Charles, age 7
I was seven years old when mom took me to Japan.
“I was seven years old when mom took me to Japan. It was 1967, and she had been living in Los Angeles since marrying my father in ’58.”
In “The New World” by Charles Duffie, published in The Atticus Review in 2019 (577 words), Charles witnesses his mother’s grief over the death of her father and cannot really understand or connect with her. Yet, he recognizes a shift inside himself as he watches her weep.
“…like I was standing on the deck of a ship, gazing across the ocean to a new world where mothers became children again and cried for their fathers.”
By 7 years old, we are familiar with crying; it was one of our earliest forms of communication. We’ve also probably started internalizing some social judgments about what crying means (depending on your generation). The concept of death has usually been addressed through the loss of a pet or grandparent, through religious education, or in a book. So the intellectual capacity is there to understand that when someone dies people cry. Cause = effect. Simple.
But that’s entirely different to sitting beside someone who is crying, inconsolable, broken into a visible form you cannot reconcile. Seeing our grown up—who cares for us, who keeps us safe, who seems to know everything—in such a vulnerable state brings forth feelings we find difficult to process.
I found this flash essay in the wonderfully serendipitous way that fuels this project. I use the Calm App for meditation and sleep stories. My favorite sleep story is Lionwood: Mystery of the Lavender Water. Layla, of an age not specified, accompanies her father to his job as caretaker of the kingdom’s beautiful fountain. The water in the fountain turns lavender for a short time every spring. Layla sets off on an adventure to satisfy her curiosity of why the water turns lavender.
My favorite part is when narrator Chike Okonkwo says, “She was too young to know what she was feeling but she felt it all the same.” I appreciate the grace contained in that sentence. I now frequently hear the phrase in my head—an internal reassurance that there have been many circumstances, at many different ages, where “I was too {___} to know what I was feeling but I felt it all the same.”
When I looked to see who wrote this sentence I love, the author of Lionwood: Mystery of the Lavender Water is, you guessed it, Charles Duffie. A simple google led me to “The New World” in The Atticus Review, and the essay just happened to begin: “When I was seven…”
More about Charles Duffie here & here.
PROMPT: Can you recall a moment when you saw a grown up express big emotions? What things about the moment do you understand now that you didn’t understand then?
Comments make my day! Thoughts on this issue, answer the prompt, ask a question, just say hello.
Photo credit: Jim Machajewski, 2013 cherry blossoms. To be fully transparent, this was taken in China. But there are cherry blossoms in Hiroshima, Japan, and my husband’s photography is conveniently royalty free for me.