Lavender Field by Yehor Boichenko

 “Have you ever thought

of changing your life?”, Anna asked.

“I like how everything is calm. I love my life and I love that I don't have to worry too much about the future”, Jane replied.

“But don't you want to leave everything and go travelling? To see the world!”, Anna shouted.

Jane loved Anna, but such conversations always disturbed her, and she felt that it was time to tell her friend goodbye.

***

“I love my life. I've already seen the world”, thought Jane as she tried to fall asleep. She would be lying if she said that Anna’s words did not affect her in any way. She really saw life and really had it full. At the age of eighteen, she already played in the city theatre, and at the age of thirty she staged her first play. She always said that the theatre opened a new way of looking at the world for her. Jane did not like to rest, and therefore, when the directors of the theatre asked her to leave, because young actresses began to be appreciated more, the woman accepted her new life rather…difficult. Sometimes it seemed to her that she did not defend her place well enough. “If I could just say 'no'… they wouldn't have stopped me!”, she complained to her friends. “Jane, your time is up. Find a new life... finally let go of the past," Anna told her. However, this was much easier said than done.

Starting a new life wasn’t easy, because Jane never thought about what she would do when the job of her life will come to its logical end. She tried embroidering and designing clothes, writing her own plays, and even playing musical instruments. However, nothing brought her such pleasure as it was during performances.

Jane went to her desk and took a piece of paper. “I will write to the troupe, and maybe they’ll want to see me again in the team”, said the woman to herself. As soon as she began to write, she felt a strong smell of lavender. A smell that was extremely familiar to her. She put the pen down and walked over to the basket at the end of the room. “Anna must have brought it and I didn't even notice it”, Jane thought.

The basket was filled with lavender flowers, which the woman loved so much. Jane remembered how she and her family always gathered it outside her house. And she remembered how she always had it in her dressing room. For her, it was not just a smell - it was something more. While picking lavender, she always talked to her parents. It was them who helped her find her life's work. “What if...”, Jane thought and ran to gather her things.

The street was the same as she remembered it. “Although, a little change could have been added”, Jane thought to herself. She walked for several hours and finally turned onto the right path. She finally found a purple field of flowers that were so familiar to her heart. Jane had thought for a long time about what she would do when she finally came to a familiar place, but now that she was here, she felt relieved and simply sat down on a bench that stood alone in the middle of a lavender field.

“I want this moment to last forever”, she thought, and felt a small tear roll down her cheek.

“Greetings, don't we know each other?”, said the man who suddenly appeared next to Jane.

“Oh, no, I don't think so. I used to live here with my parents, but I haven't been in this place for a long time”, she answered.

“Lavender blooms in a special way this year”, said the man.

“Couldn’t agree more!”, said Jane. “You know, I've always said that I wanted to plant and harvest lavender...I didn't know if I could make a business out of it, but oh, how I dreamed of making it my life”.

“And what prevents you from doing it now?”

Jane thought. The man was right, what was preventing her?

“You know, I never thought I'd come back here”, the woman said.

“I think that if you have had this dream for a long time, now is the time to make it happen. Believe me, you should never put things off for later. Live here and now”, the man said.

“Thank you. I think you’ve just opened a new life for me”.

The man said goodbye and left, and Jane continued to contemplate the lavender field that would soon become even closer to her.