I remember waking up before dawn, once, in the early hours of the morning when everything feels delicate, fragile, like one wrong move could break the tenuous peace that hangs in the air. I’m always up before the world when I’m sick, and I get sick a lot, so padding down the stairs in utter darkness is something I’m no stranger to. That day, though, was wrong; the Keurig on my kitchen counter brewed far too early, the familiar scent of day-old coffee replaced with something fresh. Behind the door to my basement, a single light glowed, bathing the hardwood floors of my hallway in gentle light.
Before I even opened the door, I knew what I would see: my father, hair a mess, wearing those green plaid pajama pants he always wears in the winter, at his desk against the wall with his computer open to some kid’s essay, or his calendar, or one of those stupid matching games he always pretends not to play. It used to be that I would wake up before him on weekends, that I would walk downstairs to a completely silent house, but that all changed when my grandfather died. Now, my father wakes up earlier, sleeps later, and works and works until he can’t anymore. Every morning, I’d find him at his computer working on an email, and every night, he’d kiss my hair before sitting down at his desk with a sigh like disappointment, like monotony.
He looked up when he heard me walk down the carpeted stairs, frowning in a way I could pinpoint on anyone’s face.
I’ve never been an artist, but I could draw my father’s frown, the way his mouth turns down at the corners when he’s thinking or feeling anything but ambivalence. It’s never anger; I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him angry. It’s always disappointment. I’ve seen it a lot in fourteen years, far more than I wish, more than enough to paint it one day. I wish to paint the way it fades into his beard, to run my fingers over the texture of his grief, to feel the frown that soon will be mine.
My father, who grieves in silence, whose frown seems to be permanent these days, whose tired eyes seem worse every day, will one day pass them to me. As the youngest, as the mediator, as the one who sings when my parents fight, his tired eyes will fall on my shoulders. It’s only right for me to take his burden as I could never lift it on my own.
I will not complain when it is my turn to rise before dawn every morning, to hide my emotions behind messy hair and a computer screen, to know my child will one day become her mother the same way I have become my father. I will not complain because I am like my father, my father who wakes up tired in the dark.
Tris Meagher is a sophomore Literary Arts major at Appomattox Regional Governor's School in Virginia. She is fifteen years old and has been writing since she was a kid and wrote a mystery short story that won a school-wide prize. It ignited her passion for writing and she never stopped! She is thankful for her teachers, Ms. G, Mr. Sberna, Mr. Goodwyn, and Ms. Geen for all of the work they've done shaping her into who she is today.
"My desk, while writing a paper" by gudmd.haralds is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
