Master and the Middle

Today is my fortieth birthday. On this occasion, I had long wanted to create something as a tribute to my mom who brought me into the world. This story is based on my own life, it is my humble tribute to her and a gift to myself on this occasion.

A Stranger at the Door

A Short Story

by

Abishkar Shrestha

I.

It was early on a Saturday morning, around five’ish, annoyingly early to have woken up on a weekend. Or have half woken up. Perhaps it was because he had turned in relatively early the night before, or because he had gone to bed a little preoccupied with a long list of errands that awaited him this Saturday. He lay prone on his bed in a state of disconnect between body and mind. He had just turned forty years of age. FORTY! To celebrate the milestone, they had invited some friends and families in the area for a small celebration. For this soiree of sorts, there  were a few items to be procured that morning. Pork and chicken to marinate for the grill, mushroom and bell peppers, some drink mixers, bags of ice for the cooler. The first guests could arrive as early as noon, so he needed to  start relatively early even if it was a Saturday.

But not this early he thought… he wanted to steal another hour or so of sleep. Or just lie and rest in bed even if sleep would prove elusive. There was leftover chamomile tea on a cup at his bedside table from the previous night. He turned on the dim bedside lamp, took a couple of sips of the tea and opened up a magazine from the nightstand, trying to fall back asleep aided by the gentle lull of the chamomile herbs and the daze of the indecipherable sentences in the magazine article he had left unfinished from the previous night. His mind was soon adrift… guests, pork rib cuts, green pepper portobello mushrooms, soda water ….and  then …Trinngg…. Ttttrrring… Trrrinng..  It sounded like the doorbell.

He ignored it for a little while as he wasn’t sure if it was really the doorbell or one of those novel noises one hears at dawn in the betwixt of half sleep and half wakefulness on a Spring morning. But the ringing  continued and seemed to get louder. He finally dragged himself off the bed and went downstairs to answer the door. From the peephole, he saw there was an elderly lady at the door. She looked pretty harmless. He opened the door and saw a woman standing  on the porch. She may have been in her late fifties, of similar age as his parents. She had gentle, hooded eyes; mid length, mostly dark hair  with some patches of gray around the front parting; she was wearing glasses whose frame seemed a tiny bit big for her face. It was the slightly oversized frames that completed the air of innocuousness.

“Can I help you?”,he asked, “who  are you looking for?” She said, “oh, hi, I am a close friend of your Father’s. I knew it was your fortieth birthday today. He mentioned you were living around here now and since I was going to be passing through here this morning,  I thought I’d stop by, wish you a Happy Birthday on this big milestone, and see if you wanted to get a cup of coffee?”

He was of course a bit confused, this encounter, amongst other things, being first thing on a Saturday morning as well. How did she know it was his birthday, that was pretty weird. He had talked to his Father the previous evening  who wished him a happy birthday in his typical, matter-of-fact manner. But he did not mention anything about a family friend or an acquaintance that would be in town or passing by. But, it was also not unusual for his Father to forget to mention such things. And anyway, it didn’t matter now. She was there on his doorstep and the lady  gave off a friendly vibe. So, he thought yeah why not, he did need to get going that morning and get a cup of coffee anyway. So, he agreed.

“Yes, sure, can you give me ten minutes to get ready.  Just to brush my teeth real quick and change. Come on in, you can wait here in the living room.  It’s just my wife and I here, she is sound asleep upstairs. Grab yourself a glass of water if you’d like.”

“I might..”

“I will be right back.. We will talk in the car.”

He quickly went upstairs, got ready and came back downstairs.

“Alright ready, let’s go?”

“Sure, I saw a café nearby  on my way over, across some type of a community center”

“Yeah, exactly the one I was thinking. Let’s take my car if that’s okay. I will bring you back here afterwards. We can just sit outside there or take a walk around the park. Either way…”

II.

The  café was less than a couple miles away from his house. It was a breeze getting there in the quiet of the Saturday morning. And so was getting  two cups of coffee to go, a plain black coffee for him and a small cappuccino for her. From there, they quickly drove over to the nearby lakeside park. The lake looked milky grey as the sky was partly cloudy that Spring morning. A gentle breeze caused the water to ripple softly along the lake shore. There was a bench close to the shore, on a small mound overlooking the water. They sat across from each other on the bench. Trees were blooming, branches swayed gently with the breeze. But it was relatively warm.

“So.. tell me.. how do you know my Father?”  He said. “I didn’t fully get that  earlier. You mentioned you talked to him recently and he told you it was my fortieth birthday this past week.”

“Yeah, he and I we have been in touch on and off over the last four decades. It was actually me who reminded him of the date. He is getting slightly forgetful with age as you know. I had to visit this area  for a longstanding social thing this weekend anyway and I thought I would drop by and give you my birthday wishes and a hug on this big milestone of a birthday.“

“Thanks, yeah, how did you know it was my birthday?”

“Ohhh, long story.. It’s one of those things that one does not forget.”

“How do you mean? Are we connected in some way that you are not letting on? This is starting to make me a bit anxious now.. are you …”

“Yeah your day of birth coincides with something of major significance that happened in my own life as well. It was the day that  my previous life ended and this life began”

“Hmm… okay, still not very helpful or clear…”

“Anyways, so tell me about this party of yours later today. What are you planning? Who’s coming?“

“Oh… no big plans. We are just going to do a small barbecue, start around late afternoon and just hang out with some friends who live in the area and a couple of them from out of town.My brother is also in town this weekend. He had to come here for work this past week. He is staying for the weekend and joining us this afternoon for the party.”

“You mean your half-brother.”

“Yes, halffff…wait…how do you know that?“

“Oh I know everything about you and your family…I have heard so much about him over the years but I have never met him. Would love to see him and say hello if I get a chance …”

“Heard from  my father of course?”

“Yeah …”

“I figured… Yes, you can come and meet him, and my wife of course. What time are you going to be done with your thing  this afternoon?  Feel free to stop by anytime that suits you really. We will be around, plenty of food and drinks. No need to bring anything …”

“Okay, let’s see. I may take you  up on that… Should we walk around a little here?”

“Sure, let’s… This way may be better, this trail loops around and there are a couple of pretty views along the way…”

“Okay, after you…”

They set out  walking on the trail that  went along and around the lake. It was a bit narrow to walk alongside, so they were single filing, with him walking a few yards ahead of her. They were both silent as they walked except a word here or there remarking on the  general pleasantness that pervaded in the Spring air. There were one or two other early morning  hikers along the trail that they nodded and greeted in silence. Before long, there was just  total silence, bar the morning birds, the gentle sound of the morning breeze and occasional muffled whirrs from cars driving by on the road not too far from the trail. He turned around to see  how far back she was. And there was no one.  And just then, he heard this loud blaring sound … Tnnuuttuu… TnnuuuTuuu… TnnuuuTuu.

It was the  morning alarm  going off, set for eight in the morning. For a few seconds, he was entirely discombobulated to know where he was, what this sound was and where it was coming from. After a few seconds, he realized he had woken up from a very weird dream and it was the morning alarm. He turned off the dim bedside lamp, put the magazine back on the nightstand, and rolled off his bed soon thereafter to set about his day.

III.

Later that morning, he sat at his usual morning spot at the dining table, with a cup of black coffee to start his day. With each sip of the coffee, his mind slowly came into wakefulness. He was still unsure what the dream he just had was. It was quite lucid and vivid, unlike most of his dreams. There was a woman who showed up randomly at his door and said she knew it was his birthday today. She seemed to know a lot about him and his family.  He could only vaguely recall her face at that moment. She said she would like to meet his half-brother. He was not used to calling him that. His mother had passed away the same day that he was born, a few hours after bringing him into the world. Due to post-natal complications, she lost an excessive amount of blood, which she did not recover from. His  father had remarried a year or so later. From his Father’s second wife, he had grown up with a sister and a brother. Technically, half siblings but he never thought of them that way.

On the wall across from where he sat at the dining table,  there was a framed photo of a young woman. It was of his mother, his biological mother. She was nineteen when she died. She had gotten married when she was  seventeen and lost her life a couple years later, on the same day she brought her son into the world.  He kept looking at the photo as he sipped his coffee. And as the cobwebs of his mind slowly cleared, the dream suddenly became clear to him. He realized that the lady in the dream was his mother, who had appeared as an older version of the young woman in the photo. He could see now that they had the exact same eyes. Before that morning’s dream, he had never ever had any type of interaction with his biological mother. Obviously, not in real flesh and life due to her passing away the same day he was born. But also not in any other form like in a dream or any type of imagination. He had grown up not even knowing her face or  having a picture of her for reference. During his childhood, his Father and others around him had tried to hide the fact of his mother’s death from him for as long as possible. In fact, it was never explicitly mentioned. It seemed silly now to think why it was handled that way, why they had kept this  fact away from him as if it were some big shame. But they had their reasons which must have made sense to them, they probably thought they were protecting him from the pain of knowing about the seismic loss, the enormous trauma it could bring. But the fact would remain that he had not spent a single second of his life with his mother, the woman to whom he owed his entire being. His poor mother never got to even touch her baby boy, run her fingers through his hair, tickle his soft baby flesh, sing to him.

He realized then that morning would be the first time that the mother and the son had spoken to each other, albeit in a dream. A dream perhaps invoked by deep-seated longing and wishfulness to experience a moment, an interaction of some sort, any sort, with his mother. She had come to his house and had said hey,I wanted to wish you a happy fortieth birthday, your big milestone, let’s go for a coffee.  She was a total stranger but somehow he had felt safe enough to say, sure, I will be right  down, wait for me here. Even if it was only in a fleeting dream, he had seen her for the first time. He had spoken to her for the first time.

Adrift in these thoughts, he locked his eyes with his mother’s in the photo and murmured half audibly: “Thank you! thank you for the life you gave me. I am so so sorry it had to come at a cost of your own”.

He kept staring at the photo in silence. After a few seconds, the mother from the photo seemed to be saying “Don’t be sorry of course, it’s no one’s fault, and least of all yours. I am proud of the way you have turned out.”

“You have? That means so much.. I was never sure  how was it that I should honor or remember you.”

Most people who lose a parent, even if it happens during their childhood, there is a seed of memory somewhere, however tiny, maybe a picture of them holding the baby, a handwritten letter that evokes their persona to be cherished in the after years, or a personal note that was left to discover in adulthood. For him, there was no such seed.

He continued talking to his mother in the photo.“I had no memories to lose, nor to cherish… When I grew old enough to realize what had happened, it was painful but also such an utterly blank pain that I did not feel anything… Over time, because of its visceral blankness, the idea of you, you being my mother and I your son, became more of an abstraction than a factual truth of my life.”

“As I grew older, I did not know if I should think of you every day. Or not at all, because …I am sorry to say this, but what’s the point… it was all so blank. I never found the right formula, if ever there was one for such a thing. I did not even have a picture of you to look at. And the longer I did not, it became weirder to seek out one. I eventually obtained this photo from your brother only a couple years ago. “

“I understand… you don’t have to explain yourself..”

“I was lost and confused during my childhood years. Grateful for the love and affection  that my extended family of uncles, aunts and other relatives showed me because I had been unfortunate to lose you…But as I grew more aware I also started having conflicting emotions, because I did not want my life to be defined solely as being an object of sympathy for everyone under the guise of affection… I wanted to grow up, be strong, be independent, be able to say yeah that tragic loss happened in my life, but I am fine I guess… I have stumbled along. And here I am today, in middle age, happily married. I have just turned forty.”

“It’s only over the past year or so that I feel I have finally reached a point in my life where I am comfortable looking at your photo every morning like this. I am comfortable with the mixture of sadness, happiness, guilt, gratefulness, all that it evokes…Cause I often think, she is my mother. Of course she would love me and understand me… right?”

“And you would be right, she seemed to say.”

Given the circumstances of his birth, his birthday was also always going to be the day of his mother’s death. It was an inextricable irony of his life. He thought further about how life and death are so interconnected. The beginning and the end. And yet, we live life with an obligation to not think about death too much on a daily basis. If there were a being who took care of such things, he wanted to make a simple pact that morning. It would be that every year on his birthday, he would have a dream where his mother would come and visit him. And they would just do simple, everyday things like drink a cup of coffee together, take a walk. Maybe one year, he could even cook a meal for her in this future dream. He thought dreamily about these possible future dreams for a little while longer as he finished his second cup of coffee that morning.