The Blue Orchid Years

Chapter 43: Revisiting Our Happier Moments

After seeing Johan in the psychiatric unit and witnessing Dad being open with every member of my family, I could honestly say that for the last few years, my life had been nothing but a series of shocking events. Frankly, I didn't know if I should be elated or frustrated about this development. Maybe a little bit of both? It would be a lie to say I wasn't relieved to see Johan slowly realizing all of his psychological problems weren't 100 % his fault (Dad had a hand in creating this chaos), but it wouldn't be wise to set aside the fact that I was also disappointed that it took so long for Dad to do what he should have done right at the very moment he had a change in his heart about disowning my brother. I wasn't sure if I bought Dad's explanation that he felt remorseful as soon as the hateful words escaped his mouth those many years ago at the dinner table. Since I wasn't convinced of Dad's version of the whole repentance stuff, I spent the whole time driving from the mental hospital to my home silently constructing my own version.

In my version, I imagined Dad listening to a sermon in which the pastor quoted the book of Timothy. There was a passage in that book about a parent's responsibility to his children, more specifically a father's responsibility to his son if I recall correctly (I haven't read the Bible in a long time since I declared myself an agnostic), something like how God condemned fathers who didn't provide for their sons because denying the sons any provision was worse than being an unbeliever. In my imagination, something like remorse (but not as powerful) stabbed Dad's heart when he heard the sermon and he thought something along the line of how awful he was to Johan and how true it was that disowning a son was even more terrible than denying Christ.

"You are spacing out." Moira's soft voice and her hand on top of mine on the steering wheel took me out of my daydreaming. "Careful that you don't crash onto the garage door."

"Whoops," I said sheepishly as I slowed my car down and got ready to automatically open the garage door. "Thanks for catching me in the middle of my daydream, honey. Sorry about it."

"It's been a tiring day," she said as I finished parking the car and unlocking the back door to the kitchen. "What'd you like to do for the rest of the evening? Are you going to listen to music?"

"I'm thinking of just sitting on our porch tonight, gazing at the stars," I replied to her as I made my way to the living room and grabbed two sets of knitted giant blankets and some pillows from the couch. "Wanna join me? We can have hot apple cider too and you can cuddle with Linda's dogs. Heh, those dogs are so dang cute I could hardly believe they belong to someone in prison!" I shook my head and Moira just smiled as she let little Baxter and Roscoe out of their crate.

"Woof!" Baxter jumped up and down under my legs as soon as he was out of the crate. "Woof!" he barked again as I bent to hug him. Roscoe barked too and licked my cold fingers. Moira laughed and picked him up. The dog wagged his short tail and licked my wife's nose.

"Yeah, they're flipping adorable!" Moira nodded. "Alright, Nardho, you go set up those blankets nicely and I'll warm up the cider, okay? And boys," she gestured to the ecstatic dogs to hurriedly follow me outside. "Keep him company while I'm preparing the drinks, okay? Good boys."

"Aw, honey, you talk to these dogs as if they are your babies and you their mom!" I kissed the top of her head before heading out with our furry friends. "You'd have made a good mom."

Moira's face turned scarlet before she grinned and hurried to the drawers where we kept our mugs and coasters. It made my heart swell with a lot of warmth to see her blush like when she was a girl. Come to think of it, when was the first time I made her blush? When did she make me? As I asked myself those questions, a memory of us kissing for the first time flashed through my eyes. We were so innocent back then and our only worry was whether I could survive our freshman year of college. What the hell happened to our innocence and why couldn't we keep it?