This is the debut write up by one of the best writers I’ve
met. I hope you guys like it, like I did. Happy reading:)
He walks with heavy steps as he gets closer to his home. Not
because he is dejected or destroyed or has a lot of baggage or because he
doesn’t love his life. In fact he is irretrievably in love with his life and
would give anything to live it all again, forever! He is an established and
entrenched writer, has more money than he can spend and a house worth millions.
He has everything any guy of his age could dream of and then he has something
he loves more than his life, his six year old daughter. She is beautiful beyond
limits, probably because her mother was beautiful too. She smiles and his world
stops. He would do anything to see her laugh and her tiny little hands grab her
belly while she does so. The tiniest bit of freckle on her radiant skin freaks
him out.
He is standing inches away from the room his daughter is
playing in. But he can’t go. If he does, he will have to answer her and he
knows he can’t. He can buy her anything she wants, take her places unknown to
mankind, but she wants something without a price. Something even the gods can’t
get her and he is mere human. He hopes that she has forgotten what she asked
for, what she’s been asking for since the day she started talking.
He hopes that for one day, he won’t be a reason for her
heartbreak. He walks in and doesn’t even have to call her name. She jumps from
the bed, climbs onto his shoulder, kisses him on the cheek and asks for a kiss
back. She then asks in her honey drop voice, “Daddy, Did you get me a mommy?”
He kisses her back and hugs her tightly, for he is dismal down in dumps. He
sheds off her wish, pretends not listening to the question and hopes that she
won’t be disappointed, deluded, again. She climbs off her shoulder and walks
back to her bed. She hugs her teddy and says, “I hate you, daddy. You never get
me a mommy. Everybody has one, but me.” He stands powerless, destitute and weak
and hates himself as if the gods had spelled their worst curse on him. He wishes
if he could get her a mother, if he would’ve married someone or if he could,
just for one day see her laugh and giggle all day long with her mom.
He walks up to her and picks her in his arms. He kisses her
tiny hands, one after the other. “I can’t get you a mommy sweetheart but daddy
will always love you, even if you hate him.” She looks into his eyes. He can
see her blank, vacant, beautiful eyes looking for an answer as to why she can
get everything but that. He looks at her with immense, unprejudiced and
immeasurable love; for he knows that as long as he lives, he will have to
go through the same every day, and someday his soul will burn itself down. He
faces this every day until she comprehends that she will have to live without a
mommy.
Time passes and the love between them seems to never end. He
writes for her and she loves what he writes. Actually, everybody loves what he
writes but none matter to him, except her. Time runs its due course,
unaffected. She is married now and she’s about to become a mother. Her daughter
will be beautiful, because she is too, and so was her mother as well. He kisses
on her forehead and believes with endless hope that she’ll be a good mother.
She kisses him back like they did ages ago and says, “Daddy! I will be a good
mother. I missed my mommy when I was a kid and I won’t let my child go through
it.” It kills him, for he did all he could to make her life full, to make her
smile at every turn and to erase the crime he once did.
He forces his smile; because in his mind, he couldn’t be a
good father. She takes his hand and says, “There can never be a father like the
one I had. There can never be a guy who’d dress up like a clown and dance, to
make me smile like he did. And that is why I will be a good mother because no
matter what, my child will never have the father I had.” She continued, “I
never needed a mommy because my father loves me more than his life and I love
him too. And I want to tell him that until the day I die, there will be no
other guy I’ll love more than I love him! I would love living the life; I lived
with him again, forever.” He looks into her eyes, vacant and beautiful like
ever. She just said something he once wanted to write in his book but was
afraid she might know. His life had meaning now; it was perfect after that
sentence of hers. He kisses her again on her cheek and walks away. He has tears
in his eyes but he won’t show, like he never did when she was a kid.
He never taught her
to cry but to feel what was around her and she felt her father’s love. His life
was never so promising, not even when he was a young man and was in love with a
woman. All the pain he had gone through, when the woman abandoned him and their
kid because he was a failure, and all the pain he lived through, when his
daughter told him that she hated him, was gone now!
There was rain and the drops were sweet. There was fire and
it was warm. The winds comforted him and the light showed him the path. There
was love and it was pure, untainted. He walks back to his house, picks up his
phone and dials a number. A female voice comes from the other side, “What is it
now? I told you not to call me again. I am not coming back for her, never.” He
gathers his crashing voice and wipes off his tears, looks at the picture of her
daughter when she was a kid and says, “Congratulations! You’re a grandmother now!”
and then walks out in the rain for he has tears, he has had them for years now.
And now he can finally cry in the peace he discovered. The peace one woman took
away from him and the peace another woman gifted him back. He smiles without a
sour heart for his heart has started healing again and his wounds have found a
rescue. He looks again at the picture and smiles, because the journey of his
love found its destiny.
Writer: Enas
Ekkery
