Love and Sacrifice Stories
Since she was a child, she had always envied the love between her parents.
Her father was a renowned painter in that city, having held countless exhibitions, and his care for her mother was meticulous and all-encompassing.
She often felt that her mother must be the happiest woman in the world, being able to receive such selfless love from such an outstanding man as her father.
She frequently saw her parents painting together. They had been taught by the same teacher since they were young. They had a habit when painting: the father would first use light-colored brushes to outline the detailed contours on the canvas, and then the mother would color it based on those outlines.
The final painting would be like the crystallization of their love, full of vibrant and dynamic life.
As she grew up and entered into a relationship, eventually getting married, she found that her life with her husband was not like what she had hoped for all her life. They did not share common interests and often spent their spare time doing their own things.
She felt that life was like a train filled with bland emptiness, repeating back and forth. The love that once existed felt like a cigarette butt lost in a dark tunnel, shining for a few seconds before disappearing.
Two years into their marriage, her husband encountered trouble at work. Facing her disappointed husband, she not only failed to provide comfort and encouragement but also felt that compared to her mother, she had always been an unfortunate woman. Not only did she not find a partner with similar interests, but she also had to face her husband’s incompetence.
After an argument with her husband, she returned to her parents’ home. By then, her mother had been deceased for over a year.
She confided all her dissatisfaction with life and her husband to her father, asking him in grievance, “Why can I never have sweet love like you and mom?”
Her elderly father did not immediately answer her question. Instead, he unfolded a canvas and began to paint in front of her. She was surprised by her father’s actions because he had not painted a single piece since her mother passed away.
Ten minutes later, her father showed her the painting. It was a painting with only one color; all the shades were tranquil blues, deeply and lightly covering the entire canvas.
In the center of the canvas was a fish swimming in the deep sea, with a small lamp on its head emitting a blue light.
Her father told her that, in fact, he had always been able to paint with only one color.
It turned out that when her father was young, he was diagnosed with severe color blindness. To keep him from giving up painting, her mother, who had studied painting with him since childhood, would always help him color his completed monochrome drafts. It was because of those beautifully colored paintings that her father enjoyed fame in the city.
“So all along, the truly happy person was not your mother but me, a man who received your mother’s selfless love,” her father told her.
Her father gave her the painting and asked her to return to her husband. From then on, whenever she saw that painting hanging in her living room, she would remember the story her father had told her about the fish in the deep sea.
In the depths of the Mariana Trench, the water is so deep and cold that almost no life can survive. Yet, in such deep waters, a kind of anglerfish lives happily, giving birth to offspring and reproducing generation after generation.
The larger the anglerfish, the blinder it becomes, unable to see the road ahead. But as long as love happens to them, a small lamp will grow on their heads, lighting up the way ahead, allowing them to swim safely in the deep sea.
She finally understood that love is about lighting a small lamp in the dark for the one you love.
Thank you for reading! ” Sitestorys “
