A photograph lives for a fraction of a second. In that brief collision of light and time, something is fixed forever. And then the moment is gone.
Life offers the same kind of instant, though we rarely recognize it as it unfolds. We move through it unaware, only later tracing back the thin invisible line where everything shifted.
The evening that altered my life did not look important. There was no thunder, no warning, no sense that destiny was clearing its throat. Just my father at the kitchen table, the rustle of a local newspaper, and me—half listening, half elsewhere.
The paper lay open between us, smelling faintly of ink. Headlines shouted about politics and rising prices, about other people’s problems. And then, almost buried among them, I saw a small advertisement. So small it could have vanished in a blink.
It invited Lithuanian women to correspond with American men seeking a serious relationship.
That was all. A few plain sentences. No promises. No miracles. Just black letters pressed into cheap paper.
Yet something in those words felt like a door left slightly open. Not quite a dream—I had not allowed myself to dream that far—but a possibility.
“Why not?” I thought. The question felt reckless and calm at the same time. “I have nothing to lose.”
So I picked up a pen and wrote a letter.