Children dressed in suits, we drive silently. The one kid slides in a cassette tape and I hear it for the first time, a song I will listen to for the rest of my life in a trance, o’ let the sun beat down upon my face, as I look out the window. I don’t know the song and I want to ask but the music fills the space and there is no other space, not for speaking, not for laughing, not for crying.
We step into the stone building and everyone is there, all in black and white. A large photo of the boy sits on the stage, looking out at us as he does in the yearbook. I did not know him well and spoke to him but a few words. I imagine he did not speak much with others as well. I am as alien to he was to everyone around us, but I have soldiered on. I sit among the others in an aisle, unable to find where I should be, but there is nowhere else to be or not to be. I stand and walk to the front and shake hands with the mother, who cries and smiles and asks me did you know him? And I say yes, he was a good guy. She lets go and look questioningly at the next boy in line as I walk toward the father. He shakes my hand, I look into his eyes – is this the look of sadness in a man?
I go to university. I study engineering, following my father’s vocation, and my first-year grades place me on the bottom. The dean speaks with me and tells me he’ll be watching me. It isn’t for long. I drop out a few months after. I change universities and enrol in philosophy because it doesn’t require any pre-requisites and I can enter as a second-year student. Surprisingly thinking and writing comes easily and my grades flip. I apply to law school and get in, but I think I can be one of the greats, sit alongside Kierkegaard and Kant and Hegel. I apply to graduate school everywhere and nowhere takes me. I spend the summer with friends, discussing life, religion, meaning, impractical questions with utmost intensity. But what will I do with my life?
I sit beside my father as he sleeps, the machines whirring and beeping softly. He opens his eyes slowly and sees me and smiles. I hold his hand in mine and we look at each other. I play guitar for him and he says I have improved. He asks me to make him a promise, to pursue computer science and programming. I promise I will.
I take the programming courses but fail them all. I apply to graduate school again and make it in, then law school. I move from job to job and somehow a career is made, a family is made. Would he be proud of me? I wish he could see my sons, better now than I ever will be.
I hold the boy in my arms, tightly, resting my face into his hair, as he wraps his arms around mine. I close my eyes as we squeeze each other, losing ourselves in the embrace. I think about how he will grow up soon, and then there will never be another embrace like this. Is he too old already, this long, this close, should I let him go now. It isn’t how fathers can hold their sons, not when I was the same age. Yesterday a baby, and now a boy, and tomorrow a man. I gently loosen my arms, I let go. But he squeezes me even tighter. I hold him again. I cry.
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