Day 40 - Dad's Head

So this is what I wrote on my new word-processing electric typewriter. I remember having trouble formatting the piece. By then we had an Administrative Assistant on the property, and I asked her for advice on the problem, as it was all very new to me. She looked at me as if I was simple, and said 'just delete the space!' Well, to me, then, a space was something that wasn't there, so how could I delete it? I had a lot to learn about the new age we were moving towards. I think I've got it now, though. And the piece is remarkably prescient under the circumstances.

Dad’s Head

Miss Jones said write a story. About your family. With lots of describing words. I want to go out to play. And don’t start your story with “one day” or “once upon a time”, and write proper sentences with full-stops and commas and not too many “ands”. And Katy’s out in the street on her roller skates. I wish I was with her, but dad’s watching me.

My dad has a lovely smile. I’ve seen pictures of it in my mum’s album. He’s got dimples. But I haven’t seen them, not since he stopped shaving a long time ago before I could remember things. He’s got a long beard, my dad, it makes him look like his face is very long, down to his belly which is getting fat, my mum says. He doesn’t look like other people’s dads with skin on their faces, but I’ve asked Katy and she says her dad’s face feels rough at night. When I kiss my dad before I go to bed I rub my face in his beard. It’s soft and warm and smells of him. I like it. It’s called a beard wag. And I bet he’s smiling inside it. My friend Katy thinks he looks like a Bigfoot. I told her she was stupid and you don’t get them in this country and anyway they’re not real even where you do get them, but he’s just as nice and gentle as they are in the movies and he takes me places I’ve never been and brings me back and I’m always safe.

Like when he took me on his bike early in the morning down a country lane. The bike was rusty and it had no rubber on the wheels, no tyres and it made an awful noise on the road. It scared up birds as we rode by and dad was laughing. The front wheel was bent. It made the bike jump every time the wheel went round and it hurt me because I was sitting on the bar across the middle and I complained a lot about being sore and my dad stopped and moved me so it didn’t hurt me so much and it was fun and then it hurt some more.

I think I’ve put too many ands. Miss Jones won’t like that.

Anyway we went off down the road and the sun was sitting on the sea. There was mist floating on the moor. Sometimes I saw a rabbit frightened by our noise sitting up listening and then it ran away through the heather below the clouds where I couldn’t see it any more. Then my dad stopped the bike and I nearly fell off, he lifted me down, lifted me over the fence, we were in the woods, the leaves and twigs under our feet were soft and crackled, the wet mist dripped off the trees and shining cobwebs shaking in the breeze grabbed on to my face. As we walked through the softness of the bluebells a startled toad hopped a single hop and waited while we walked on. The wood grew deeper, the wood grew darker, the moss on the tree trunks became thicker and wetter. It was scary so I asked dad where we were going and he said “it’s a secret”, I said “why?” and he told me because it is a secret place, then there it was, a hole in the trees, the sun pouring through made my damp hair warm, I heard water splashing and leaves rustling above me, I looked up at the sky, at lines of white light flickering through the trees. The light moved like weeds in running water, the strands of it changed places all the time, that’s what my dad said. I know all his words so well, they’re right inside my head, they paint pictures in the dark, they’re always with me even when I’m frightened in the night when the rain tries to make holes in the window-glass and the wind comes under the door to lift the carpet up as if snakes or a thousand tiny worms are crawling there. And when that happens, I am scared, but I have dad’s pictures in my head, like this one of moving lights in the sky, then I look down. I don’t believe what I see, in that dark place a pool of light so bright I blink, my feet nearly standing in the clearest water I have ever seen, a pool of rippling water on a bed of sparkling granite chips, and a granite cliff behind it. The ice-cold water bounces down the cliff and throws itself at me, on to my shoes, my ankle socks, the hem of my cotton dress, on the cold wet moss that I try not to slip on because my dad says so. Look up there he says, up at the sky where the sunlight is waving and the droplets of water are flying through the air, up there in the rainbow, what can you see, what do you think is up there? I can’t see anything dad, just a rainbow, a beautiful rainbow and little droplets falling slowly, very slowly in the sun. And come with me he says, we’re going to see what lies above the rainbow, what there is behind the sun. Then he takes me under the arms, lifts me onto the rocks and I can climb, and I am safe with him behind me. As we go up sometimes I slip but I have no fear. The water in the air wets our faces, I know I’ve reached the rainbow but I can’t see it any more, or the ground beneath us, so we keep on climbing and the cold moist breeze grows warmer and drier, the mist has cleared, one last push dad says and you’ll be there. My fingers are clutching grass, soft, untrodden grass, dad says, there is brown, crumbling soil in my hands and the grasshopper is chirping in the green. One pull up and I turn. I’m lying on my belly looking over the edge, here comes my dad, his hair all wet and dirty marks on his face. I bet he’s smiling. Then he’s up here with me, his arm is round my shoulders, we are laughing, then we’re serious.

My dad’s not serious much, he mostly jokes and tells me stories, but I am sometimes, when I look at him, or think about him. I’m not sure, but he might be asleep there, across the table, I can still hear Katy on her roller-skates, can I have a drink dad, I’m sure he smiled. I’ll pour myself some orange juice.

Down below us were the trees. We could see the tops of them way down below, the pines, the birch, the ivy climbing. Far beyond the sun floated above the sea like a big ball bouncing, but it looked so small, the sky lit up with shiny colours shivering, in patches down there the mist clung to the treetops, I said to dad just like candy floss on your beard when we took you to the fair and you couldn’t wipe it off.

We sat a long time watching before we turned round to look at the place we had climbed to. We were sitting on lush green grass. Worms and beetles burrowed beneath us in the good earth, behind us stretched fertile plains till we could see no further, dotted with orchards, apples and peaches, orange groves, great teeming rivers heavy with fish, tall beasts browsing in the trees and short ones chewing grass, and everywhere the sound of birdsong and the whisper of distant children laughing, that’s what dad said, and when we turned back and looked over the treetops down below, the sun was a cold evening red sitting on the sea and this is what god must feel like on a good day is what dad said.

And I said yes but I miss my mum when she’s not here. Dad smiled, a bit, I think, we climbed back down, it was dark at the bottom, you carried me dad, when I was tired, when I was scared, and the bike had no tyres, and the bike had no lights and every turn of the wheel must have hurt but I didn’t notice because you were bringing us back to mum and I was safe with you and your words.

Do you think I could go out and play now dad? I’ve done a lot of work and I think Katy’s still out there with her skates. But mum shouts come on you two, come and get your tea, so I push dad down the ramp into the kitchen. I take him places too, but not like the places he takes me, and he thanks me with his mouth full. I’m sure he smiles while I feed him and mum puts her arms around me. And I know he thinks I’m lucky with my legs and arms, but aren’t we lucky too, mum, that his head still works?

And I know dad smiled. I could see it in his eyes.

Dad's Head