Page 11 - Revelation
P. 11

Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova.   Revelation























                                      On the left side: mom, dad, grandmother and me.
                                          Right: Dad after pneumonia, Mom and I.

                     The first "swallows"

                  My second favourite passion was reading, which forever remained my greatest
            love. I learned to read when I was three which, as it appeared later, was a very early
            age  for  that.  When  I  was  four,  I  already  could  fluently  and  incessantly  read  my
            favourite fairy-tales (for which I have now paid with my eyes).

                  I adored living with my heroes: I sympathized with them, cried when something
            went wrong and was indignant and offended when the evil won. And when fairy-tales
            had a happy ending, everything sparkled in pink and the festive mood accompanied
            me throughout the whole day. It is funny and sad to remember these astonishingly
            pure childhood days, when everything seemed possible and absolutely real. Well,
            sometimes it was indeed so real that I could not even imagine how this was so. It
            happened when I read one of my favourite fairy-tales, being in pure rapture. The
            feeling was so bright that I remember everything as if it happened yesterday: the
            ordinary world around me suddenly disappeared and I found myself in my favourite
            fairy-tale. I mean I truly appeared there. Everything there was really alive – moving,
            changing and absolutely astonishing. I did not know exactly how much time I spent
            in  that  amazing  world,  but  when  it  suddenly  disappeared,  I  felt  a  painfully-deep
            clanking emptiness inside me…
                  It seemed that our "normal" world had suddenly lost all its colours, so bright and
            colourful was my strange vision. I did not want to part with it. I did not want it to end
            and  suddenly  I  felt so  "deprived"  that  I started  crying  and  rushed  to complain to
            anybody I could find at that moment about my "irreplaceable loss". Fortunately my
            mother was at home and on patiently hearing out my confusing babble, made me
            promise not to share this "extraordinary" news with my friends.
                  When, surprised, I asked: – Why?

                  My mother confusingly said that it would be our secret for a while. Of course I
            agreed, but it seemed to me a little strange because I was used to sharing all my news
            openly with my friends, and now it was suddenly forbidden for some reason. My
            strange "adventure" was gradually forgotten, because every day of one’s childhood
            usually brings something new and unusual. But one day it repeated again and then


           Back to content

                                                           10
   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16