My father had never understood my mumbling tongue, and even now I did not speak to him much. I hesitated to draw his attention to me. Even to be in the room with him challenged me. When he looked at me or focused his attention on me, the sheer power of his drenching thoughts terrified me. I dared not let him touch me, and even to meet his eyes was to feel the pull of that whirlpool. And so I avoided him, as much as I was able, even though I know it hurt him and grieved my mother.
Despite that, he began to try to play with me. He came one night to the fireside with no scrolls to copy. He sat down on the floor near my little table and patted the hearth next to him. “Come see what I have,” he invited me. Curiosity overcame my dread and I left my inks and ventured to stand near him.
“Here’s a game,” he told me, and lifted a kerchief that covered a tray. On it were a flower, a white pebble, and a strawberry. I looked at it, mystified. Abruptly, he covered it. “Tell me what you saw,” he challenged me. I looked at my mother for explanation. She was in her chair on the other side of the hearth, her hands busy with some needlework.
She raised her brows in puzzlement, but prompted me, “What was on the tray, Bee?”
I stared at her. She lifted a rebuking finger and raised her brows at me. I spoke softly without looking at him. “Flowa.”
“What else, Bee?”
“Ro-ock.”
My mother cleared her throat, bidding me try harder. “Bewwry,” I added softly.
“What color flower?” My father prompted me patiently.
“Pink.”
“What color rock?”
“White.”
“What kind of berry?”
“Stwawbewwy.”
“Strawberry,” my mother corrected me softly. I looked at her. Did she know I could say it correctly? I was not sure if I wanted to speak that clearly for my father. Not yet.
My father smiled at me. “Good. Good, Bee. You got them all. Shall we play again?”
I scooted closer to my mother’s feet. I looked up at her, pleading with her to rescue me.
“It’s an odd game,” she ventured, sensing my unease.
My father made an amused sound. “I suppose it is. I used to play it with Chade. He’d add more and more things to the tray, or he’d add something and take something away, and I had to say what was missing. He was training my eyes.” He gave a small sigh. Elbow on knee, he cupped his jaw in his hand. “I don’t know any real games. I didn’t have much chance to play with other children.” He looked at me and lifted a helpless hand. “I just wanted to …” He sighed away the rest of his words.
“It’s a good game,” my mother said decisively. She stood, and then surprised me by sitting down on the floor next to him. She drew me close to her side and put her arm around me. “Let’s play again,” she said, and I knew she sat by me to give me courage, because she wanted me to play with my father. And so I did. We took turns, my mother and I, as my father added more and more items from a leather bag behind him. At nine items, my mother threw up her hands. I played on, forgetting to fear him, my focus only on the tray.
There came a moment when my father said, not to me but my mother, “That’s all I have.”
I lifted my eyes and looked around. My parents seemed hazy, as if I saw them through a fog or at a great distance. “How many was that?” my mother asked.
“Twenty-seven,” my father said quietly.
“How many could you do, as a child?” my mother asked softly. There was trepidation in her voice.
My father took a breath. “Not twenty-seven,” he admitted. “Not on my first try.”
They looked at each other. Then they returned their focus to me. I blinked and felt myself sway slightly. “I think we are past her time to bed,” my mother announced in an odd voice. My father nodded mutely. Slowly he began to return his items to his bag. With a groan for her aching joints, my mother clambered to her feet. She led me away to my bed, and that night she sat beside me until I fell asleep.
On a day of wide blue skies studded with fat white clouds, with a soft wind blowing the scents of lavender and heather, my mother and I puttered in her garden together. The sun was past noon, the flowers breathing gentle fragrance all around us. We were both on our hands and knees. I was working with my little wooden trowel, carved by my father to fit my hand, loosening the earth around the oldest beds of lavender. My mother had her shears and was pruning the runaway sprawl of lavender plants. She would stop now and then to catch her breath and rub her shoulder and the side of her neck. “Oh, I am so tired of getting old,” she said once. But then she smiled at me and said, “Look at the fat bee on this blossom! I’ve cut the stem and he still won’t get off. Well, he can just ride along for a while.”