Every girl has a fairy tale. Even if she is a hard core feminist, some long long time ago, when she was a young teenager, before her first heartache, I'm sure she had a fairy tale she wanted to believe in.
Mine, is a classic. Feeding each other spaghetti, clinking our sweating glasses of Champagne. Somewhere in the not so far distance, stand our home, stone and vines crawling up its walls. My little daughter and her brother off somewhere picking berries for our dessert. He tenderly kisses my cheek, and twirls a strand of my hair, musing about how beautiful our life is...
I'm enrolled in a university somewhere in Rome, I study fashion design or architecture or just language, I spend time in the old libraries, study on the sprawling lawns....I'm a working mum, I own my own line of clothes and perfume, I write novels and publish them, we own a small cafe, where we serve pasta and wine and italian coffee..... I garden and cook for my family with the vegetables and herbs I grow in my garden. He pulls me into his embrace as I make dinner, soft sweet whispers of nothings in my ear and I turn around and give him a little lick of the wooden spatula of whatever I'm cooking. Life is busy, but never too busy for me to spend time with my family and my loving husband. On weekends we cycle to the market, just like young couples on a date, giggling and laughing and teasing each other. We have lunch with our parents, aunts, uncles and in-laws and siblings, outdoors in our vineyard, my children growing up close to their cousins.
Evenings curled up in front of the fire, cozy and drowsy, we read books out loud, or watch an old movie, snow falls lightly like feathers outside our window...
Every night I watch as he falls asleep, softly tracing the outlines of his face, awed by how great Allah is, how wonderful life is, and how beautiful my kids are. A combination of me and him, green eyes, brunette wavy hair, stubborn and determined like me, in love with music and art and dance and soccer like their dad.
My fairy tale, what has become of it, time passed and I feel I'm losing grip, it's fading away, my beautiful husband, my gorgeous kids....the life I want so desperately.
