Preparing a sensational ending for the things keeps our destiny under control.
However it’s not a good idea: life always gets the better of your projects. You can decide everything from the start but just a little distraction makes reality cheat you and everything finishes. The problem isn’t the end itself but the way it happens. In silence, without fireworks.
So don’t give importance to things, don’t ever do it, it’s just a waste of time.
Just like what happened to this bottle.
French Champagne, what are you crazy? I exclaimed almost a quarter of a century ago. Exhausted and content, I saw him at the hospital dressed in an improbable manner and unaware of his handsomeness.
He was smiling and holding the bottle in his hand. I loved his enthusiasm.
Only the best for this little girl.
Our daughter.
His idea of the ‘best’ included an expensive bottle full of bubbles that we decided to store in the cellar: our daughter would open it eighteen years later.
Eighteen years is a long time.
I’ve gotten older, he didn’t get the chance.
He went out to go to work one morning and he came back the next day in the obituaries.
So when Catherine was 18 she found herself in front of the bottle to be opened but decided that it still wasn’t the right time. She would wait for a better moment.
We celebrated her college degree.
We celebrated her specialization.
We celebrated her first work contract.
Each time I would put the ever ageing bottle on the table and then take it back to the cellar.
My daughter was postponing it in view of more important achievements. I adored her ambition but at the same time I was moved by the importance she gave to this story. I had the feeling that the bottle would not be opened for who knows how much longer and that the right moment would have never come.
I was wrong.
Today I’m having friends over for lunch. In a hurry with too many things to do. I always end up getting nervous.
Once lunch is over, we decide to toast so I ask my friend to go and get the Champagne I bought and put in the cellar. She comes back up, shows the bottle to me and asks me if it’s the right one. I give it a glance while choosing the glasses to put on the table and say yes, yes. And cheers.
Catherine comes back when everybody else has gone. The table still has to be cleared and she offers to help me.
Mother! I hear her shouting from the kitchen, but this….and she comes in holding the empty bottle of French champagne.
It’s that one...
I try to say no, and say that I bought another, that it isn’t what she thinks. I would like to convince her but I still have to convince myself. The truth is that I’m confused; I did it inadvertently, without thinking. How did I do it?
My daughter starts shouting and says I’m superficial and maybe she’s right. She cries. Irreparable, the story of the bottle that ended up in the wrong hands is reduced to silence, deprived of a meaning that will never come back. It is ridiculous but it seems like a great loss.
But do you realise it has even lost its taste in all these years? I tell Catherine without any reason. It’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Don’t be ridiculous, she replies drying her tears with a smile.