Note: Don't own anything. Only written for myself, and anyone who might want to read it.
My father was a quiet man. He spent his days working, then came home, had his dinner, and sat in front of the fire. I asked him what he saw in there once, and he smiled at me, but wouldn't answer. My mother took me and my brother out of the room, and told me not to ask again. I was eleven at the time.
When I was twelve, I asked about my father's tattoos. He told me they were memories of the man he had been, and a reminder to never be that man again. He said the same when my brother asked about the scars on his ribs.
When I was almost fourteen, my mother got a letter from California. She read it sitting at the kitchen table. That evening, she sat in my father's lap in front of the fire while he read her letter. He went out that night, and when he came back the next day, he seemed at the same time very sad and lighter than before. He laughed more after that day.
When I was sixteen, I bought a motorcycle; an old, broken-down one. I asked my father to help me fix it. He refused, and when I took my first ride, he walked away as soon as the bike started. He cried in front of the fire that night. He never touched the bike, and would not look at me when I rode it. My mother said it brought bad memories, but she wouldn't tell me more.
When I was eighteen, I went away to college. My father told me he had never been prouder of me, and that he knew I would make something great of myself. He drove me, and helped me carry my things to my dorm. I left the bike at home for my brother, but he never rode it. My mother sold it, and gave me the money.
When I was twenty-eight my first child was born, and when my father held my daughter the first time, he cried and smiled through his tears. He said she had the eyes of his first love, the eyes of my brother's mother. He doted on her, and she on him.
When I was forty, my father sat me and my brother down and told us a lifetime of smoking had caught up with him. Even in his seventies, my father had seemed indomitable to me, and I could hardly believe he would die. He said he didn't mind so much. He had done so much bad, and so much good in his lifetime, and he had had all the important things. He told us he had loved and been loved by two strong, beautiful women, had two sons he was so proud of. He told us he was content. My mother held his hand.
After my father died, my brother and I helped our mother go through his things. We found envelopes with photographs. They showed my father riding a motorcycle, my father wearing a leather vest my mother told me was called a cut. They showed my father with a brunette woman my mother told me was my brother's first mom. She told me that woman had been called Tara Knowles, and my father had loved her so much. She told me of my father then, of his life in Charming, California. She told me of love and hate, and she told me that maybe my father hadn't been a good man in his youth, but he had tried to be. He hadn't always done the right thing, but he had tried to. She told me she loved him, and he had loved her. She never told me what happened to my grandmother, who was in pictures with me, and I am glad of it. I don't want to know.
My father was a quiet man. Not because he had nothing to tell, but because he wanted to forget. He wanted to listen to his sons having the life he knew he would never have. After he died, I knew why he doted on my daughter who so reminded him the woman he had loved and who had been torn from him because of his lifestyle. I knew why he was so happy I went to college and took a route so different from his, even though I didn't know how different until then. I knew why he couldn't look at or touch my bike, not because he didn't like it, as I had thought, but because he missed riding himself. I knew what his tattoos reminded him of, and something of the man he had been and both missed and hated. I knew then what he saw in the fire. He saw a young man on a motorcycle. A woman with brown hair, wearing scrubs. Men in cuts, riding with him on the highways. He saw crows flying free.
My father was many things. He was an outlaw, he was a killer, he was a widower, he was a husband, he was a father, and a grandfather. He loved and he hated. And he never forgave himself for what he had done.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you had some enjoyment from this story. Please, tell me what you think, even just a word or two. It would make me happy.