The Price of A Dream

“I might get late today. Don’t wait for me and have your dinner on time ma!” said Clara as she left the house. Her weak, old mother just looked at her leave with a tight-lipped expression. ‘Today will be different,’ hoped Clara. She carried the same hope every single day as she left home. Clara was twenty-five, born and raised in Nottingham, and was a photographer.

She had a bachelor’s degree in marketing and she had worked as a marketing consultant for a few years at a meager pay. She hated every moment of that job so she finally decided to call it quits a year back. She used up all her savings to buy a professional photographer’s camera and a couple of lenses. She loved photography. She absolutely loved it.

Ever since she was in college, she loved taking pictures. She would keep fiddling around with her cheap old camera. At that point in time, she only looked at it as a hobby. She would never think of doing it full time as she was aware of the struggles it took to be a professional in this field.

Being a photographer for a living was hard; especially when you were poor. Her father left the house when she was sixteen. He abandoned her and her mother. She never fully understood why he did it but she deeply hated him for doing it. She could somehow attend college with the savings they had. She had to juggle two part time jobs between her college to stay alive. She had to get a job to support her mother and she did just that. Her heart however, lied elsewhere. It took her three years of grinding at her job before she could finally gather the courage to follow her dream. 

“I’ll capture a masterpiece one day,” she would say, “like Van Gogh’s Starry night or Raphael’s Sistine Madonna or Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, I’ll have Clara’s masterpiece one day.”

Today she had to go visit a local photography journal’s office to show them her photography portfolio. She had sent a picture to them a couple of weeks ago. It was one of those contest things and she received a positive response from them yesterday. She was elated. It had been weeks since she had received a positive response from a photography journal. It took her an hour and a half to reach the place. The place looked pretty old. It was mostly made of wood and had a low roof. 

“Hello, I’m Clara Ford. I had an appointment with the manager here, Mr. Rutherford,” she said to the receptionist.

The receptionist paused for a moment and looked at her from head to heel. She then motioned her to sit on one of the chairs and asked her to wait. Clara sat and waited patiently. She was used to it by now. They always made her wait. After a quarter of an hour, she looked at the receptionist and she signaled her to wait. She sighed and waited. She could not do anything else. Another half hour elapsed before she was called. She stood up, feeling hopeful and walked to the reception.

“Where’s the manager?” she asked.

“He just asked you to deposit your work here. He’ll get back to you soon,” said the lady at the reception nonchalantly.

Clara sighed. She handed her portfolio dejectedly and walked out. She knew it meant failure. ‘We will get back to you’ almost always meant that they would never do it.

“Maybe I was late and they had already found someone,” Clara thought.

She had no other appointments for today. She was free to travel and take pictures for the rest of the day. She loved it; capturing a fleeting moment before it faded away into nothingness. “Art is eternal and time is short,” she would always say. She had read it somewhere. 

“I’ll click my masterpiece today,” she said (she said the same every day), “A masterpiece for which they will remember me for centuries to come.”

The day dragged on. She took a few shots here and there but none of them were exceptional. The constant rumbling of hunger in her stomach made her aware of her dire state. She wanted to believe that things were good but they were not.

Her savings from her previous job were spent almost entirely. She would have trouble meeting this month’s rent payment. She made almost no money from photography. She would travel aimlessly around town trying to capture ‘ephemeral moments.’ It did give her joy though, it truly did. But she couldn’t continue doing this. 

She captured the innocent face of a child; a blue rose standing tall and proud; a swan and her beauty being mirrored in the lake; a monarch butterfly resting gently on a sleepy flower. It filled her heart with joy. The sun was about to set in an hour. She had reached a park near her house.

Loners sat depressed on park benches. An aura of fearsome melancholy lay about in the air. She was overcome with a feeling of overwhelming sadness. She sat on a bench and sighed. She was tired. She was hungry. She was defeated. She was heartbroken. She was dejected. She was lonely. Tears almost pooled in her eyes. Reality struck her.

“What am I doing with my life?” she said to herself with a sniff. “I went to sixteen different journals and magazines this month and my work was accepted in only one of them; and their pay was pathetic. I waste away my day roaming around aimlessly like an imbecile while mother waits for me at home. I don’t have money to feed her or myself and yet I continue doing this.”

She gazed at the sun; its dying light flooded the place. “Mother has been sick for years now. I wasted my savings in buying this camera instead of treating her. Why doesn’t she ever stop me from doing anything? She did not say a word when I told her about my decision of leaving my job. She hasn’t stopped me from doing anything ever since father left. Is she afraid of me? Is she afraid that I will leave her too?” She broke into a sob 

The mask was beginning to crack now. In the throes of passion, she could not understand what she was doing but as time passed and things became heavy and her passion began to sink like the setting sun, she realized the true price of a dream.

“I cannot keep doing this. In another few weeks, all our money would be depleted and we would starve. Oh, I am such a failure! Mother would suffer so much because of me. She already suffers so much but never says a word. Oh, how alone she is and how alone I am!”

She sat there in silence and cried her eyes out. “Should I give this up? Should I go back to my old life?” She thought, “But what of the joy that this gives me. I have never felt so happy in my life before. I am so happy and yet, so woeful. I do not understand what any of this even means. Am I happy or sad? What about mother? Why doesn’t she ever say anything? Why should I give up on my dream? Is this even truly my dream? Why can’t I just get up every day and do what my heart tells me to do? Oh, how miserable I am! What about my masterpiece? I must be rational; words and dreams don’t fill bellies. Mother must be lonely too. I should go,” she said and stood up and rushed back home.

She rang the doorbell. After a minute her mother opened the door. She was in her late forties and yet, she looked terribly old. Her black hair was disheveled and unkempt with a few streaks of grey. The wrinkles and lines on her face depicted years of pain and sadness. She looked weak and sick. She looked like a living portrait of sorrow and woe. Despite all of this, when she saw Clara, she smiled.

Clara froze. She just stood there for a while and let all of that sorrow sink in. There is a beauty in sadness, a beauty that most people can’t understand. 

“My masterpiece,” she mumbled, “Clara’s Masterpiece,” she said; this time triumphantly. She asked her mother to wait. She pulled up her camera and adjusted a few settings. A few minutes of the golden hour’s light still remained. It was a photographer’s delight. She took a picture (her last one perhaps?). Her mother’s face - captured along with all of its sadness and happiness. “The two can exist simultaneously too perhaps,” thought Clara.

“What’s the matter dear?” asked her mother.

“Nothing ma, let’s have dinner,” said Clara innocently.

“But it’s too early now,” said her mother.

“But I’m so hungry!” said Clara, “Let’s eat, mother.” 

“Maybe the price of my dream is too high for me to pay. Maybe some dreams are just not meant to be,” thought Clara. “Ah no matter, I finally got Clara’s masterpiece.”