julie moon: RETURNING by Julianna Middleweek We meet on the Common like a blind date. Father and daughter divided by absence. I love him instantly. He smells like hot apple pie with cloves on a wet Sunday. The fronts of his wool jacket hang above his wrists as he forces his hands deep into his pockets to calm himself. It calms me too. We have returned to our own place at the wrong time. Five years too late and in the wrong season. We are grey and shadowy like winter - silent as snow. All around us the Common is lit like fire; yellow-golds and orange fading to browns. The wind seems to shout abuse at us, firing leaves like pellets that cling to our hair. He touches me with a gentle finger, lifting the strands of hair that cover my eyes and blind me. Language has abandoned us like a bad mother. We move to nods and gestures; a sweep of his hand. In the distance a child plays. Her tiny fingers thread daisies one by one through the small wet cut she makes in their stems. Yet - there are no daisies here Father. We find a bandstand where we can sit face to face like strangers, afraid to catch each others eyes, yet we watch - take in every crease, every crevice, every line. I had forgotten his grey-blue eyes; his mouth wide with good teeth like mine; his lips fine and well defined like my lips. I look into his face and see a sadder older copy of my own. If he were a woman like me I could arrange his curls to soften the lines; make up his face to put the colour back - tone down the grey, the shadows. He shoos the wind; watches the leaves run across our feet like children playing - like the child amongst the daisies tumbling and turning; her fathers hands outstretched to have her spin - round and rounds she goes, he is her maypole, she is Queen, she climbs him to his sunny face and crowns him King. â??â??Oh God" my father says as his head drops to his palms. His voice: a soft memory of Cornflakes, cocoa - his warm breath against my cheek - the Sandman and sleep. He chips the polish from my thumb-nail; inspects my hands as if they are some new part of me that I have grown in his absence. They speak to him of age; of time lost; how the child becomes a woman in such short a time. Play child play. He speaks my name, whispers it over and over, 'Anna, Anna, Anna' , he says and my name glides from his lips so easily. as though he has practiced it daily so as not to forget, called his other woman by my name in moments of thought; spoken it at night when waking in that strange house and forgetting, has looked for me, as I have done. We have come without words. Words that would have us skipping and skirting all the time we have lost. Only through touch can we explore what has gone and what is now. We place our hands together, palms to palms, fingertips to fingertips, thumbs to thumbs and find they fit - like twins. I ruffle the hairs on the back of his hand, feel briefly the damp terrier roughness of his jacket against my skin and my heart is full of daisies. All around us there is change. The impending darkness; the colours greying, the wind strengthening its grip on the trees. We are part of this place, part of this Common, the trees, the wind, the child playing - we are part of each step that we tread, each turn we have taken. When I take him home they can grieve together, Mother and Father and my pictures in silver frames. He can look now, touch them, pick them up in his hands, without fear, that I might stare back at him like a stranger he has once known. |
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