Above the Seas of Dunkirk

Blue Skies and Tearstains

Sometimes, he wished he could remember the day he'd been born.

It was in a hospital in Essen, in a room he'd never remember surrounded by doctors whose faces he'd never be able to place a name to. If asked years later, he wouldn't be able to recall the color of paint on the walls or for how long he cried when his lungs took their first sip of air. He wouldn't remember how his mother, whose face had been contorted with pain from the labor, broke into a smile as wide as the Fatherland when she saw her son. He wouldn't remember the first time he'd seen his father cry. Nothing would strike him as familiar—and when he heard stories of the memories, they felt like they weren't his own.

Johann Xylander. He was born Johann Xylander, son to Herr und Frau Xylander. He'd been a small baby; it quite frightened the doctors when they weighed him, for they feared he would have defects due to his lightness. And indeed, there'd been an issue, but not with his weight—with his lungs. He could scarcely breathe. The doctors had to rush him away from his parents to tend to the matter, while his parents were left ruminating on his disappearance. Frau Xylander feared the worst. But, in fact, Johann turned out to be very resilient.

The doctors had pinpointed the issue and fixed it promptly. Johann was whisked back through the halls after a careful observation. All at once, cries of relief resounded in the hospital room where Herr and Frau Xylander resided—Vielen dank, Herr Doktor! Danke!

As expected, all the commotion had upset little Johann, so he'd squeezed his eyes shut and began to cry. When he was finally handed off to his proud mother, he was still squirming and wrinkling his little nose in apparent disgust at the world. Tears stained his cheeks like red wine on a new white carpet—stark against his otherwise dry face. Throughout the whole ordeal, as his weeping mother cradled him and peppered his bald head with kisses, his eyes remained shut. Only hours later, when he stopped crying, did his parents find those eyes were a rich, coveted color. Himmelblau—sky blue.

As he grew up, his mother always reminded him of how vast the sky was, how he held the entire world in his small, shining eyes. She said the tears were rain and the shines from the sun were the clouds, creating a little personal sky just for him. That was when he used to like the sky. He wanted to be part of it.

But he was older now. He was smarter now.

Now, he was afraid of the sky.