father death, father time, father of mine

it's a picture in black and white, kind of faded with time and spotted by white dots. in it, a little boy stands in front of a pine tree. the pine is young too, a stick figure of a plant with a thin trunk and shallow branches, nothing like the imposing coarse-bodied titan it undoubtedly grew into. i might know this pine. the boy might be standing in the yard of the same school i went to for eight years, ages after the picture was taken. the background looks hazy but familiar enough; white walls and windows, a concrete walkway winding around the building. i might've stood under the shade of that same tree, sat on the stone slabs and laughed with my classmates. it might've recognized me and had no way of letting me know.

it might also be the same tree his older sister planted when they gave the saplings to the children. or it might not be.

i don't know who the person behind the camera is but it must've been winter or early spring when they decided to take the picture because there's snow on the ground and on pine needles and on the boy's shoes.he's wearing black trousers and what looks like a bomber jacket zipped half-way. inside, a white collared shirt with buttons. his shoes are barely visible. a fur-trimmed hat frames his face. he's looking directly at the camera, at me, sternly. dark eyes, reproachful and his mouth, a thin line. a little sad and a little angry. or he may just be annoyed at having to stay motionless for the photograph.

the ground is smudged under the tree. part of the earth not covered in white, rocks jutting out. it's a cold day, one of the many that has passed and will.

in the picture, the time stands still and so does the boy. a brother to a sister and a brother to three brothers.

a father to me, once.

clever, they tell me, but that didn't mean much then. a boy on the stage becomes a man in a prison cell.

gives his coat to a random person on the street and hits my mother? did that happen?

someone told me it did. someone told me it didn't.

when i'm young, he's overseas. he calls sometimes and he's going to be back one day with gifts to make up for his absence.

when i'm older, i wonder where he really is.

when i'm even older, he comes home and he's dying. a stranger meets a stranger.

i'm not allowed in the hospital room. he's not allowed out of it. still, he's on the stairs and in the hall and hugging me. is this the last time i see him?

long hours, white walls, milk chocolate bars and fridge magnets are what remain of that time somewhere between hope and hopelessness, beginning and the end.

a dream dies along with the man in the hospital room. it's a young dream, not yet fully

defined and it lies in the coffin next to him.

a boy is born and it's a bad time. unrest, poverty, and uncertainty does not make the future look promising for anyone, especially for too brave boys who know so many things and don't know just as much.

for a while i go to the same school he did. people tell me how intelligent he used to be. they say he could write exceptionally well. i know some of his classmates and even women who used to like him. his history teacher hugs me and i can tell she's fond of me through no effort of my own.

i've heard she wanted to help him get into university.

i've heard my grandfather used to throw books from the balcony.

a boy must work in the field and he does, he helps his father. a boy must fight and he does that as well. he's good at it, a real superstar of the streets.

a boy leaves school for war and i imagine it takes as much ego as it does courage. his brother follows to bring him back. my father gets wounded between the eyes and he really shouldn't survive but he does. they say he barely even noticed getting shot. when he comes back his leg is injured and his voice is different but he's alive and he's back and i suppose that's the only way i ever knew him. a book is the only thing he and his brother bring home aside from memories.

i've heard his soldier friends used to congregate at our house. ten or forty or a hundred of them.

he gets into fights, into trouble and out of it. runs from the cops and only sometimes succeeds.

he meets my mother, for better or for worse.

i'm born and he keeps saying how beautiful i am, even though all children look the same at the start. he brings home a puppy. we watch cartoons together and he draws me pictures. he's good at drawing things. he tells me stories and doesn't leave me in the kindergarten because he doesn't want me to cry.

in a memory, we're in the yard with the round table and wooden chairs he built. me, my mother and him. there's a hammock. i'm in the hammock. or my mother is. he breaks the hazelnut shells and gives the hearts to us to eat.

it's a stone table with an iron stem and i don't know if moss covers it then but it does through the years. death of the creator does not mean the death of a creation and so it stands in the garden, alone, for a long time.

my father does not have a proper job.he argues with my mother and makes up with her. spends more money on his friends than on his family. he can't bring himself to move to the city so we can live on our own, me, my mother and him.

someone says he doesn't smile and doesn't talk much. someone else says he talks a lot with the people he likes. was the mention of my name really enough to calm him down? it's a photograph in color. he and i stand in a field. grass, green and yellow. a concrete wall and trees as the landscape. it's a place i don't recognize. if it's our yard, it looks different. i'm still a child, very small, wearing a white hat. there's a pacifier in my mouth. he's in a blue striped shirt, holding my hand and leaning on a cane. his leg is bandaged. was it really during the war that he injured it?

there's another picture from the same day. it's gotten dark. we're on a chair next to a tree. he's holding me and there's a ring on his finger. nose hooked and eyes serious . i'm smiling, a pine cone in my hand. there must've been many days like this.

he's tall. he loves to read. he knows all the answers to the questions on quiz shows. he believes in god. he likes to swear. he neatly trims his nails. he listens to Status Quo. he takes ages to get ready before going out because he wants to look good. he gives his sister's children books he'd like them to read. he loves the iliad and the odyssey and all the deities and my mother's hands. he's interested in medicine. he's a middle child of 5. he's a good basketball player. he gets ugly when he gets drunk. he fights with people, feels guilty and apologizes. he looks like me.

in another frame he sits at a table. three other guys around him, they're all looking into the camera lens and i can recognize one of them. he's the one who died of an overdose not long ago. i know his son, only a little younger than me. here, my father is in black, wearing a leather jacket. his posture is slightly hunched and he looks like the person from the stories i've heard so often. bottles on a white tabletop. a chain-link fence in the back.

he makes a really stupid plan and backs out of it. except some plans, you can't back out of. it's a bad time to be anything but especially to be a prisoner. they say he didn't sign the testimony even when they beat him bloody and swore at the guards when they hit an inmate. he walks into the courtroom and it's years before he walks out, sick.

a call out of the blue. he's coming home. in my mind, a plane crosses the ocean overhead and lands in front of the gate with the peeling paint. it brings me a father, finally. we're in my aunt's house and while others wait for a piece of their past to come back, i wait for the future, alight with a child's excitement. then he's right there, and too weak to hold me. does he smile when he sees me for the first time in so long? i wish i knew what he thought just then or what his expression looked like. adults talk while i dance around in the room with the piano and, like a spy, steal clandestine glances at the man; imagine the future the two of us are gonna have, now that hes back, at last.

he loves my mother. his brother tells me he said this at the end.

he doesn't get to see her. i don't know if he had been waiting. she only arrives at the wake and it's not often i see my mother cry but she cries then. i do not. at six or seven, the sight of her tears is more distressing to me than the cold body of my father lying still.

somewhere in my mind, in a room with a blue wallpaper, my parents argue playfully and i hit my father on the leg with a tv remote. he picks my mother up and spins her around.

someone tells me he was a good man. a great man. a saint of all the men and the women and all the warriors.

someone else tells me he was the tragedy of my mother.

she tells me nothing and i can never bring myself to ask.

just left of here is another story about three generations of women all ending up alone.

a man dies and he's been gone a long time already. a woman says he's beautiful even in death.

somebody thinks it was the war that killed him.

he was only one of the five siblings but i believe his mother loved him the most. maybe because he was dead.

when i still believed in god, i imagined the two of them watching. my father and the world's.

sometimes the thought comforted me. sometimes i swore at him and hoped he heard.

a picture. i sit in his lap. i look at the camera and he looks at me. i suppose then it used to be an ordinary thing. we're in a room i know well, it's where i watched my dvds. there's a drawing on the wall behind us. sunset on the lake, birds and greenery. a black figure rows his boat to the shore or away from it.

a boy in the schoolyard becomes a boy on the street becomes a man of war becomes a man, dead.

the boy, the man, the father is gone and i guess all that's left is me, wondering. if he would have liked me. if i would have like him. if my father would have understood me better than my mother does. if he would have loved the books and movies and songs i love.

a fearless man leaves behind a terrified child and isn't it interesting that a man who never seemed to flinch would have a daughter who can never look the world in the eye. i imagine i am scared for the both of us, afraid of the things he should have been afraid of and if only he had waited for a little while i would have told him all about how dangerous the world really is. how you can never ever risk things because for every hero that makes it home there is one that does not. for all the people praising your valour - one girl resenting your irresponsibility. a failed journey of the father sends the mother on her own odyssey and there's a daughter left, waiting.

a child at the cemetery. collector of memories. historian of one man.

a sister to no one.

a daughter to a mother.

a daughter to a father, once or always.

Written by Mari.