you're too young & eager to love

Your mother tells you stories.

Most of the mothers in the village do not know how to read, but your mother does, and her most prized possession is a book of stories – tales of adventure, romance, excitement, things your small village can only dream of. You listen to her read, her voice warm and quiet but so articulate and so lovely, and then, once she tucks you in and kisses you goodnight, you take the book and turn through the pages. You look at the delicately inked illustrations and pretend that you can read the words yourself.

You decide that you want to be like the characters in the book. You aren’t sure if you want to be like the princes, going on quests and slaying dragons, or like the princesses, falling in love with men who are so passionate, charming, considerate, clever – you only know that you want great adventure, great romance, great excitement.

How you’ll find that in your small village, you don’t know.


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The boy is no prince – he is a baker.

He fumbles around for words. His knees are always covered with dirt and his hands with flour. There is not an ounce of chivalry in his body. He’s about as far from the characters of your storybook as a piece of moss is from a beautiful rose.

And yet you knock on his door every morning and smile at him as you walk to school. Your mother is reluctant to grant you permission at first – a young lady should not walk unaccompanied with an orphaned boy – but you cajole and plead until she relents. She sighs, and says that she supposes it’s kind of you to help out the poor little boy. You don’t correct her – you don’t say that it’s not out of sympathy that you walk with him and help him with his homework, and share your sandwiches when he forgets his lunch (which is often).

You don’t correct her, because you aren’t really sure why you do those things. Maybe because you don’t think anyone should go without friends? Maybe because you’re trying to be a nice person, like the princesses who always get happy endings? Or maybe because he has a bright smile when he lets it out, and can be quite clever if he tries, and is genuinely so good, with so much empathy and respect for everything around him despite all of the sorrow the world has piled upon his back?
You don’t know. You don’t think about it often. You just walk with him, eat with him, laugh with him, and listen when he tells you how he wants to be a baker because when the old women visit to help clean his house, they always put a loaf of bread in the oven, and the time when the warm smell of dough transforming into crust fills the house is the only time it ever feels like home.


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Life with him is easy, natural.

You’ve been friends for so long that you already know everything about him: his favorite foods, his favorite jokes, his favorite place in the meadow to lie on his back and look up at the clouds. Little changes, except that the physical part of your relationship develops slowly, from awkward and nervous to wonderful and exciting.

And you know – you know not to expect great chivalry, romantic gestures, or grand speeches. Your dreams of princes from storybooks are pushed to the back of your head replaced by simpler worries about flour prices and temperature changes.

One morning, as you walk down the road to market, he stops you. And there, in the middle of the dirt road with chickens clucking nearby and the sun rising behind you, he drops to one knee and unearths from his pocket a small, gold ring. He gets as far as, “I – I want to spend the rest of my life – if you would only –” before you pull him to his feet, throw your arms around his neck.
The whole village comes to the wedding. You wear white, there are flowers everywhere, the old women nod and say they saw this coming years ago. He can’t stop smiling. And then, once the guests have left and your feet have grown tired of tight slippers, he picks you up in his strong arms and carries you to the small house on the edge of the wood. Carries you home.

You will learn to bake bread and pastries, all that the village can eat. You will give sweets to the children. You will put aside your storybook. Your home will always smell of warm dough baking.

You will be happy with him, if you tell yourself that you are.