"I love you. With all my heart. To the end of the ocean and back."
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FEATURED BY @StoriesUndiscovered
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Missy is a promising student of art, drawing wherever she goes. She is just as talented as quiet and she seems too indifferent to care...
There was a tale. Not a beautiful fairytale. A tale.
My dad told it to me in one of the dearest moments of my life. And I haven't forgotten about it since.
Weeks passed by along with assignments, classes and silent meals without her presence. Her absence in my life was a hole in the sky, pouring all the dark thoughts that were once kept away and drowning me bit by bit. I clung to that tale desperately as if it were a bouey in the storm.
It was called the Wide Wide Ocean.
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How was school, my dad asked.
Good, I said.
How are you, Emma asked some more.
Good, I replied. And you, I asked her as well.
I'm alright, Missy, thank you for asking she said.
How are your drawings as if he didn't know they were no longer drawings.
Emma smacked his arm as dad tied to move away from her in the small car.
They are not drawing, Garet, she scolded him.
I smiled. Their laugh was like church bells on an early Sunday. It reminded me of my childhood and that stone smell and cold carved, uneven benches. I shouldn't have been surprised when they offered to take me back to New Orleans just to have a small dinner.
Actually, I said, I drew you, Emma, I tell her.
She looks back at me in surprise, her lightly wrinkled face shifting to astonishment. I took out my sketchbook, a paper falling out into my hand. I handed it to her. Emma stared at it for a moment. Long seconds passed by until she smiled widely, eyes tearing with emotion.
I wanted to thank her for a long time. Even though she wasn't my mom, I was glad that she made dad happy. I wouldn't mind if she were mean to me. Envied me and hurt me. But she never did any of those things. Not only because she was kind. But also because she knew I was important to my dad.
Emma understood what that drawing meant. She knew of the 'thank you's that I had just listed. For the first time in my life, someone understood what I had to say. Someone else but Evie knew what I meant when I said nothing.
I loved that feeling as Emma told my dad to stop the car and hugged me.
I realised, that when you put a pinch of your soul on paper... people will understand you just fine.
The next time I visited New Orleans, the drawing short-haired woman with a heart drawn with a golden pencil was embracing a slowly appearing shadow of a man with glasses, a beard and a huge smile hanging on the living room wall.
It was the simplest one of my drawings.
I suppose Emma's and dad's love was just that. Simple.
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