“Yeah,” I answered, staring out the living room window.“I will meet you there tomorrow, Miss Amara.At what time?”
She shared her busy schedule out loud and suggested around 4 p.m.I agreed.
In the last second of our call, I almost asked her if Ella would be there.But I didn’t.
A memory from that afternoon replayed in my head.When we sat at the school pavilion for the Principal’s kick-off lecture, and I — along with everyone else — saw Ella enter through the wrong door.
I was starting to understand that she was this perfect citizen: straight-A student, role-model type, would-probably-be-voted-prom-queen-and-student-body-president-at-the-same-time, and yet, she was still this clumsy, distracted girl in the most endearing way.
I didn’t know if that was it, or what it was about her.
The only thing that grabbed my attention long enough to matter.
Lately, life had been gray.
And I didn’t know why.But she wascolor.
Chapter 15
Ella
September 22nd, 1998
Tuesday
I said goodbye to my dad and ended our phone call.We had spent about an hour keeping each other company.He was stuck in traffic driving home from work, and I was pacing around the small telephone table in my living room.I had called him when I got home from school, made my usual stop by the mailbox and found a letter from him.
My mom and brothers had already arrived home.My brother Simon had interrupted me to ask where his Spider-Man socks were — I had no idea.Too many socks and too many feet in the house.My brother Theodore had peeked through the door to offer me a slice of the yogurt cake he had just baked.And my dad had stayed on the line with me, no big news to share, just quietly living the day with me from afar.
We lived with an ocean between us.He had moved away a long time ago for a great job offer he had accepted after the divorce.I didn’t really recall a time when my parents were together.
Somehow, I missed memories of moments I didn’t even remember.Not exactly of my parents being together, but of my dad being closer.Physically closer.Even though we had never stopped being in constant and continuous touch through long phone calls and the letters we’d randomly write to each other about our days.
My father and I were never particularly skilled at outward displays of affection.
We were alike in that, often speaking love without words.
While we may have known how to describe feelings, there was an invisible barrier between comfort and vulnerability that kept us from expressing them out loud, where they might be caught by other ears.
Sometimes, I looked into my father’s eyes and recognized the unshed tears.Tears of emotion he also refused to let fall.
My parents were incredibly special.I wondered if I deserved them.They were both such amazing human beings that I couldn’t help but question whether life had been too generous with me.
One thing my father had done ever since my sister and I were little was quietly open our bedroom door at night, just a little, just to look at us.Slowly, without making a sound.Without speaking.And in that moment, I knew his heart simply needed to check that everything was okay.And without words, he told me, “I’m happy to see you here.”
Expressing ourselves had never come easy for either of us.It was hard with each other, too.I knew how much he loved me, and he knew how much I loved him.The reason had never been a lack of love.It was simply a different way of showing it.
Whenever I visited him, when my time there came to an end, he always walked me to the gate.He stood there, watching as I drove away, and I would see him in my rearview mirror.He never turned back first.He always waited until I was the one disappearing over the horizon.
When I was younger, it wasn’t me driving away.It was him.And I used to stand at my mother’s gate, arm raised, waiting for him to reach the curve in the road where he would slow down and wave back at me one last time, just before the turn.
That was our way of saying “I’ll miss you.”Without words.
The last time I visited, I left for my flight on a Sunday night.Before I walked out the door, my father hugged me twice.His smile was genuine and comforting.His embrace was strong and safe.We both smiled and held on.A hug that was a refuge, a hug worth more than a thousand words.
And that moment was our wordless “I love you.”
I walked through the CIC’s front gate, turned the corner into the garden, and saw Miss Amara and Miles coming my way, walking side by side, engaged in a deep conversation.
