We ate pink cotton candy, larger than three heads combined.Like we would have done on my 6thbirthday.
We entered the coolest dinosaur immersive experience at the Verryn Adventure Park.Like we would have done on my 12thbirthday.
We toasted with a special slow-fermented craft beer.Like we would have done on my 21stbirthday.
Ella bought a decorated cake and exactly 28 candles.And after the birthday song, she made me close my eyes and make a birthday wish.She showed up with balloons: one had “28” written on it, the other had a happy face she’d drawn.That happy balloon still floats around my hotel room, getting smaller each day, but I haven’t had the heart to throw it away.
Two weeks flew by.
I hadn’t expected time to pass so quickly, but it did.
Every day was a blur of moments I’d never imagined I would share with my father.We spent the first two days getting reacquainted in small, simple ways.The third day was my birthday, and he knew it — he had a plan.Ella helped him prepare it.
On the other days we visited museums and cafés, strolled through Verryn, and discovered spots in the city neither of us had ever been to before.Most importantly, we were rediscovering each other.I was learning about him, and letting him learn about me.
One day, I drove him to New York, a trip I wasn’t sure he would agree to at first.
He was surprisingly excited about it.He met my friends, and we even visited the studio, where the guys and I played some of our songs for him.“A private concert,” my father had said.He seemed fascinated by how music, sound, and emotion could be woven together.He had questions, some I didn’t know how to answer, but I loved that he asked them.
And I was lucky.Because there was Ella.Through all of it.
We stayed in constant contact.
One day she surprised me with a chicken pie she had spent hours hunting for all over Verryn.
The next day she showed up with an original Evermere Village Oven chicken pie.To make up for thefraudulent one,she had said.
We had long phone calls, sometimes lasting hours, talking about everything.Hearing her voice settled me, grounded me in a way no other voice ever had.
We would meet at patisseries in Verryn after work hours, grabbing something sweet to unwind, lingering in the comfort of each other’s presence.We wandered the city at sunset, the world a little softer in the golden light, taking breaks from our hectic lives.Those walks, those moments, transported me.I could still tell her anything, and she still listened as if it were the most important thing in the world.
I’m letting a father into my life.
Ella makes everything feel lighter.
She’s my escape.But I’m my anchor.
I feel aligned.Balanced.Grounded in myself.
The conversation with my mother was the least bright part of the past few days.
She knew something was wrong in my voice from the moment she picked up the call.I tried to remain calm, but I didn’t gloss over the truth.I was honest with every word I said, and every time I pulled the phone away from my ear to check if she had hung up the call — expecting she would eventually do it, run away from me and my confrontation — she was surprisingly still there, listening.
After she allowed me to let it all out, I was ready to listen to her.
She said it took a lot of therapy to change her impulsive reactions.And then, she started to explain it all to me.Finally.
She told me about my grandparents.She told me that my grandmother loved their house in Evermere, how she loved tending to the flowers in her garden, and collecting small ceramic objects that she kept over the fireplace mantelpiece.Back then, Evermere was even more rural, nature-filled, more deserted.I tried to picture it.My mother said they were happy when she was born.But when she was two years old, her father, my grandfather, got sick.It quickly escalated to him being in a wheelchair… I remember the wheelchair ramp at our kitchen door.
She said that his soul rapidly darkened, day by day.They didn’t have enough money to provide constant medical care for my grandfather, so my grandmother dedicated herself to taking care of him.“She gave herself”, my mom said.
My mom told me she’d watched my grandmother try to bring light into his days, sometimes, until the effort drained out of her too, and she herself gave up.And then, the gray fog expanded throughout the house, into its walls, and into all of them.My mother shared that her father had turned into a man bitter at life, that her mother tried to explain, softly, with loyalty, that he was still at heart, but that all she could see was a man angry, restless, monstrous, trying to drag down the loved ones beside him with the weight of his anger, which he had succeeded.
My mother said she was never truly happy in that house, that she was never happy in Evermere.The moment she decided to walk away from it was when she was sixteen years old.She felt that she had run away from parents she no longer knew or recognized, in two human bodies that no longer wished to… brighten.
My grandfather never lived long enough to benefit from the construction of the CIC, nor did my grandmother, who took it all on her shoulders and became too weak to survive much longer after he was gone.
My mom shared that the day she lost her mother, she didn’t shed enough tears — she felt she had lost her long before that.
