The homecoming

After twenty years and all kind of imaginable ordeals and then some Odysseus had returned home. Finally he was back on Ithaka again, with his wife and son. Penelope's suitors did all lie dead and the mess they had made had been cleared out. As well as Penelope's doubth that it really was her husband returning after all those years. That the 40 something with salt-and-pepper hair and beard and weathered skin was the very same one as the handsome man who had gone off to war two decades ago.

But the twinkle in the chestnut eyes remained the same, as well as the smile when he looked at her and the birthmark on his left hand. Not to mention the knowledge about their special bed, made from the huge olive tree growing right through the house.

- That's why we can't move the bed, dearest one, Odysseus had laughed when she had made her inquire.
- It is you, beloved! Penelope had smiled and the next moment the two bodies seemed to melt into one in the dim light of the olive lamp.

All happiness and joy that night. Finally!

No, not really.

In the shadow beneath the cedar trees someone was silently crying, muted sobs hardly heard over the singing crickets. Hot forehead resting on a steady tree trunk, still the cedar offered little comfort that night.

All her brilliant planning, all her carfully thought out schemes had all been in vain. Days and days, years and years she had spent to get what she wanted.

Odysseus, the great hero of Troy and the cunning creator of the hollow horse and the plan that went with it, Odysseus who stole the magic Palladium, the stone from heaven from Troy and robbed it of its invincible magic. Odysseus who cared less for treassures and gold and more for family values. Odysseus the lover of Circe and Calypso. Mighty goddesses both of them who had offered him immortality in return for his promise to remain with them.

But he had turned immortality down. All he wanted was to go home, to once again hold his dear son Telemachos.

So she had helped him, she had been convinced that when he finally returned home he would be dissapointed. That he would see Itacha for what it was, instead of the shiny castle of his dreams with his young, beautiful bride await he would see a minor farmhouse in need of repair and paint and his wife being a plump 40 years old with graying hair and wrinkled forhead.

She knew nostalgia and how people seem to paint the past in glorious colours, all sunsets and fresh flagrances. How they remembered harmony and perfection! She had seen the dissapointment in so many homecoming heroes. Perseus, Menelaus, Heracles, Jason – just to mention a few. And she was convinced that Odysseus would feel the same when he had finally seen his home for real, seen brute reality shatter his dream-images.

She had been convinced that this realisation would sadden him, break his heart, and make him want to run off again. To leave Ithaca.

And then she would have been there waiting for him. Waiting with her arms open. She would have offered him the same gift he had turned down with Calypso and Circe. Immortality – something she had been assured he would accept that time. From her.

But that hadn't happened, Odysseus had loved to be back with the bleathing sheep, the muddy roads and the little main building that needed both paint and new thatching. And most of all he had loved to see his wife again, he had still loved his faithful Penelope. Not the dream Penelope of his youth but the real one of his middle ages.

So there was nothing more to do for her here, the lady in the shadows realised when Odysseus and Penelope had entered their chamber and closed the doors behind them.

With slumping sholders she turned around and started to walk down to the very same Ithachan beach where she had given Odysseus his final advices.

Athena was crying now. The only man she had ever loved, the only man she had ever wanted. He was the one she could never have. She thought she had waited for the right moment, that she had been clever. But she had never been so wrong.

With a sigh the mighty goddess took off in the air, headed home for Olympos, the cold night wind drying off ambrosian tears from her rosy cheeks.