Just a little something I wrote up quickly after watching the movie Big Fish.
As always, I own nothing.
I was maybe three-years-old when my father told me the first story. He claimed it was true, but he was like that. He'd always say, "Just because something's not the truth doesn't mean it's not true." Oh, I would get so mad whenever he'd say it. It didn't make any sense! If something was the truth, it was true. If it wasn't the truth, then it was untrue and therefore, not true. But he'd just chuckle in the face of my tiny, clenched fists and kiss my head before starting another story.
And, let me be quite clear here, these stories were ridiculous. Ridiculous, fantastical stories that were so far beyond the realm of possibility that they nearly came back around the other side. Stories of a woman who could pop in and out of chalk drawings, who blew in and out of his life on the winds. I believed him for as long as I could, but at a certain point you have to grow up. The woman who could literally make the sun shine brighter, who had rode carousel horses off the carousel, that woman couldn't possibly exist. Magic wasn't real. It simply didn't exist and neither did the woman.
It got worse as we got older. My father insisted that this magical, fantastic woman, the nanny with the clearest soprano in the world, she was real, that she'd come back. She always did, he claimed. Well into his sixties, he'd consistently check the winds every morning. I had to admire his commitment, even to a stupid, fictional woman that I was semi-convinced he'd made up simply to atone for the fact that my own mother hadn't seen it fit to stick around and raise me. I think that hurt him more than it hurt me, honestly. I wasn't two years old yet when it happened, and all I really had of her was the one picture he kept of her in the house and the little tidbits my father would tell me.
His stories were never about her though and the only things I could ever get him to tell me about her were in comparison to his fictional nanny. Her hair was copper where Mary Poppins' hair was dark as a night when the moon wasn't out, her eyes were hazel, but Mary Poppins' were the clearest blue.
His descriptions of this Mary Poppins were what had kept me sold for so long. He had a very clear picture of Mary Poppins in his head and to hear him describe her, well, it was beautiful. But as I reached twelve, thirteen, twenty years of age, and no woman had shown to whisk me and my father away to a land where the sun always shined, I realized that it was time to grow up, that my father, in his older age had become attached to this fiction he'd invented in his head. I thought perhaps Mary Poppins had been invented to not only give me a sort of mother figure (from the time I could remember, he'd hold me in his lap and tell me how Mary would positively adore me—it was a huge compliment when I was young enough to believe in her), but to give him something to hold onto in the loneliness of his new single fatherhood. I can't say that I blame him.
But I did blame him for many, many years for choosing to tell me about this Mary Poppins instead of my own flesh-and-blood mother. For the longest time, I resented him, not understanding that perhaps my own mother was too sore of a subject for him to bring up.
He'd tell magical stories, closing his eyes as if he could relive the fictions behind his eyelids. The day Mary Poppins had reappeared in London, only to pull him into a chalk drawing, where they'd been waited on by penguin waiters and rode carousel horses in a horse race. The tea party they had with her uncle on the ceiling. The night they danced with the other chimney sweeps, another night they danced among the stars. They were truly beautiful stories and everyone loved them. But they were just that: stories.
And yet, to his grave, my father insisted. He insisted that Mary Poppins was real, that she'd come on the East Wind, we just had to believe and be patient. He was wrong and the East Wind didn't blow. Not until the day of his funeral.
It was easily the worst day of my life and the hardest thing I've ever been forced to do. We didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things, but he was my dad and I loved him more than anything. He'd always been there, constantly holding my hand, cheering me on, simply loving me. I was lost without him.
It was at the cemetery I saw her—a woman with hair darker than a night without the moon and the brightest blue eyes I'd ever seen. There were tears in her eyes but she managed a smile as I approached her. "I'm sorry," I apologized. "I don't think we've met."
"Not formally, no, but your father told me so much about you. He was incredibly proud of you, I hope you know."
"I know," I said, and I did. The refrigerator in his home still had old report cards and finger paintings on it. "If you don't mind my asking, how did you two know each other? It's just… you're not like most of the people who were around the house."
She smiled sadly. "Your father and I were once very good friends, many years ago now."
I could tell, could see it written all over her face, that she had loved my father. That she'd been in love with my father. But that didn't make sense. She didn't look a day over 30.
"Well," she sighed as the wind started to pick up and she brought an umbrella out from under her arm. It was a funny old thing with a parrot handle. "I'm afraid I must be on my way. I am truly sorry for your loss. Your father was the most… genuine man I've ever had the pleasure of meeting."
"Thank you."
"It's been a pleasure," she said with a smile before departing.
"Wait!" I called out as she started to walk away. She turned back around. "I'm afraid I didn't catch your name."
A small smile graced her lips; there was a glimmer in her eyes that was almost knowing, though it was hidden behind the tears there. "I'm Mary Poppins. I hope our paths might cross again, Miss Alfred."
And with that, she was gone.