Around the heart in eleven years. Epp Petrone

see,” I shout. “I’m not moving ahead! I can’t get rid of this journalist’s life! I keep getting hired for new articles, new TV shows. The whole road until my natural end has been paved. The eulogy is already complete. I’m going to waste away to nothing, if I don’t break out of this myself and see the other side of the world. Besides, I feel that somewhere else another reality is waiting for us!” Tom wants to cut in, but I won’t let him, “Remember, you were the one who said how you were wasting away in the army and losing your creative edge? And you wanted to leave, but couldn’t?”

      “That’s hardly comparable! You have no idea what my life was like in the Soviet military. Are you seriously comparing your life right now to that! You have the freedom to give your employers notice tomorrow if you wanted to and just start writing your novels.”

      “But I’m not ready to write them yet! And the fact that we haven’t had kids – yet – well that’s just our luck, our chance to go out into the world, travel, mature, get ready to move up to the next level. Then we’ll have something to tell our grandchildren that they can be proud of: see, what our grandparents were brave enough to do. They’ll see how everything is possible in this world!”

      “I don’t really need my grandchildren to be proud of me going to wander the earth with some deranged hippie to who knows where. I’m happy enough building another floor on this house and redoing all the plumbing. Why do you even think that all this travelling is something you can afford?”

      “Everything is possible, if you have faith!”

      That’s how we argue, round and round. Dog-job-mortgage-house versus need-to-discover-world-and-self, all this witnessed by our unborn children, for whom we are ready to walk through fire, at least for the sake of the argument.

      “Just think what kind of an impression it would leave on your children, leaving like this? What kind of complexes would it give them, knowing that once upon a time, their mother left her home behind and ran away?”

      1

      “Problems” in Spanish.

      2

      “The beautiful life!” in Spanish.

      3

      “Monastery Barn” in Estonian.

      4

      “The tongue of fire” in Estonian.