Here We Are, Old And Gray. Eve, My Dear Wife, Is Here By My Side.

I was in the 8th grade. One of my classmates was Eve. Her father was employed by my family. He suffered from alcoholism and my father saw fit to release him and discipline him. They lived in company housing. His wife, Elena was young. Eve was born when she was sixteen. Elena did work for my mother. It was my mother that insisted that Eve attend school with me. Eve was my best friend.

But when her father lost his job, he went home and hanged himself. The tragedy was not lost on my mother. At the funeral she was ashen, scared, she trembled. She told my father in a loud voice, that he had to find a place in his heart for Elena, and Elena would fill his house with children. And Eve would have a home and a brother to look after her.

My mother made room for Eve and her mother. Elena was moved in with my mother, they would have the mother's room. Eve would sleep with me, 'to hold her tight and tell her I loved her'. My father, had his own room. Elena would provide my father with a household of children.

Eve slept with me, she turned on her back to draw me onto her, and was soon pregnant herself. The decision taken by her mother and mine was a quiet wedding, to which both parents signed. In short few years, between them they produced five children. The house rang with their voices, or as my mother would say 'at last we have the sounds of tiptoeing children, our home is not empty'. My mother it turned out loved Elena dearly.

Eve, my dear friend of my school days, was my wife and best friend at home. I realized that I loved her so, and with her beside me I felt like a grown man. 'No man can love a girl so', some poet would have said.

My mother ever so slowly forgave my father for disciplining Eve's father, causing him to take his own life. And throwing her true love, Elena, into a world of abject poverty. So, that night of the funeral, she gave Elena to my father, and gave Eve to me.