^^^
The past tense of your words above is a bit worrying ... Is this offering too late? 😆One that Duchovny contributed to with the great man himself. Deal clinched?
Originally posted by: greenteaholic
Ah, watching mercury pass with Sun in background. My favorite scene from the movie and one of my favorite moments in movies :=)
Fine, sold.
Interlude: 1 - Child of apocalypse
Life is a current of moments. One moment leads to another which leads to yet another and the pattern persists till one takes their last breath. She isn't educated enough to know that academics and researchers have observed patterns in the world and try to rationalize it. She doesn't know that. But she does understand that for every problem, there is always a root cause. Sometimes the root cause is a person but as her experience tells her, the root cause is almost always is simply - time.
Maybe that's what happened this time too, she thinks belatedly.
She is a mother of a nineteen year old girl and wife of a middle school teacher. They lived a wholesome simplistic life complete with family time every evening and exchanges of muffled whispers between the parents planning for their only daughter's education. She had always wanted her daughter to have a good education after being denied to study further once she completed high school.
She looks at her hand and pokes at the callous formed between thumb and index finger. Early in her marriage her husband had commented on the softness and the cool pinkness of her palm. In coming years she saw the pinkness reducing and skin hardening. Her husband had once told her that the happiness of their family could be seen from the palm of her hands. His eyes were brimming with affection and his lips curled into a private smile. It was only two years ago but now it feels like twenty, she thinks. The callous in her hand are now formed by guns, doing hard labor in the camp they are taking shelter in and the harshness of the world that they are now living in. Every person was now a gun wielder. In each one of them warrior was thrumming beneath their skin. Well, those who had survived first couple of months of infection, she thinks wryly.
She misses the soft rumple of her sari. She misses the way her husband communicated his affection in the way he followed her into the kitchen and helped her wash up. She misses the way her young daughter put on a private fashion show for her parents wearing her mother's clothing and jewelry. She misses the static mundanity of their lives when they didn't have to turn back and check for zombies. Her seventeen year old daughter looks like a Valkyrie and not a teen obsessed with teenage boybands. As a mother, she had missed on the moments, the angry tender ones that transforms a girl into a young woman. In place of her young daughter, she sees a grown woman whose responsibility is far too large for her narrow shoulders. She sees a young woman, a soldier in fact, in the way she organizes food and water for the campers. Unease itches under her skin whenever she sees her daughter absently flipping knives. A young soldier had taught her that. After that young man's death, the light in her daughter's eyes had dimmed. Being a mother it had chilled her stomach. But her daughter had easily replied, "Its war mother. We are trying to live while surviving for most part of it. When we feel loss, we will have to absorb it." Her throat had failed to react then.
"Are you thinking about dad again?" She heard her daughter say and felt her daughter in the way the space next to her was suddenly heavy.
She shrugs. She had stopped crying about her fate few weeks after the outbreak. And that was more than two years ago. "I was thinking about time and how most of us don't know what day it is anymore." There was sadness in her voice. "We are alive and so are our memories. I hadn't realized how these memories are so complexly tied to the way we measure time."
"Isn't it enough we have our memories still?" Her daughter points out the obvious.
She nods in resignation. "We have lost centuries of knowledge. I don't know how many more centuries is necessary to be what we were only two years ago."
She gets a flat look for response. She chuckles at her daughter's look. "I keep running recipes that my mother and my grandma taught me in my head. I can't make that kind of food anymore and it's painful when you think about it; generations of innovation in making meals exemplary are all lost."
"You are in that kind of mood today," her daughter sighs. For some reason, her daughter's reaction disappoints her.
"I suppose I am. It's one of those days." She answers instead. "There is nothing I can do to leave my legacy behind."
Her daughter looks at her, unimpressed. "You will leave me, your legacy, if you were to die before I do." The casual way her daughter talks about death scares her. Her daughter grew into an adult in the middle of apocalypse. She was too young to understand but too old to ignore. The complexity of the situation had sunk too early for the young teenager to ignore the obvious mechanism to adapt to survive.
She didn't cry. Two years ago anything related to death would have scared her. Any talk of dying would have brought tears to her eyes. The thought of her daughter doing something remotely scary would have made her pray to all the gods she knew and perform rituals that would keep all the bad things away from her daughter.
She has no prayers left. She has no dreams of a bright future for herself or for her daughter. Losing her husband to the epidemic was a shock. The speed in which she had to let go of everything she held dear was incomprehensible.
Her fingers gently poked the black beads on her neck. The beads reminded her of adoring eyes and the warmth that followed. She smiled privately as she felt her fingers warm.
"Mom?" She hears her daughter.
"I guess memories are all we have left." She says and hugs her daughter. She knows she probably will not make past another couple of years.
Death wasn't scary anymore. All the philosophical and spiritual discussions she had heard over the ears had culminated to this very moment. Death was just death. An expiry date. End of shelf life.
Few moments would be left behind for people to remember. She would still be alive as long as they were thinking about her.
Its only when the memories died, a person was truly dead.
For a reason she couldn't comprehend, she was quite okay with that too.
The daughter's matter of fact way of stating "if you were to die before I do" hits home more deeply today. A daily reality for parents of our jawans.
I love what you wrote of memories. How a tangible symbol of her husband washes her with his warmth. So beautifully put. Even after knowing that all your hopes and aspirations built up over a lifetime will come to nothing, memories still have the power to comfort.
I have read this interlude three times already and each time I find something more that touches. No poster will ever be enough ...
The daughter's matter of fact way of stating "if you were to die before I do" hits home more deeply today. A daily reality for parents of our jawans.
I love what you wrote of memories. How a tangible symbol of her husband washes her with his warmth. So beautifully put. Even after knowing that all your hopes and aspirations built up over a lifetime will come to nothing, memories still have the power to comfort.
I have read this interlude three times already and each time I find something more that touches. No poster will ever be enough ...
| topics | author | replies | views | reply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rizz-ington | 35 | 5716 | ||
| abavi | 247 | 91422 |
comment:
p_commentcount