Silver

A short story

From the ‘Letters to my Daughter’

It’s September. I am not giving in to the temptation to write ‘again,’ not only because it is a cliché, or so they say, but because it is not true. There is no ‘again,’ for each comes on its own. In its own robe of sorrow. Each year a little bit less scarlet and a little bit more vaporous. Like a fog lifting above fields at dawn.

But I guess I better tell you where I am and what I am doing. Even though you know, let me tell it anyway. It is the only thing that makes it real for me — telling. To you. Which is why I don’t write ‘about you,’ but ‘to you.’ Words are magic don’t you think? They create what they name.

OK, so I am at my desk, in my flat of course. I don’t write ‘at home,’ since there never was such a place, only a string of temporary accommodations belonging to others marching on their own temporary roads, unaware. Mostly. Blessed by the ignorance they cannot name.

The wind is whistling through the branches of the kōwhai below the balcony, already yellow as egg yolks, tūīs come and go, squawking, calling, squabbling. Kids in the house across the road are packing towels, flip-flops, sun-hats, fat joints, and bottles of booze for the beach where to shiver pretending they are not, while the tiniest grains of sand fly into their eyes making them water and sun leaves red splotches on the winter-pale, teens-taut thighs, and glass-smooth shoulders.

I gotta get up to mix a shot of a good Jamaican rum with coke and fill a pipe before opening a photo of you sitting on one such beach, with sand, and towel I remember buying and sun-glasses I don’t remember, laughing into the camera held by one of your friends, others with bodies as young as yours, stretched around you on beach towels their parents might have bought them.

One has to hand it to Jamaicans — it hits right every time. No kidding.

It is your birthday. Twenty-nine. The age I was when you were born — 29 years, two months, and two days. Precisely. You would be 29 and two months and two days on 23 November this year. 2023. Would you have your own girl? The one you said you would name Marija. I guess it would have been spelled Maria in English. But I doubt you would have been as scared as I was of making a spelling mistake. Checking and re-checking that all is right. In English. Only first generations do that — bend themselves to fit. You would have spelled it as you liked.

What would she be like? Marija?

All the rum in all of Jamaica isn’t enough to let me imagine her.

But I remember how we laughed when you said that, in the unlikely event she turns out to be like her grandmother (me), you would have it easy — she would never get into any mischief.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Grandma here has gone all mischievous; drinking, smoking, lighting fires, sharpening knives, and whatnot. The latest is a tattoo replica of the drawing you made when 14 or 15. Right where my heart is. A tall Māori fellow did it, back in Tok … I know crazy, right? But I love it … finally got it why you loved tattoos. They are forever. It is all you ever wanted — permanency. Sorry, it has taken me so long to realize.

Then there is America. And not just any America but the Midwest. Yeah, I hear you… what the feck mum! Well, I don’t know either. It sort of just happened… first, it was that young woman over the phone. I only called to ask a couple of questions about the application process and suchlike… but blimey me didn’t she just launch into it! Never have I received such cheerleading… I almost believed her when she said I surely must apply and age doesn’t matter at all. I must think positive, she said. Well, at that I laughed. Couldn’t help it! She laughed too. A clear, crisp laugh. Like yours.

I started filling in the forms (and there are pages and pages of them, I tell you) the next day. I kept on telling myself — no way that would work. Almost hope it will not. But in the unlikely event that it does, here is what I’ll do; first I’m gonna buy me a pair of black cowboy boots with silver spurs, a belt with a heavy silver buckle, and a fine Stetson hat with a silver band all around it. Then I am gonna buy me a gun, one of those peacemakers Jesse James carried, and maybe even an old Winchester in memory of Geronimo. I’m told they are selling them like candies in the supermarkets over there.

And then I’m gonna find me a nice, thick growth of cottonwoods by the river-side, just like in that old movie Grandad and I watched when I was a kid, in which John Wayne tells the girl that he is gonna build her a house at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow, that always made me cry even though I never knew why.

And then I am gonna stand up and fire … and fire until no more shots are left.

And then I’m gonna lie down, in the cottonwood shade, and close my eyes.

That, my dear girl, is what I’m gonna do.

As you are 29 years old and your little girl is running into her grandmother’s arms.

Thank you for reading.