearing blue jeans and a black shirt, and she had a child sitting in the stroller in front of her. The expression in her eyes was bright and intense, but warm. The corners of her face were nicely rounded, and her shoulder-length hair was moving in the slight wind. 

My heart made a strong bump. Another. That woman wasn't from this world. 

In the days after, I saw her every now and then with her child in the park, in the streets of the village, in shops, by the sports pitches and summer events. If I took a walk, I could almost count the probability of how I'd bump into her. Soon I realized I was planning my walking routes hoping to see at least a glimpse of her. 

Maybe my luck was that after my divorce, I had made a decision. I had decided to do everything to make my life and my child's life better than it had been. I wouldn't get stuck in the sofa and eternally drown in self pity. I wouldn't dive into substances to forget the past and get by in daily life. 

I'd keep up my health and mind by getting fit and doing some socializing. Developing myself. If nothing was going to bring me more possessions to replace the ones I had lost in the divorce, at least I'd have the richness of wisdom, wealth of spirit. If my riches couldn't be measured with the scale Scrooge McDuck uses, at least I could get a good value in my scale. You can get a lot of things with some ten-grands, if you invest them to the right places. And not everything can be bought with money. 

Along with all of the miles I was walking and running, I started going to the library more often to find information about cultural events. Some were free and were still (or as a result) of very good quality. 

One Thursday I saw a notice on the lobby board for a series of lectures about local history. The first lecture would be on Tuesday, the same week when my child was to be at his mother's. Maybe this was the right way to integrate myself into the local community. To understand the meaning of local history and how it created the idyllic basis for the present local culture. 

The small auditorium was only half full. Some elderly gentlemen and ladies interested in history. A group of middle-aged hobbyists and some individual enthusiasts. And suddenly her. With her dark hair and slender appearance. She walked in at the last minute and sat next to the person sitting behind me. 

For a moment I thought she had chosen the place on purpose, to see how I was interested in the subject. How I'd react to the occasional dry humor thrown in during the middle of the lecture. Maybe she had attended the lectures of the same old, jovial gentleman before.