Julie Loves Words

There was once a man who cut trees for a living. He was short and well-built, yet boney from a childhood, an adolescence, and now, an adulthood ever-full of hard work. This man would attempt everything he could think of, to earn money. As long as the day was bright, he would always hum and talk to himself, wherever he went. His eyes would always be eerily wide, even when looking down in thought, and his body would never stop moving him forward.
On one windy day, he felt like going out with his friends to the school. One of his friends had a girlfriend at that school, and in their group, the man would frequently take the opportunity to check the girls out there. Because he was at least ten years older, he would be seen as a pedophile lurking on school grounds for no reason, so he took advantage of knowing people around him, to connect himself to these newer people.
He saw, from his red old Toyota Camry, a young student with a long flowy skirt, a stack of books in her arms, and long, black, curly hair. She wore no glasses, no makeup, and she looked calmly at the street, waiting for something, never shifting. She never looked at the other students. The man decided to ask his friends about her, and by chance, one of the girls knew her well, so, the girl walked to the still woman, and told her how beautifully she had just been described by a friend of hers, “that man in the Camry.” The student, shy and unaware, surprised herself by smiling over at the man, and soon, they were friends.
In a matter of five years, the still woman had three kids. The first was a girl.
“He left”, she said to her three children, “He’s already found some other woman over there, and he is not coming back. Understand that if he cared about you a single bit, he wouldn’t have left you. Understand that you don’t matter to him. He’s not coming back.”
“He’s a bad father”, said the youngest of the group.
“Exactly”, said the woman, tilting a can of beer over her mouth.
The man, far away, had not been seen for those five years. He had indeed gone back home to his country, where he had grown up alongside his twelve siblings, in a forest with guns and machetes. He now went back to visit his family, and indeed found a new woman there. She was different from the first one. Tougher, wilder, and she wore a great big smile on her face and, although she spoke plenty for a woman in that country, and held more experience in her life than any woman should, she easily fell into the man’s embrace, when she saw that he was a hard worker who came from a wonderful land where women were free and safe.
In the span of ten years, that woman had three children, and they lived humbly in an apartment building in one of the Toronto neighbourhoods you hear about in the news every week. Her three children looked up to their father, whom the woman had married. She felt as though a dream of hers had come true. She could say and do as she pleased, and she relied on nobody. Of the three children, there were two boys and one girl. The girl was left to the mother’s care, entirely. Of the two boys, the older one would frequently be chastised, insulted, and beaten by his strong, hard-working father, who had always wanted a strong little boy. This first boy was weak, lazy, and almost never smiled up at his father, which insulted his father to his very core. His second boy, like his mother, wore a great big smile as one of his first garments, each day. This younger one spent a great deal of his time speaking, and when things were needed of anyone, he was the first to respond. He was always the first to get up, and work to gain the acceptance of his heroic father, from whom he learned everything.
The man raised his younger children well. He taught them lessons about taking advantage, being independent, brave, and strong, all of which he learned from his father, back home. Back home, the man had lived in a forest, with no running water. He learned to shoot his first gun as a young boy, and growing up, he would help his father grow his business, even if it involved getting beaten into fear.
He now accepted some of his own children’s shortcomings, and merely ridiculed them on good days.
The man grew to have many children and frequently he appreciated them with good words and smiles, yet more frequently, he punished them for not knowing how to act. The first time that someone stood up to him, it was one of his first-born daughters. She said, “I see how you treat your favourite. You’re perfectly capable of supporting a family, and you decided that I wasn’t ever worth supporting, so no, I actually don’t care.” A tone sounded and he sat in his car a while, thinking about his first-borns, and how stuck up they had become from the distance. Had he been around more, he would have showed them how to act towards a father.
The favourite child of his, the younger boy, acted very well, especially in the presence of his dad. The older he grew, the wider he smiled, with his little white teeth. He played with the others, he carried whatever needed to be brought in, and most remarkably, he could talk all day and all night, about anything, with anyone. Everywhere he went, he made people smile.
“Where’s dad?” he asked once, to his mother.
“Son, your father went to visit his family. You know that when you grow up and become a great man, you need to go and see your family, son. You wouldn’t forget about your family, would you? You have to visit them, son, to see your grandmother and to see me when I am all old and wrinkly. And hopefully god blesses us and everything goes well and you can buy a house, both of my kids, I say, will grow up to be great men with a good little fortune for yourselves, yes? Just like your father, and you’ll buy us a house and you’ll visit us, yes? My good boys.”
– “Yes mam, I know.”
– “Okay.”
A new woman became pregnant with the man, and when his favourite son wanted to see the newborn, not knowing that the newborn lived in another country, the father said to the boy, “I will see you soon, son, very, very soon, and you will meet him.”
Back home, years later, the man was laying down in a bed with a young woman of twenty, about the same age as his first-born daughter.
“Look at all of this money. Look at it. I’ll buy you a house, and you can stay here and live. You don’t even have to work a day in your life, just stay and take care of our little girl, and you’ll live comfortably and I’ll be here with you very soon.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll visit you very soon, you’ll see”
“And you’ll only be away for a month?”
“Yes, one or two months, max, and I’ll send you some money too, in a month.”
The man left home, and he returned to the free land, where he started working hard once again, cutting trees. In fact, he attained a legal tree cutting license, and started cutting trees for anyone and everyone he could convince of a need to have their tree cut. He did his labour, and every day he brought cash home, enough to fatten an envelope, yet humble enough to run your fingers through in one swift flip, in his car, as he showed you how well he could take care of things.
At fifty years old, he knew this was the last good decade of youthful, hardworking life, and it took him a while, but he eventually got around to reflecting on his life ahead of it.
He sat and he wondered to himself, one evening, if he would ever buy himself his own house. He worked very hard to make money to give to others. He cared very much about his family back home. He cared very much about his children, at least about the ones who appreciated him enough to call him dad. He gave his hard-earned money to anyone who needed it, but about himself, now, he wondered.
He felt as though he could make it. he was convinced that he would make himself a reflected respectable, retired man of a man, one who worked hard his whole life, with his children grown up all around him, loving and praising him for the life he had endowed upon them, and he would die happily because he made all of life possible for all of them.
What more could anyone ask for? He suddenly felt a new ease to his life and future. he knew that he had worked hard enough, that all of his efforts were not for nothing, and that soon, someday or another, he would receive what he had given to others.
He bought plane tickets back home, as he was informed of the birth of a new baby boy.

2020-04-26