The Lovesong Sisters

 PART 1: CRIMSON

 My dad told me, when he was young, there was this band. He was obssessed with them. He loved every song and always got the updates on their latest tours around the country. He knew every song and every tune. 

 Being poor, my dad never had much fun in his childhood. He was always poor. It's a family curse, you could say. He lived on in an old crumbling house with ten other brothers and sisters. His mother, my late Grandma Jilly, died on day after giving birth to the youngest of the lot. My grandfather had to juggle the whole lot on his own. Dad knew he had to help out. So he did. He was so busy doing all sorts of old jobs I doubt he ever had the chance to do something fun. 

 I wonder what kids did for fun in the 1960's. Definitely no Facebooking. 

Anyway, as much as he loved his family, he yearned to see that band live. Just once. But he knew that was out of his reach. He needed all his money to give to his dad. He told me that he packed his own lunch for school everyday; bread and cheese. Everyday. Just so he could help keep the house for his family. My grandfather knew he was making small sacrifices,  but it wasn't as if he could do much to compnesate for it. 

 Then one day, my grandfather asked him to follow him to the lake, to go fishing. ' Catch some trout,' he had said. And that's when he was presented with one ticket to a concert the very next day.

 Dad was overjoyed. I bet he loved my grandfather a lot. I had never met him, but we have a picture of him in our living room. Everytime I see him look at it, I want to cry myself. Maybe I'm just a sap, but it's true. Family devotion can go a long way, even after death.

 So he went to the concert. He was so excited when he woke up early that morning; he jumped out of bed with a hurricane brewing his stomach, threw on the mosrt respectable clothes he could find, combed his thick hair back and polished his scruffy old boots. He could barely eat his breakfast. 

"Eat up, son," Grandpa had said.

" I got enough jitters that would make an elephant last twelve days in an empty brick room." he said unsteadily. Whenever I think of him saying that, I imagine a boy with a sweet little face sitting at a table, smiling.

 He walked all the way there. It was taking place in the middle of town. It wasn't anything fancy. Just a little space next to the town hall and a makeshift stage with a big cloth banner made by the elementary school students. But he didnt care how sad it looked. All he wanted to see was the band.

But he turned to his left to see them walk up the stage, and someone was blocking his view. Someone he didn't know at the time, would make his life (and later mine) change a whole lot.  And maybe we would have been better off without her. To this day, I can't really tell if she's the whole cause for the problem.

My mother.

She was so beautiful, he had described, there was something that made him want to follow her across the globe if he had to. I've never seen her before, but I know i have her mousy brown hair. Not exactly an attractive colour, but it's my hair. And if it's my mom's hair too, then why hate on it?

 And she liked him too. They didn't know, but throughout the concert, they held hands. They went out for a while, after that. Then she left, suddenly, and he felt like someone had snipped off a part of his life like a pair of scissors. 

 "Freezer burn numb, it was." he explained, when I was young, balancing me on his knee.

He tried not to think about. He had to focus on a job, on college, on finding ways to pay for the house that still housed his younger siblings, and his aging father. And then, maybe more of a curse than a blessing, but he stepped out of his house one day and saw two squirmy babies on his porch.