Frankly Told: Footsteps
“I know, it has taken me all this time to come see you. I guess to tell you the truth, I didn’t know what I could say to you without breaking down.” He said.
As he stood there, the wind rustled his clothes about him. He pushed his hands a little deeper into the back pockets of his Levi’s, to stop the cold from caking his fingertips. As gentle as it was, it sounded like screams in his ears within the empty silence that hang after his statement. No matter how many times he visited, he couldn’t seem to get used to how intrusive the winds outside the city got without all the buildings to break them. He felt a shiver hug his spine and tried to brave it as he cleared his throat.
“I still don’t know how to start this but I guess I’ll be the only one speaking because it seems you said all that needs to be said. Besides, I am the one who has a lot to say, right?” he continued with no response to his words. “So I guess I’ll start.”
“Hey dad, hope you’ve been… well? Is that even the right way to start this?” he scoffed at himself. “Ah! Whatever, anyway, I got your letter from mum. I read it. Yeah. I read it, all of it. All eight of those pages.”
A single tear slipped and slid down his cheek. He brushed it to the side in budding frustration. Catching himself in that frustration, he took in a deep breath and exhaled calm through his mouth. Somehow, this was harder than he ever thought it to be. Even though he had practiced this speech every day for months and had his talking points memorized, there was a clear difference between the mirror and the actual speaking out. Every breath felt belaboured in his chest and his words shook as they left his mouth. When he felt ready enough to finally let out all he held within, he continued.
“You don’t have to answer but why could you not say all these things to me face to face? After all the years I asked you to talk to me but you said you were busy, why would you call me back here with this letter? I get our profession calls for it but still…” he asked sharply.
As he said those words, his hand pulled out some haphazardly folded papers from his back pocket. The papers flailed in the breeze but he wrapped his fingers around the batch, slightly crumpling them as if he held on to the very words written on them. They trembled as his hand did and standing there paused momentarily, he sighed.
“Still, I’m here. I just…” he swallowed painfully.
The rocking chair on the patio, of the house he had built, creaked in response. The colour on it had began to fade, weathered by time and use. The house behind it however, had stood the test of time. As he stood there reminiscing how the two men had fought over what type of wood to use for the door, he remembered they had bickered about traditions of the family. He could almost feel the relief they had, when they finally unveiled the fully constructed house; their little pet project.
In his mind, came a vivid image of the framed picture on his desk in his little office space tucked away in the city. A still crisp image of the two standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the bungalow with stern faces, that they joked was how they smiled at each other. Memories of the dust and dirt of construction work, through which they had fun. They may have not said it but they both knew that they had had fun. He longed for those days again.
His eyes scanned the house in silence until they fell on a little streak of orange across one of the glass panels of the windows to the sitting room, that didn’t quite fit right. He could feel tears threatening to come up again before he saw his son waving at him from behind the orange streak with a sheepish smile across his face and the tears disappeared. He curtly nodded back to his son who was then pulled away by his mother.
“Right,” he started yet again. “ I came here in anger but honestly I don’t even really remember exactly why I was angry with you. I guess I got that from you, this inability to hold grudges so I suppose that is out of the window now. Can you imagine I thought I had the script down to a tee? Now that I am standing here…”
He shifted his weight between his legs, his sneakers having left their prints in the fresh morning grass. How long had he been standing there? The sounds of cows mooing somewhere within the property catching his ears, accompanied by the clucking of the chickens that made their routine walk around the house looking for whatever they scratched the ground for. The sun lit the compound softly and beautifully. He smiled.
“I’ll admit it. This is probably the greatest design we had. Well, the only one of this scale if it counts. In a couple of days, I’m thinking I will add another streak on that window of ours with the young man. I guess I now understand why you fought so hard to have it brought from our old house even though it clearly mismatches.” He momentarily lost his smile.
“You had your flaws. You made your mistakes but I guess for all of it, I’m thankful. Thankful for all these good things you raised in me. Thankful for the fights. I laugh to think that I thought I wouldn’t be like you when I grew up, yet here I am, looking down at my footprints realizing we aren’t so different after all. Even though I now wear the same size shoes as you do, I don’t think I could fit in the shoes you left. At least I can console myself in the fact that I understand you a bit better than I did when I was younger.”
He looked up from his imprints in the grass, across the flowers, over the tiles and finally held his gaze on the short but powerful epitaph.
“If I followed your footsteps, do you think I could teach my son enough to look up to me too?” he asked softly.
“Baba!” a happy voice called out to him and he looked up to see his laughing son, cradled in his wife’s arms, as she stood next to his father’s empty rocking chair on the patio.
