"the traces of us" by Andrea Damic
Updated: 1 day ago
we came, to see them—my family I hadn’t seen in years—oceans between us; there was
Covid and lockdowns and life I suppose; time flew as we joked and cried and fell
silent—maelstroms of memories spilling around the table, echoing cache of lives lived and
lives ended, pocketed moments protruding through the haze of our brittle
recollections—remember how we laughed at our Grandma’s funeral, my cousin said,
emotions taking over and we couldn’t stop; it was like she was there, a hunched apparition
with grey curly hair, head bobbing as we chuckled, her gaze caressing our cheeks as time
played musical chairs—at the juncture of what once was, for what seemed an eternity, but it
was just a flutter of eyelashes as the need to move forward took over; remember speaking
about the boys, Grandma’s delight in the modern world, how things are and how they used to be—a living oxymoron; remember drinking gemischt, ashtrays overflowing with cigarette
butts, sitting on a tiny balcony we barely fitted into, high up in the air, amongst the clouds, on the ninth floor of a twenty-floor skyscraper, our knees curled under the chairs, whispering so Grandpa couldn’t hear us; he grunted about our unhealthy lifestyle and at Grandma for encouraging us, hiding the enjoyment of having us around, seeing us so carefree; remember his chicken roast with young potatoes, making sure we ate enough, filling our glasses with wine—still grunting but his eyes giving him away; remember his insistence on curfews during our uni days—be back by 10 pm, I’d say 11 and he’d nod; it was a game we played for peace of mind as we hugged, always awkwardly—the six-plus feet of him, like a perennial plant canopying a sapling, a venerable stronghold shadowing us from perils; my father spoke of his rigidity— he’s from a different time, he’d say and how he changed when I was born, unrecognisable—he’d say, almost mellow—I thought; and the years seeped through our fingers—funny how we never thought about the passage of time being anything other than a constant, not for our parents, nor for our grandparents, while yearning for adulthood nonetheless; and the places metamorphosed into spaces where we weren’t, filling the void with new events, new families and novel memories; and we parted—again, uncertain of what the future holds, our holiday coming to an end; as I prepare for a 24-hour flight across the globe, I wonder about these interludes in the time-space continuum, and what they mean, the traces of us left behind, hovering in the air, somewhere…
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