is a quiet, soft night after a hot day, a heat me recalls the one in the middle of the Sahel, a yellow heat and heavy, a golden warmth. The neighbors on my street are having a beer together, Tonio invites me, I sit next Sunday, the neighbor across the street who comes to town in summer and says how happy I feel here. His wife and daughter are with us, dogs surround us and the sky is blue as the Pacific Ocean.
suddenly
My neighbor tells me that his daughter is his favorite. I have two daughters, he says, but this is my girl . I sit still, I say nothing, I hear. There is a silence between my neighbor and I, as something very soft. Must be the love that unites him with his daughter, this strange thing called love between father and daughter. In this stillness
my father appears as soft, inside me. I was not expecting. Not expecting you, father. You left so many years and is usually so good than harm, the absence. And suddenly you with all your strength, this force is always I have admired. Because like it or not, my father, you were a hero, my hero.
your presence in this I wonder if some day you will not say to a friend or relative, I was your favorite child. And frankly, I do not know. I do not know if I wanted. Were these parents never expressed feelings. You never told me you loved me, I do indeed. One learns, for the parents. However
know that I admired, at least when I was tiny, I know because I read the letters that you sent your mother and talking about me, about how beautiful I was, of how happy I looked. I know you felt something when I made a bed for my teddy bear they gave me a wooden horse. But then I do not know. Then everything was so complicated, I just saw your complaints and bad humor and rage and grief.
biggie am now, my father, and now understand many things that before seemed inconsequential or that caused me grief. Now I'm not sad because I know you were a good father, good father is my neighbor who is in this gentle and loving space, looking admiringly at her daughter, asking questions, living this present will soon disappear into nothingness. A present in the middle of a starry night like the sea it is during the summer nights. And when I turn my face to my neighbor did not see my eyes filled with tears, stars in my eyes.
