I sat watching a young, spirited man laughing in a picture film. He was holding hands with a much younger version of Mum. It was the first time that it struck me how old Mother was. I glanced over at her. At thirty-seven, she was graying, and had bags under her eyes and deep grooves cut in her forehead with time and worry. But mostly I watched my dad.
The picture film had him and Mum going through a park, sharing intimate looks. I wondered briefly who had shot this footage. After that, four months later, Mother had gained a lot of weight, and Damon was rubbing her fat stomach and absolutely beaming. Next, three months afterwards, Mother was holding a shiny baby (I recognized Joy’s pout), with Dad right at her side. And next they were caring for the infant, feeding her and diapering her; and playing with her, bouncing her up and down.
Then Mum got fat again, and then there was the last scene. She was on the bed again, with another newborn, but now there was no Damon and no joyousness with her. She held the baby close and cried onto its perfectly round head. The scene ended, and I was left with a picture frame in my hands of Damon holding his baby that he had actually seen jubilantly, and kissing Mum.
Mother leaned over and wiped my wet face and said, “He lived a good life, Aigneis, which is more than most can say. Just remember: you can’t change the past or present problems, but you can try to change the future ones.”
I nodded. She was right. But still. “Why is life how it is?” I would have asked why is life so unfair? But that sounded childish, even in my head.
“Only God knows the reason, Aigneis, but there is a reason,” she said.
“A reason for innocent lives to be stolen?” I asked heatedly.
“Putting a worldly view on truth distorts it.” She looked at me with tender eyes. “I guess for now all we can say is like Mother, like Daughter. I’m sorry it had to be this way, dear. But there is a difference between us. There is a strength in you, Aigneis, that I have never had.”
I stood up abruptly. “I’m exhausted, I’m going to bed. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Aigneis, I hope you feel better tomorrow.”
I sat up late into the night, wondering maybe, if Absalom had married me, if it would have been me crying into my infant’s head.
*
“Aigneis, I’m talking to you Aigneis,” Joy said.
I was thinking about our father.
“Aigneis!”
“Hm?” I blinked at her.
“I was talking about your job applications,” she said, scowling. When I looked down her face softened. “What’s wrong?”
“Just thinking of Dad.”
She frowned. “You can’t be feeling sorry for what you did, are you? He was a Sting, he deserved it!”
I stared at her incredulously. Then I snapped, “YOU DON’T KNOW THE HALF OF IT!”
Flinging the picture of Damon, Joy, and Mum at her startled lap, I flew out of the room, down countless hallways, and out the great front doors. I hurtled down the hill; everything mattered, nothing mattered, I was slipping and stumbling but kept going in a haze of tears. I made my way through the forest, through the twists of many trees, and then stopped.
The field was on the other side of the oak I stood facing.
I walked out to my father’s grave, and now you can understand the multitude of feelings that battered at me as I stood there, wishing to God that it had been someone else, anyone else. I flung the key into the sky with its gray clouds pressing in.
A twig snapped behind me, and I started. It was Mother. I rushed into her arms, where she held me until my tears stopped flowing.
“It’s all going to be okay, Aigneis,” she told me, stroking my hair like how she had when I was a child. Sunlight appeared to brake through the clouds.
“Of course it is,” I said, “I have you, and Joy.”
We chuckled softly together at the word pun that my sister’s name seemed, and somewhere nearby a bird began to sing.
1
Adding your comment:
