So what if I lied. The girl needed a push. You wouldn’t believe it to see her now, addressing the crowd of her followers from Jakarta to Glasgow, her bare feet drumming their hearts into action, but she was such a cautious child. And lazy. Always counting the steps it took her. She’d refill her glass at the bathroom sink if her brother and sister had pushed her to the right end of the couch.
Hagiographers will tell you that it was only her first phase, that rational way of apprehending the world, counting, listing, categorizing, but the bottom line is she always ended up picking the easy path. I know, I raised her. It was as if she tried to use the least amount of energy–of air–that her body needed.
So when the oxygen ran out and I almost crashed that damn plane, it was no wonder she stayed conscious the longest. Back then, she barely breathed. I woke up from the bump –thank God for autopilot– and I saw her grey eyes staring at me. That’s what rattled me the most. She was awake. Watching herself die; watching us die. Were we not worth the effort? In that computer brain of hers was there no room for the value of life?
So I told her the story of the dog and the bird. That’s what dads do. It was a lie, but it made sense at the time. And she ran with it. Those six years on the Island really changed her. Maybe it was being in a such a small circle of land surrounded with water, with just us to make sense of. Once she had listed and categorized everything she became free maybe not to care and to love, but to connect, to channel and give back.
And to take on the world, one bird at a time.
Based on Re: Vignette 22 by Dia Felix
Also based on Vignette 1
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