“Come on, come on, come on!” The voice rings out in my head and despite the hurried frenzy of rushing, I can’t help but smile. Her small hands wrap around my wrist; it takes both of her hands and she can just barely touch her fingers around my wrist. It isn’t a testament to how fast she’s growing. It’s a testament to how small my wrists are. With my free hand, I grab at the final duffel bag we’re loading into the car. There are only two things in that bag. One is an empty box. The other is a red panda stuffie the size of my chest, propped up onto the empty box so his head pokes out of the bag. His name is Pandy.
“Okay, okay!” I try to hide my excitement behind a veil of exhausted okays but with my little girl beaming up at me like that, I might as well try not to be warm in the desert. We woke up at six am for this trip, but I’ve always been a morning person; getting up at six am is easy for me if I have something to do. “We can’t forget Pandy can we?”
She stops smiling for a moment then. With my duffel bag in hand, Pandy sits at eye level with my little girl. They stare at each other for a while. The smile stitched onto Pandy’s face omnipresent. No matter how often he might like to express his displeasure. Fortunately for him, the snout of his nose is so large when tipped the right way, you can’t see his smile. Instead, he looks at you disapprovingly, angrily. But then, like the sun breaking out over the window sill to slap you in the face in the morning, my little girl’s smile is back. She smiles so bright it’s like she had never stopped.
“If we forgot him, he’d chase right after us! Right Pandy?!” She wraps her little arms around Pandy and hugs him tight. Rubs her face against his soft fur. She knows he’s not alive; she’s told us as such, but she knows what I know. Maybe she knows it because I taught her. Pandy doesn’t need to be alive to feel, accept and even give us love. I can’t help myself. I wrap my free arm around her. Around this little ball of light. And kiss her on the forehead.
“Come on, let’s go.” I whisper to her. She nods then races out the door. How lucky am I. How blessed by gods I don’t believe in am I. That I get to spend my day, my life, with this little ball of light. I can’t believe it.
“I really can’t.” I tell the voice in my head. The pictures are unclear; they come to me piece by piece. It isn’t a flowing story that rushes out of me like waterfall. I know what it feels like to be hit by a story, to feel inspiration and to struggle to reach it. I’ve felt the stories within me begging to be written, begging to be told. It’s not what this is. I’m not sure what it is. The movie, fragmented and skipping and scattered as it is, feels different than any story I’ve ever tried to tell before. But I can feel this story in a different way. I can feel the joy he feels.
“What is this?” I ask him.
“We talked about this already!” He tells me happily. Irritatingly happily. There’s a small smile on his face somewhere. Even as I stare at the page before me, I can see his smile leering back at me. It’s like the Cheshire cat. I can see his sharpened smile, but I see nothing else.
“Is this the future?” She feels like my daughter. She was never named in the story on the page, but I could hear myself saying her name. Saying the name I know will one day be my daughter’s. But more than that, Pandy is real. He’s sitting on my bed right now. Somewhere in the world beyond the darkness of my mind.
“Is that what you think?” I can feel the smug smile on his face. The Cheshire smile is gone but I still feel it in my mind. It isn’t malicious or benevolent. It merely is. The face of a voice. In my head. I don’t believe in magic. In fortune telling. In voices in my head. They’re all just a part of me. I learned that a long time ago. But his voice is different. It doesn’t feel like just another of my voices. It feels alive.
“Then what am I? What is this? Just a story? Or a glimpse of the future? Maybe it’s not the future. Maybe it’s the future you want. The future you need. Or maybe. Just maybe. This isn’t your story. It’s mine.
It’s a beautiful day outside. I step outside and it feels like I haven’t felt the sun on my skin in days. I have to squint against the sun but it’s a welcome discomfort. It lets me see her in all the wonder and awe I did when I first saw her. I can still feel it sometimes; the butterflies in my stomach when I see her, when I talk to her. She’s standing with her hand on the car door waiting for me.
She’s barely taller than the car, small as a teenager but those years are long past for us. Of course, I would never say that to her face, I’d be a Fool to. Besides, she’s still as beautiful as ever. She sometimes tells me how she’s aged; the grey hairs, the sagging and wrinkling skin. I see it too. You’d have to blind not to. Literally. But even though it may have been her youthful beauty which pulled me into her orbit a lifetime ago, it’s her that keeps me there.
She may be a mother now, but she radiates a new kind of youth, of vitality. There is an energy, a glow around her only a loving mother has. I’m glad to be a part of it. I’m so incredibly humbled to be allowed to be a part of her light. She shines with the pride of a mother with the purest love for her daughter. For her family. And being in her warmth lets me glow too. Tells me I can not only be loved in a family but that they can accept my love, my light.
“I can’t believe you still bring Pandy around.” She says it disapprovingly, but I can tell in her smile she finds it amusing. I can feel the love in that smile. It fills me with a warmth I’d never felt before they came into my life.
“But we can’t leave Pandy all alone here mommy…” Our daughter’s happy face turns into a frown and it melts all our hearts. To our little girl, Pandy is as much a member of our family as anyone else.
“I didn’t mean it like that little dracon.” A nickname we gave our little girl after one of my stories she loved to hear. My wife kneels to our little girl’s level and strokes her hair gently.
“You have to say sorry.” Our little girl looks determinedly at her mother. I can see the seriousness in her eyes. The demand. Unfortunately for her mother, our little girl is not to be trifled with. Her spirit is as strong as her mother’s. In her mother’s eyes, I only see confusion. Shock. Surprise. I wonder to myself how she can still be surprised after all this time. After how I treated Pandy for all these years and how our little girl has treated Pandy all these years. Pandy has feelings. Pandy is real. She should know that by now.
And she does. I break out in a smile. Like I always do around these two. I see the resignation in my wife’s eyes as she turns to face Pandy. She looks straight into Pandy’s giant plastic eyes. Eyes the size of ping pong balls. I can tell from the angle she’s looking at Pandy she can’t quite see his smile. His snout is too big for that. Pandy looks at her disapprovingly, a little angrily. His feelings demand to be heard.
When she finally speaks, it isn’t to Pandy. Her eyes flick upwards to me knowingly and with what can only be described as a defeated smirk, she says. “I’m sorry Pandy.”
“Snnnk…Mmmfff!! Ahaha!!” Behind my wife, our little girl bursts into laughter. She’s laughing so hard she tilts back, hits the frame of the car and falls (thankfully) with her back on the car seat. It’s not the first time she’s pulled a trick like this. It’s not the first time I’ve pulled a trick like this. But it’s so much more innocent and believable coming from our little girl. Pandy’s face tilts up to reveal the omnipresent smile mischievously laughing at my wife.
My wife throws her head back in frustration. She groans, or maybe growls, out loud but I can still see it. I can see the smile on her face and it’s as infectious as our little girl’s laughter.
The smile that never left my face grows wider and wider. My wife rushes towards our little girl and towers over her hands on her hips.
“So you don’t really care about Pandy’s feelings?” She says menacingly. But unlike our daughter, our wife is not as good at playing us. The smile on her face belies her menacing tone but she’s been with us a long time. And what is menacing is mostly mischievous.
“We know you love him. Even Pandy!” Our daughter says still laughing. She’s clutching her sides she’s laughing so hard. My wife sighs, looking away from us for a second. There’s still a smile on her face though and despite herself, she knows our daughter is right. She does love Pandy. As much as she loves us. And I’m not sure she can believe it.
“Yes, yes.” She says impatiently. When she looks back at our little girl, I see the mischievous smile on her lips, the type I won her over with. Her hands are raised up in the air like claws ready to pounce on her prey. “I’ll give you something to really laugh about!”
She pounces on her prey, her fingers dart to our little girl’s ticklish spots. Her armpits, her sides, her thighs. It’s a different kind of laugh coming from our daughter now. More fevered, higher-pitched and more frantic. But it’s joyous all the same. My wife’s is there too. The hint of the trickster I love tickling her laughter.
I love these two more than anything in the world. They’re the blinding light that brings me joy and hope. The smile on my lips turns from joyous to tear jerking happiness. They are here. Standing before me. Melting my heart so deeply I could cry.
I walk up behind her, wrap my arm around her waist, and kiss her neck.
“I thought this was supposed to be the sun.” I tell the Fool. I hold the tarot card I drew for the day in my hand, twirling it in place. I hope fragments of this movie, the strings I’ve pulled on, will lead to something. But each tug, each pull is painful. It feels like I’m tugging on a giant mirror but when I finally reach the end, there’s nothing there. And if there is. It’s merely a fragment of a shattered piece of glass.
“Oh ho? And what might you mean by that my fellow Fool?” There’s a smile on his face again. The smile of a man with wisdom. The smile of the Cheshire cat in the darkness. Leading me on. Urging me on like always.
“This story, this fractured movie we’ve been watching. It’s more about love than the sun.” But what does the sun mean?
“But what does the sun mean?” Does he hear my thoughts? Or is he simply so attuned to what I’m thinking he may as well hear my thoughts. Or, despite what I feel, is this voice in my head merely another voice in my head. Yet another part of me?
“Well dear boy? Not answering the question, are we?” Is he referring to the pause? Or is he reading my distracted thoughts yet again?
“Tick-tock my boy. The sun is going down.”
The sun sits low in the sky as we drive down the highway. We take this trip whenever we can. It isn’t easy with our schedules, but we make it work. We know we have to. We learned how important it is to keep a family together and I won’t allow my family, my real family, to fall apart. This time, I have the power to do something about it. I have the power to keep everyone together. We do it to remind ourselves about what’s important.
Every day, every morning isn’t like it was today. Getting a little girl awake at six am is far from easy. Even today, as excited as she was, she’s already asleep in the backseat. Even asleep, the love between us radiates warmth. Pandy watches over her like a caring brother. My wife isn’t a morning person either. At all. Sometimes, some days, there are no smiles on our faces as we get up for this trip.
There’s tired frowns and groans. There’s grumbling and complaining about whether we need to go. When we first get up, we don’t always remember why we do this. On our worst days, there are arguments and disagreements. Raised voices and tempers rising. Then we sit in a tight, enclosed space and fume. We don’t smile; we don’t talk; we sit and we stew in our anger. Some days, none of us want to go.
But we still do. We always do.
Because as sure as the sun is going to rise as we drive down this highway, this is something we need to do. Our love for each other binds us together but this trip, this three-hour drive to a mountain lake is the manifestation of that love. It’s the promise we make, and we keep to each other. It isn’t once a month or once a year. It isn’t set on a schedule or a timetable. It’s a place we go to when we can. Whenever we can. That’s the promise.
The promise between us is stronger than any bond as random as chance. We built it into something more. Something strong enough to bring us together on our darkest days. Even when we yell at each other and scream at each other, when we feel like we hate one another, we are bound by something more than the blood in our veins. We are bonded together by choice.
Today, there’s a smile on my lips. Today, I look in my rear view mirror and I see my little dracon sleeping with a smile on her face. She’s bundled up in the blanket I slept with my entire life until the day she was born. It wards off the morning chill, protecting her with its warmth. I know when we arrive, she’ll be bursting with energy. The warmth of her innocent love will fill me in ways I only knew were possible after she graced my life with hers.
My eyes look back to the road. There’s no one else out here. It’s too early; it’s the off-season; and it’s a workday. The sun has barely moved but the warmth of its rays fill the car. I can feel it on my chest through the window. I let the warmth of it ward off some of the morning chill.
I turn to look at my wife. Her finger pokes me in the cheek long before I could fully take her in. I’m so predictable she saw me coming from a kilometer away. I turn back to the road, making sure we’re safe but even that short glimpse was enough to fill me with her warmth. She’s tired like she is every morning but she’s excited. She’s happy. And it makes me happy.
“Putting the sun and warmth into the story doesn’t make it about the sun.” I tell the voice in my head. I toss the card onto the table. The colorful picture of radiating energy spills out onto the black table. A perfectly framed image on a perfectly black background.
“And what makes you think I am in control of this story?” I can see him in my mind’s eye. A faceless figure holding the film reel, the strings delicately in his hands. He pulls on them lightly and they come to him freely, happily. But he never pulls them entirely free. He only ever tugs at them gently, reminding him they are there. Perhaps priming them for the next person. For me. There’s a caring smile on his face matched with a smug one beside it.
“And you never answered the question either: what does the sun mean?”
“Vitality. Energy. But this story isn’t about that.” I pull on one of the strings and like so many others, there’s nothing at the end of this one. “This is a story about love. This should be for the lovers.”
“Then what should be the story for the sun? For today?” Others might feel interrogated by this Fool’s string of questions but to me, it’s as much his interrogation as mine. I need to understand. I know that. Maybe he does too. Maybe that’s why he’s asking.
“Something about youth. Something about energy.” I fumble. The words don’t come to me. The story doesn’t either. I pull on another string and this time, there’s a shard. A shard of a father, a mother, and a daughter. Of a loving family.
“She isn’t young enough?” The voice is right over my shoulder. There’s no finger but I know he’s pointing to the daughter. The little girl. My little dracon.
“But that’s not the point. This story isn’t about her. It’s about him.” I point to the father, the man. This is his story. My story? The Fool’s? All the same, it’s about the father. It’s about their love as a family. Their connection. It’s not about her. It’s not about her, the wife, either. No matter how many times this story sprinkles words like warmth, sun and light, it isn’t about that. It’s about their love.
“Meaning what exactly?” The Fool cocks his head to the side in question. I can see it spinning upside down like the Cheshire cat’s. The cat I once loved for its wisdom and trickiness. “Can’t their love be enough?” His face is in mine. I can’t make out its expression. Can’t hear the emotion behind his words.
I only hear them.
“Can’t you stop lying to yourself?” They wash over me. Wash against my toes. The words fill the space between my toes with cold but as my blood rushes back into them, it’s the warmth I feel. It’s reassuring. It’s welcome.
It’s home. I look out at the turquoise-blue waters and that’s what I know. This isn’t a tourist stop with a little stop and sign on the side of the road. It’s a gap between two lines of metal railings. There are no significant landmarks to recognize this place aside from that. We’re in the middle of the mountains but with a lake as big as this and mountains all around us, there’s no way we could find this tiny, unremarkable spot if not for that gap between the railings. And still, this is home.
We sit on a giant rock on the shoreline. Depending on the weather, this area is either submerged in water or a rocky beach. Today, it’s a rocky beach with plenty of uncomfortable rocks to sit on and watch the waves roll by. We sit there quietly, listening to the waves rise and fall. It’s a gentle day today. There’s no breeze to make the waves crash against one another. They roll gently, rising and falling like the chest of some sleeping beast. I let them wrap their ethereal arms around me like old friends embracing one another.
My wife is sitting beside me. I feel her shoulder against my shoulder. I feel the warmth of her body even through our sweaters. She lets her head rest on my bony shoulder. I know she can feel my clavicle through my skin and bones shoulder, but she also knows I love the feeling of her head resting on me. She knows I love the feeling of being trusted. It’s painful for both of us: bone on bone. But we love it all the same.
Our daughter is walking along the rocks. We were scared, terrified once. We still are. If she falls and hits her head on the rocks, who knows how hurt she’ll be. The closest hospital is over an hour away. Then one day, she told us. She made us understand. She loves us. And she knows when she’s in pain, we’re in pain. She knew she couldn’t promise us she wouldn’t get hurt. But she just wanted us to know. To understand that she understood. And it was enough for us.
We’re still scared. Still terrified. But we let the joy which fills her heart and ours triumph over the rest. We watch our daughter with gentle, calm smiles on our lips as she dances on those rocks. We hum along with her as she sings the lullaby we sing her every night. She’s careful not to go too far. To stay not just within our line of sight, but within our comfort zone.
I let the warmth of my love for her. The warmth of the love I have for my wife. The warmth of the love they have for me. The warmth of the love of our family. Fill me. And I hope I never forget that warmth in my life. And I hope. I try, to send that warmth back to the long, dark years of my life when I never knew such a feeling.
…
…
“What is this?” I ask again. My voice is quieter this time. It quivers with a wealth of emotions bubbling to the surface. My eyes start to tear but the slow breathing, the pauses. The fragmented pieces of the story keep them from coming. I feel it in my breath. In my eyes. But they don’t come.
No answer.
“Is this the future?” I ask again. “Is this some sci-fi, emotional love time jump?” But I know he won’t answer. I still don’t know if he’s just another voice in my head. I still don’t know whether this is his story or my story. I don’t know.
“But you do.” The quietest of whispers. So quiet I don’t know whether it’s him or me. But it’s right. I do know. I don’t know the magic or the mechanism behind it. I don’t know the narrative techniques and literary devices at play in this story. Perhaps somewhere in my mind, one of the voices knows but that’s not what this is about.
It’s not about the magic or the mechanism.
It isn’t even about the story.
It’s about the emotions.
The things I feel now.
This is about us.