All we have, Father and I, is each other now. In those days, we hardly sat together. I felt it trifling listening to him tell tales of his time in the Force: how many peacekeeping operations he’d been for, the time he went undercover to uncover a drug cartel in Uganda, the time the President sent for him and they had a secret meeting, where he was told he was in the running for Chief of Staff. Now, all we do is lurk about each other; him coming into my bedroom most mornings, telling me of a job vacancy he came by in the newspaper and how I’d be perfectly suited for it, and me barging into his bedroom at the slightest sound. Unlike in the past, when we hardly shared a meal, now we share the table over breakfast, lunch and dinner. We go as far as holding hands to pray over the food, and while at it—eating—we discuss politics, something I never have fancied but indulge in for his sake.
When we aren’t around each other, I’m alone in my bedroom, reading a novel, watching a movie, or writing. I have a knack for melancholic artistry; things that speak to my clairvoyant nature; things with a touch of gentle sadness. Father, on the other hand, goes out to God-knows-where. After he retired, he and Mother clashed a lot. She complained they longer got to spend time with each other. “At least, when you were working, you came home no later than five in the evening,” she said. “These days, you leave in the morning and, without calling to let me know you’re okay, you stay out until seven, sometimes ten even.” Because he always came home fatigued, he hardly had the patience to engage her in a banter, so he would go straight to his bedroom, slump into bed and fall asleep. Mother was never the kind of person to engage in too long a conversation; usually, the details were all she needed, and if, in an argument, the excuses were satisfactory enough, she let it slide. But Father was different. He wasn’t the kind of man to raise his voice, and neither was he the kind of man, who felt he needed to explain himself. To him, it seemed to me, being a man came with ‘privileges,’ like exclusion from female reproach. As a child, this confused me a lot. If he was immune to Mother’s rebuke, why wasn’t I? It wasn’t until the fortnight since Mother and I became estranged, did he come to me to give me the usual “your mother is an extension of me talk” that I asked him why he was immune to her reproach and I wasn’t that he quoted the Bible, saying “children, respect your father and mother so that your days may be long on earth.” When I told him the part where the Bible says “parents, provoke not your children to anger,” he countered it, saying I knew, deep down, the tension that existed between Mother and I was, mostly, caused by me. I did not push it; did not feel the need to prod further. I loved how he loved her, always coming to her defence, a lot of times blindly. This is the special way, I said earlier, I loved Mother. I loved her in a way that did not tolerate others, besides myself, giving her a bad day. So the days preceding Father’s keeping-late-nights, came with Mother being livid all the time, hoarding resentment. And Father’s incapability to fix what was broken between them before she passed on, I think, is the reason every dawn he sits on the balcony, watching the sun come up. I’d like to imagine the dull contrast between the orange sun and the soft, blue sky that time of day finds him not only one with nature but one with her somehow, I hope.