When I imagine my mother and my father, it is always night in the vision of my mother, and evening in the image of my father. The night my mother lives in, in my Imagination, is a young night, where the moon shines tenderly in harmony with the stars and the freshly lit Madrid streetlights. My mother is young when I think of her, as young as she was when I was a child. She is full of energy and she smiles from ear to ear with her friends as she gets in a taxi by herself, saying goodbye. She is in the taxi coming home to me, although I am not asleep even though I must be. When I see her in my mind she is cursing through the late Madrid night back to me, just like Ulysses arduously returned to his waiting Penelope through the Mediterranean. The image of myself, a six-year-old, resembles one of a weak and sickly child, with long and careless yellow hair. I'm in bed and I am wearing my pyjama, adorned with drawings of giraffes in my shirt and pants, as they were my favourite animal. Here I am thinking "She's coming back to me, just like she always does". I am not asleep; I am waiting for my mother still. This is a Moment, the moment of returning home to a loved one when the night, with whom you have been since her birth, is welcoming dawn, only because of experience for there are no signs of it still. For each Moment there is a song tailored made for it, and for this one, it is When the Sun Hits. A moment, an action, a song and a time of the day; in my mind, my mother has all of these domains. Her scenery is complex because she is a complex woman, deserving of this thought.
With my father, I shall say that it is a different picture. He is for me a creature of the afternoon, the agonizing day's last moments as the sun sets itself down. The time when all his children peacefully fall asleep without him. He is a goodbye, a smooth dinner with a good chat among bottles of wine. The song ringing in the back when I imagine him is a gentle jazz instrumental melody, which slowly goes off and runs into a classical melancholic piece of music without no one even feeling the difference. During this whole evening I have an enduring thought within the thought: soon, my father shall be gone from my side, away from me - again. The moment of departing eventually becomes unavoidable and my father knows as much as I do that the evening has ended; it is time for me to go to bed and wait for my mother there, laying desperately awake. I must feel sad, I say to myself, because this is a sombre moment, given this is the last embrace my father and I will enjoy before he leaves. Sad, yes, but not sentimentally sad. Instead, I must feel "cordially sad", a very German state of humour. It is acknowledging the feeling, commonly heartbreaking, without letting control of the senses go. Although I am just a child and truthfully unaware, I am broken at my core, which is shattering with each blow. I do not want him to go, leave my side. But I come to a realization. Fret not, I say to myself, he is not the one leaving: you are. I am a child and it is late and so I must go to bed to sleep so when I awake I can be with Mum, who is cursing through the night back to me.
So, holding my tears back and hiding my trembling voice in silence, I hug my father, yet I don't feel anything. As I yield back from his arms I feel like a stranger to myself, unrecognizable. It is as if my soul had taken a leap into the greatest void in sacrifice for the Moment to succeed. It had and now I didn't want either to sleep or cry. Then after the Moment of my father has passed and the Moment of my mother has also passed, I am still awake and alone. My Moment is then; not the evening or the young night, but a cold and dead, calm 2 A.M. In my mind, I walk onto the street, which is empty and hollow. The only sign of humanity are the dim lights that never go out in store showcases. To be silent is imperative and nothing or nobody is alive. The moon, the stars and the streetlights that were so bright during my mother's Moment are now tired, for they have tucked all their children in, except me. They have not tucked me in or made me tired of their strong brightness so that I preferred to close my eyes and succumb to sleep, therefore I am still awake. I am light's forgotten child. I am my father's cordial goodbye. I am my mother's home. I barely have a setting in my own mind. I have no song neither...
Shhhhh, I say to myself, you do not need a song. Your voice shall be the soothing melody making you cry tonight.
-T.L.M
3 4 2023
