He is my favorite smell, my favorite sound, my favorite sight. He will never know how much I love him because he does not remember the day Darrow and I conceived him, or the months I carried him inside me, or the minute he came into the world, the moment he said his first word or took his first step, or made me laugh for the first time. I remember all those things, and all the things about them. Where the sun lay in the sky, how his father’s eyes sparkled, what I feared in those moments, what I hoped for his life to be. That season of life is a haze to him, but when I die and reflect on my life, I know I will still believe that season was the meaning of mine.
Tag: science fiction ~
If I figured anything out in these last six years, it is this: human beings are unknowable.
You can never know a single person fully, not even yourself. Even if you think you know yourself in your safe glass castle, you don’t know yourself in the dirt. Even if you hustle and make it in the rough, you have no idea if you would thrive or die in the light of real riches, if your cleverness would outlive your desperation.
“No, Plymouth would suit me well enough,” I said, grinning at his understandable misperception.
“The air is fresher, for one. A view of the sea would suit me, but not too near a view.”
The picture unfolded itself still further. “A modest white-painted cottage, a little orchard, perhaps even a wife, if she tolerates my day-dreaming. I should call it Hilltop Cottage. There would be vines and honeysuckle, and perhaps some fine oaks about.
I should like enough patients to balance my books, and sufficient that I may be of some service to the townsfolk, but not so many that they interfere with my writing. Does that seem unreasonable?”
“I think you are better suited to the sea than you realise.”
“And I am content that this will be my first and last voyage. I have not been truly happy at any time since we set sail. If I am not seasick, I am cold. If I am not cold, I am exhausted. When I am none of those things, I am frightened. Yet if there is one part of it that I shall not regret, it is our acquaintance.”
“It is not every friend that drills into another friend’s head.”
“Human affairs would be curious indeed, if that were the custom.”