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Dad arrived from Oslo on Tuesday. It was a gray day, and while I would like to say the weather didn’t suit our dispositions, we were too Scandinavian to mind the familiar comfort of an insulated sky. We hugged when I met him at the airport, new for us since Mom died, but welcome. He was a short, severe man. Blond and thinning at his crown. I smiled, he smiled in return, and I brought his bags out to the car I had waiting.
“How is Alexei?”
“Good,” I answered. “Keeping dinner warm.”
I didn’t know how to say the rest: that I had made Mom’s halupki, that I hoped it would be a nice surprise, a comfort. That I didn’t want the meal to pain him.
Alexei embraced Dad at the front door without hesitation. He then kissed me and offered to help with Dad’s bags.
“How is he?”
“Good,” I said, shivering at the déjà vu. “Smelling the cabbage.” Mom always said the scent of Slovakian cabbage had a ludicrous half-life.
Over dinner, complete with a salad dripping champagne vinegar, Dad mentioned his writing. He wasn’t comfortable speaking English, and Alexei didn’t speak Norwegian, so I resumed my usual position as translator.
“I spent forty years at the lightbulb factory. Security is a slow job in such places. I used to daydream, tell myself stories. Ever since Hana passed, I’ve been writing them down.” This, he told us, he did longhand in artists’ sketchbooks.
To my vast relief, Dad complimented the halupki, and after a calm night’s rest, I kissed Alexei awake and showered. By the time I was ready, Dad had been downstairs for an hour, hunched over one of those sketchbooks.
“I called the taxi service,” I said. Neither of us enjoyed driving.
Dad nodded, the furrow of concentration between his brows endearing.
The campsite, fragrant with pine and crisp air, soothed us, and after we arrived, we erected our tent and built a fire. Dad continued to write.
“Will you show me?” I asked.
Dad wrote as he spoke. “This one is about a serving girl named Silva. She and her friend, a grizzled puffin, find old King Gaspboline’s magic sword in her employer’s larder.”
I closed my eyes as he read, birdsong punctuating the whimsy, sunlight warm on our faces. When he finished, I squeezed his arm.
“Beautiful, Dad.”
He shrugged, embarrassed. “Less Dostoevsky than A. A. Milne, but I like it.”
We fished that day, roasted a small bass over the fire. The night was a tablecloth of stars.
“I’m doing better, Johan. Every day, a little better.”
“So am I,” I whispered, looking toward the stars until I could no longer stay awake. I hoped I would dream about pulling Mom from heaven like Silva pulled the king’s sword from behind the potatoes.
Turning my lantern off, I fell asleep to Dad’s pencil scratching another new beginning across another blank page.
Author's Note:
Self-care comes in many forms, and I love to read, listen to music, and watch the TTRPG actual play show Critical Role. Recent books I’ve loved and gave me comfort include You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian, The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley, and two beloved favorites I reread frequently: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison and Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
As for music, I’ve been on an instrumental kick lately, and I recommend, among many others,
“The Nude and the Quiet” by Tambour, “Fairytail” by Phoria, and “Fake Magic is Real” by Slow
Meadow.
Jared Povanda is a writer, poet, and the co-EIC of the literary journal Bulb Culture Collective. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction, and you can find his work in numerous literary journals including Wigleaf, ONLY POEMS, and Passages North.
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