I shake my head to clear it. I need to keep busy before I drive myself crazy. She cares about me and wants to be with me, I assure myself. I just can’t rush her. She’ll reach the right decision in her own time. Even though the right decision is obvious. She is like a skittish little cat. If you chase her and trap her, she will do everything to escape. But if you stay still and let her be, she’ll come purring willingly.
The whole idea about a nursing career? It’s just a silly phase. I’ll entertain the foolish idea as long as it makes her happy. She won’t have to work once we’re married. I’ll take care of us. I’ll take care of her mom as well. All she needs to focus on is me and our children.
I stomp into my parents’ room. We have cleared out most of the house, except for this room. There are just too many memories here, so I saved it for last.
A few of my father’s old flannel shirts hang in the closet while most of the space is taken up by my mother’s clothes. It’s been decades since she passed away, but my father kept every last bit of her things. She is still very much part of this house. It is as if her essence has seeped into the bones of the house and never left.
My parents had the fairytale marriage that, for years, I only dare to dream of. They met when my mother was on vacation with her parents. She came from a well-to-do family and he was the poor son of a groundskeeper. Her parents didn’t approve, so they eloped. “Young and stupid,” she used to say, with a dreamy smile on her lips. Even though my father never said anything, I know he adored her.
They met by pure chance. She, the entitled daughter of a rich lawyer, demanded that the shy young man who worked at the hotel tell her where the tennis courts were. Instead of letting him just point out the way for her, she demanded him to take her there. By the time they got to the tennis courts, she found him quiet and intriguing, and he found her beautiful and mesmerizing.
Her parents were furious. They had high hopes for their only daughter and completely disapproved of my penniless father. So she chose love and left with only the clothes on her back.
A young and stupid couple deeply in love. They drove across the country and settled in this little town on the coast. Just because he always wanted to be a fisherman. Of course, he never became a fisherman and found a good living next to the water, nonetheless. He never went to college and worked with his hands his entire life. They both worked hard and gave their little family a stable life, raising their only son, joyfully and simply. They never had much, but their life was perfect.
I sit down at the stool in front of my mother’s vanity table. It is a plain old thing with chipped paint that my father built for her. She died when I was a teenager. Not quite a man, but already capable of more pain than an adult could handle. After that, Dad and I were never the same, as if the light has gone out of our lives and we just retreated into our respective cocoons of pain and loneliness. Maybe it was then when our relationship started to fray, not because of my decision to move to New York and start my companies. The realization is no less painful, but it gives me a little bit of comfort. That both Dad and I were equally to blame. That I didn’t single-handedly ruin our relationship with my selfish pursuit of wealth and status.
I watch my reflection in the old foggy mirror and open one of the little side drawers of the vanity. It is smaller than I expect, so I tug too hard and the entire thing falls out. All of its contents scatter around the floor. I bend down to gather up the expired cosmetics and old costume jewelry. My fingers clutch around a small velvet pouch. It is heavy for its size, so I look at it more closely.
The pouch is purple and faded, slightly threadbare from age, and tied together with purple silky strings. I hold it between my fingers and gently shake it upside down. A ring lands in the palm of my hand. It is my mother’s engagement ring. The only piece of jewelry my father ever bought. A single emerald surrounded by a constellation of small diamonds. The band is gold and untarnished. My father scraped together the money for it, even though he had nothing. A nice piece of family jewelry, but nothing compares to the massive gems often sported by my friends’ wives in Manhattan.
My mother loved this ring and wore it often. Its green sparkles remind me of her bright smiles and warm hugs. I remember staring at the center stone when she would read to me at night. My little fingers would twist the ring around and around her finger as I drifted off to sleep to the soothing sound of her voice. I hold the ring closer to my face and
