Ульяна Солнечная – Its Never Too Late - As Long As Youre Alive (страница 2)

The first item came painfully, like an admission of cowardice.

1. I never went to Paris. Alone.

And immediately she wanted to justify it.

That’s just how life turned out.

It was the right thing to do.

Family comes first.

But forty years of justifications were enough.

She did not add anything else.

She sat there, staring at that single line, and something inside her ached — not even regret exactly, but the feeling of having somehow lost herself.

The second item rose from the memory of her mother.

2. I never asked my mother what she truly dreamed about.

Her mother had always said,

“I dream that you all stay fed and healthy.”

Only now, at sixty-seven, did Kate understand: that was not an answer.

That was self-erasure.

Her mother had been gone for ten years now, and there was no one left to ask.

The third item was the hardest of all.

Her hand hovered over the page.

The name surfaced on its own —

Jacob.

She had not seen him in fifty years.

A tall boy from the other homeroom, the one who lent her Hemingway books and told her she had eyes the color of the ocean.

In Oklahoma, where there had never been an ocean.

Then he left for New York to become a photographer.

And she stayed.

She married Tom — good, dependable Tom, who never read books but knew how to fix a car.

She had never said out loud that at sixteen she had loved Jacob for real.

The way people only love once — and somehow for the last time, too.

She sat there for a long while before writing, in a trembling hand:

3. I never told Jacob that I loved him. And that he was right — I deserved more than just a “normal life.”

Her heart began to beat faster.

As if someone might walk in and discover this secret.

Kate glanced around — no one was there, only the wind tapping a branch against the window.

And suddenly she understood with perfect clarity that she had lived most of her life carefully. Properly. Quietly.

But carefulness was not always the same thing as living.

The fourth item came almost as a relief:

4. I have never eaten a croissant in a real French bakery. Never drank wine on the banks of the Seine. Never said “bonjour” to an actual French person.

It sounded ridiculous.

Childish.

But somehow, this tiny, foolish wish stung her eyes more than anything else.

Kate set the pen down.

Four items, and she was exhausted — as if she had walked ten miles under the burning Oklahoma sun.

Inside her, a quiet resistance began to rise:

Why are you doing this, Kate Morgan?

You should be sitting peacefully.

You lived a decent life.

And then, another voice — weak, but insistent:

But what if there’s still more time than you think?

She closed her eyes.

And suddenly she saw herself from the outside — not an old woman in a cheap robe, but that girl who used to read Hemingway and believed the world was enormous.

That girl was still alive inside her.

Wounded. Tired. But alive.

Kate picked up the pen again.

On a new line she wrote:

5. I was afraid of looking ridiculous. Afraid the neighbors would say, “That old fool thinks she’s going to Europe.”

And for the first time that morning, she smiled through her tears.

“Well, now that’s the truth, Katie,” she said out loud, in the same tone her mother used to use.

“My little coward.”

The list was not about Paris.

It was about fear.

About loud Oklahoma neighbors, about the daughter who would say, “Mom, have you lost your mind?”, about grandchildren who might laugh.

She closed the notebook.

Today she was not planning to change anything.

Not buy tickets.

Not search for Jacob on the internet.