SABIS the SURVIVOR

Chapter 2: Gadi Sees His Reflection

Chapter 2: Gadi Sees His Reflection

While I walked away from my parents' village, all I could think about was how I missed my wife and children and how little time there was to really tell each other the things that we wished to pass along. Like how grateful I felt for my parents' sincere and heartfelt hospitality. As well, I wished that I had told them that their love throughout the years had given me the inner strength to believe in myself, deep down to my core, which helped me to sustain my drive to succeed in any endeavour despite many obstacles.

I was on a mission to reunite with Marie, my bashert, which was Yiddish for one's soul-mate. We met twenty years earlier in the Andorran Pyrenees.

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That summer, at the age of 18, I worked as a guide for Mountain Treks, a local travel and tour company. Marie and her parents were visiting from Lyon, France on a group tour. I remember the first time our eyes locked: her smile had an edge to it like she was hiding some devilish secret and her eyes told a story of maturity beyond her years.

She walked with carefree abandon, swinging her hips and waving her arms up and down as if her entire being had no cares, no worries, and no agenda other than living in that moment. I could not take my eyes off of her so when the other tourists in that group started to ask me questions about the mountains' history, I stuttered.

"From this lookout, uh, you can see the capital of Andorra, La Vella, where the legendary Charlemagne would have founded Andorra. It is said that he rode into La Vella with a dandelion in his mouth, a wild duck in his left hand and a mirror in his lap so that he could capture the sun's rays while admiring himself."

Marie tried not to look impressed by my confident guiding, but as the day's heat melted the ice water in her canteen, so did my stories and surreptitious stares melt her heart. Before their tour bus departed, we had a final conversation:

"Marie, it is time to say farewell in Catalan."

She looked up at me and stared at my mouth. I could see her lips slightly parted.

I put my hands on her hips, saw the sun setting over the tops of the fir trees, and then looked down to the ground. She inched closer to me. Her bare kneecaps touched my shin bones. I felt goosebumps rise on my forearms.

"Marie, as sure as we stand here on this solid ground, I know that we will see each other again. Then one day, we will stand on this ground together again. Adeu!"

Then I kissed her softly on her lips, inhaled the sweetness of her beeswax lip gloss and watched as she climbed into the coach bus and disappeared down into the valley below.

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When I reached the outer part of the village, I came to the narrow pass that led to the neighbouring village. The pass had been sealed with ice. Fortunately, I had taken my parents' fireplace poker and with this instrument I started to chip away at the ice impasse.

As I progressed in making a small path in which to traverse the passage, the sun remained steady in its perch along the horizon.

"That's odd," I mused. "How come the sun's position in the sky has not changed over the last hour?"

My hands were starting to ache and I wished that I had brought some warm mittens. Finally, I managed to climb up into the narrow passage via the makeshift stairway that I had cleared with the poker. Once across to the other side, I would hurry to meet Marie and two kids.

After a few steps, the passage widened and I felt like this would be easy. I placed the poker back into my travel bag and continued to plod and tread carefully along the ice-covered mountain passage.

Then I made an error in judgment. Look before you leap is an old expression but in this case, a wise one for just after easing myself down a gentle slope, I jumped a few feet into what looked like a shallow snowdrift. But to my dismay, the snowdrift had been concealing a thin layer of ice. When I landed with my full weight on that thin layer of ice, I broke through it easily. I sank into what lay underneath the ice layer: An icy mountain stream.

So now my lower half was "swimming" in an icy mountain current. Whereas my upper half remained above the ice layer. I kicked my legs upwards hard but somehow the ice around my body had set. I was trapped in this ice quicksand.

My lower half went numb to the point that I could barely feel it. I started to shiver and knew that I had little time to extricate myself. So I grabbed that poker and stabbed at the ice layer with my right hand while my other hand felt for anything to hold onto should I actually succeed at breaking my ice prison.

All I could grab to prevent slipping further into the undercurrent beneath the ice patch was a nearby large rock that glowed in the sun's eerie light rays that bounced off the recent deluge of ice and snow.

That rock was now my rock. If that rock should become dislodged from its root, then when I freed myself, I would likely sink to the bottom of the icy prison and never see my family again.

"Oh God, please spare some of your strength to this rock that glows with the light of the sky. It needs to stand firm in this eerie light and sustain my weight while I continue on my way back to my family. Amen."

With every poke and stab into the ice layer, I saw my own reflection in that ice. What I saw was a 38 year-old man with a look of fear and desperation. I saw a man with a heavy heart and much angst. But I also saw a man with a lot of love for others in his heart and a lot of room for more love to enter. This type of man needed to escape his trap so that he could pass along that love and realize his dreams.