True love
I once had a friend, about whom I did not know anything special, except that his father was an "drunk". We played our children’s games carefreely, but once, on New Year’s Eve, a friend ran to me with a blissfully happy face: “Let's go, look what folder I put a Christmas tree on!” I could not understand the reasons for such irrepressible joy: a lavishly decorated Christmas tree (or rather a pine, more characteristic of the region of Semipalatinsk, where the first 10 years of my life passed) was an integral attribute of New Year's childhood. But the friend's enthusiasm took its toll, and I somewhat reluctantly trudged after him. And did not regret it.
There really was something to see. I have never seen anything like it again, never in the New Year or Christmas time in my entire subsequent life. In the middle of the room, at an angle of forty degrees, there was a plucked brown-green tree of hard-to-coniferous species, but due to a clear lack of needles, more reminiscent of our usual steppe tumbleweed. The only decoration of the "Christmas tree" was a nail with which the "hero of the day" was driven directly into the wooden floor. The trajectory of the herringbone, more reminiscent of a Soviet ground-to-air missile at a combat post, was set by the angle she sawed in the forest, quite sharp, as already mentioned.
The smile approaching my face was swept away by the friend’s enthusiastic look: "True, great! It’s brought me a folder for the New Year!” Of course, it was the best Christmas tree of all time, because it brought a folder to his son - an alcoholic for the first (and maybe last) time in his life. And then I guessed why my friend was wearing these ridiculous tarpaulin boots all year round, why his eyes were restless and muddy, why he himself faded and was thin. It became clear to me what was in those restless eyes: the experience and shame for my father, sleepless nights of buzier and abuse, and so on and so forth. And all this was regally forgiven and forgotten for one plain Christmas tree.
Noticing something new, repulsive in the guise of my friend, I began to be ashamed and shy. And our friendship never grew into friendship. Now I understand that after I saw a crookedly pinned to the floor of the Christmas tree, the image of my friend forever remained nailed to something ugly, ugly that I absolutely did not want to let into my happy and carefree childhood. But with what happiness and knightly delight my nameless child friend carried this ugliness on his flimsy children's shoulders! He would probably agree to die rather than laugh at the folder, let alone renounce him!
Like any Soviet schoolchild, of course, I scorned all drunkards and parasites there, stigmatized them and condemned them. But this story with a Christmas tree turned something in my mind. I wanted to see the father of my yard friend. I don’t remember whether this dream came true or not, but now I looked at everyone about whom I was condemned that he was a drunkard (and there were quite a few in our closed military town), as the father of that guy. I thought of a miserable New Year tree. And I felt sorry for this man. And I no longer condemned him, along with everyone. And did not brand.
Going through the memory of faded pictures from childhood, looking at some faces more closely, on many of them I see the labels of a cruel, terrible children's court: “drunkard”, “womanizer”, “thief”, etc. Now that I do not know these people at all, the circumstances of their life, I admit that the cruel label has nothing to do with this or that real person, but I can not do anything! I can’t remove these labels: they tightly fused with these people in my childhood, hanged by the authority of the words of parents, adults, all kinds of bench grandmothers. So they die these people in my memory with these labels. But among them I see a childhood friend shining with a blissful smile, forever nailed by memory to that ugly Christmas tree. But the label "drunkard" no longer rests on a person whom I don’t even remember, who I wouldn’t know anything if not for this ridiculous boy from childhood. With his sacrificial childish love, he justified his father. However, is it really different, true love? ...
Archpriest Andrei Kulkov
