Month: May 2019

For Tatay

On days like this when I wake up to the view of a calm sea, and summer music breaks the quiet of the morning, I remember similar days from over 35 years ago, when I was but a tiny hand clasping the rough, reassuring hand of my grandfather, a fisherman. Back then, there was no music from bluetooth speakers, just an old man’s voice asking if I was ready to pick up my grandmother from the market and get ice cream afterwards. And then we would walk or ride the tricycle. That was the joy of my childhood mornings. Oh, what I would give to hear that voice again and hold those weather-beaten hands. To sit beside my grandfather and tell him about the life I’ve lived so far, the parts he missed. I would ask him if there was anywhere he and my grandmother wanted to go so I could take them there, and this time, mine would be the guiding hands. But I sit here, and there is nothing; the twinkling eyes had …