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She's tired.
Close the door, my beloved.
Shut out the visitors.
Dim the lights. Feed her a bottle. Rock her to sleep. The whole time yelling at me to ‘have rest’.
The only English words Yiayia asked my young cousin to teach her.
How different my life would have been had I known them. How different I would have been.
As the days passed, I became more comfortable under the weight of their stares.
“We see her in you,” my young cousin translated. “She was our joy. You are our joy. Our hope.”
God, I missed her.
And I hated what I was doing to her, but my soul was healing.
Yiayia smiled as she crossed to the table where I was finishing my lunch with Pappou. She replaced the dishes with a shoebox. Whatever was in there was important because Pappou lit up like a beacon.
Once the table was clear, she lifted the lid off the box.
I looked inside and teenage me stared back.
Hundreds of pictures, newspaper clippings, certificates. Ribbons I’d won, and promptly trashed, from photography competitions.
I looked up at them. “Where did you get all of this?” Even as I asked the question, I knew. And the knowledge wreaked havoc between my stomach, my heart, and my mind.
Pappou lay his hand over my arm. “Your daddy, he send.”
I nodded and turned back to the box. I half expected them to leave me with it, but they dug in excitedly. Laughing and talking over each picture, each article, making mad gestures about taking pictures.
I got the feeling they’d done this a thousand times.
Reaching to pat my face. Taking my hands and kissing the backs. Showing me pictures of myself, things long forgotten, memories good and bad.
“Kardia mou,” Yiayia whispered at a picture of two-year-old me caught up in my father’s strong arms. His grief raw and wild behind his smile.
As we neared the bottom, their comments came slower, their smiles softer. Pictures sent by my mother. Pictures where she laughed with my dad. Pictures of her swollen with me, her puffy feet raised high on a pillow.
Her smile reminded me of Hope’s.
Because it was never absent.
So many pictures from my first four years, my father’s writing on the backs. What happened to his copies?
As I got older, most of the pictures were taken from afar.
Pictures taken with a long lens.
Looked like voyeurism ran in the family.
At the very bottom, pictures of my parents from their wedding. Some formal, most candid.
She was beautiful.
They were beautiful.
