Visions and Daydreams

Melody

❝The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.❞ - Aaron Lauritsen

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When I was born, my mother had held me within her arms and hummed a sweet tune she'd heard from an old music box only days before - I was named Melody. My father says he could see how I smiled at her with my eyes, admiring the woman who'd mentor me my whole life and who would make me realize what it meant to be a woman - to grow beyond what society makes me out to be and to show that, yes, I can do a job just like any man could.

I may have breasts, but god willing would I ever allow anyone to determine who I am because of them.

She passed away when I was only nine, she'd had cancer and no one in the family knew except her. I suppose she didn't want anyone to worry or to spend money on treatments, or maybe that was her showing me that suffering doesn't mean you aren't strong. Suffering just shows that you're all the more human. What is there to be afraid of when using that logic?
A lot of things, actually....
I've never been adventurous, nor have I been the timid girl hiding out within her sketchbook. I am simply Melody, a strong willed photographer who has an obsession with history and antique, or even retro, artifacts.

When my father mentioned that he would be dragging me across America and partially through Canada, I couldn't give much of a reaction.
Did I have friends where I was? No, I never really got along with people face to face and I surely never bothered to speak to anyone who wouldn't try to speak to me.
Did I love the home we were in? Sure, but it's not like he was moving us away. I'd be back home before it began to snow, so there wasn't much to worry about.
Would I miss visiting my mother's grave? Of course I would. I would see her everyday, and she'd listen if I spoke and sit to watch if I shot photography - at least that's how my mind imagined my visits to her. She was my mother....
Even so, the trip would be an experience, would it not? Something to give me inspiration to be more enthusiastic or something meaningful like that. Truthfully, I saw the trip as something to get me out of the murky confines of my room and to hide away from the boy next door who always wanted to hang out.

We set off the day I received my new Polaroid camera - one that was a brown and tan color that I adored more than I should've, following along the highway and then to empty roads where the fresh scent of pine trees dominated any other smell that would reside outside.

My father was a fit man, a police officer with a young appearance even though he's really forty and never misses the opportunity to tell me the tales of his youth. My dirty blonde hair comes from him, but I never received his brown eyes or strong jaw. He was on the taller side of the average American male, reaching a bit above six feet, and had freakishly large hands that most people were oddly fixated on. My father was, though, incredibly handsome and a good man. He'd always been there to support me and tried his best to avoid ever using anything that suggested I couldn't do something because I was a girl. He was like my mother in some ways, wanting me to be independent and not wanting me to think I had to be a certain way to be accepted. I think that's why I began to look up to him once high school started.
My father taught me how to have thick skin and purposely trained my brain to not compare myself to anyone else I may come across. I was born to my own perfection, and ever trying to change that would be useless. How I was already, I should be proud of. I am creative, I am beautiful, and I don't need to be like anyone else.
As for me, when it came to appearances, I received my mother's green eyes and her height of around five feet. However, I lack her personality like I lack my father's. Both were outgoing and social while I choose to be on my lonesome and in my thoughts. My mother was creative, like I, but focused more on water paints of landscapes and flowers. Something so beautiful that her last work made me question if it was something made and sold in a decor store or not.

We stayed in a motel during the first night, sleeping on separate beds. My father, being the protective one he is, took the bed closest to the door. His logic was, if someone broke into the room, him being so close to that door would protect me all the more. Maybe it would, but I never understood why. We'd both be in danger and we'd both be as good as dead.
I couldn't sleep that night, laying on my back and staring up to the ceiling as the dramatic teen I am. Then mom popped into my mind, and she's all I could think of.

I missed her.

She was so young and beautiful. The extremely feminine type, yes, but she never stood down to anyone who opposed her. She was the strongest woman I had ever known and the strongest I will ever know. My mother was the only person I truly connected with on a personal level and would have probably been the only female within my life that I trusted. Many, many moments of my life were proven difficult without her guidance. Whenever I needed her, my father stood in. He pushed me through my climb in womanhood and would be the one to help me during my cries, my fits, my anger, he stood as my best friend when all I ever wished was for my mother to be in that place.
I loved him for that.
No, I couldn't ever accept him as my mother figure in any way as that was difficult. He did indeed help me in a way a woman was expected to and broke through every stereotype of masculine and feminine for my sake, but I couldn't accept him in the way he deserved. He was my father, that's all he's ever been and all he'd ever be.
Was I a horrible daughter to him?
I never caused trouble or made him feel like I was too difficult to care for, but did I ever appreciate everything he'd done for me? Was I able to accept that he did so much for me when everything that he was raised to be had to be thrown out? Did I make him feel like he was never good enough?

When was the last time I told him I loved him...?