The sky is overcast over London this morning; the cinereal colour of a November day. Those grey clouds are undoubtedly snow clouds, I think to myself as I pull my thick scarf up over my face. It is perhaps the coldest day this city has seen this year, although as of lately I've been feeling the cold more intensely than ever before. When the first snowflake of the season falls, and lands in my thin, peppery hair, I feel as though the cold goes right through me, sending shivers down my spine and up my skinny arms and legs. Now, I don't by any means consider myself to be an old man, but sixty-seven years does take its toll on the human body.
As long as I keep moving, I'm not bothered by the cold. I'm off to the university this morning. It's Saturday, but there are always things to be done around the office — Tidying up and whatnot, though I've never been one to keep my office unrealistically clean... And there are always a few straggling students milling about on campus, using the library, or coming in for Saturday afternoon lectures. I enjoy conversing with every one of them, and I have to say: Their eager young minds are what keep me feeling young. If I couldn't look forward to seeing them every morning at work, why, I don't suppose I would still be working at all.
My son, Alfendi... He wanted me to retire two years ago.
"You've been teaching for thirty-eight years." I recall him repeatedly saying in the weeks leading up to my sixty-fifth birthday. "Don't you think it's time for a rest? So many of your friends are retiring now. Mr. Ledore just handed down management of his hotel to his son; Randall hasn't worked in years, besides the odd 'expedition' to some places warm and sunny. Don't you think it's time to start winding down? Nobody deserve retirement more than you do, Dad."
My beloved son Alfendi. He tries his best to take care of me, and ensure that I'm as happy as could possibly be. But he doesn't understand that retirement would hardly be a reward for me. Teaching "keeps me going", so to speak. If I didn't have my position at the university, I frankly wouldn't know what to with with myself.
Things haven't been the same since Alfendi moved out. It's a sorry thing when your children grow up and leave the nest. Alfendi's had his own flat for coming up to five years, but it seems like only yesterday he was an infant in my arms. I can still hear the echo of his little feet on the hardwood floor, as he and Flora chased each other around the living room. Flora thought it was great fun having a child in the house, and even as Alfendi grew, she continued to take the greatest pleasure in playing mother to him. It's difficult to believe Flora is a woman now, with a husband and three children of her own.
It's a puzzle the way a life works. The years go by much too quickly for anyone's liking. It certainly doesn't seem like thirty years ago that it was Flora and Luke playing on the living room floor. It was shortly after Luke left for America that I realized how lonely it was with just Flora and I, and it was around Christmas of that year that I made the decision to adopt Alfendi. Even now that Alfendi's grown, I still like to tell him that he was my favourite Christmas present. Of all the things I've accomplished in my sixty-seven years, my son, biological or not, is my greatest achievement.
It's snowing harder now, and I pick up my pace in an attempt to stay warm. I've been walking to work for exercise, but as the weather's getting colder, soon I'll be needing to take the car. With every snowflake that lands on my head, I can feel my temperature dropping. Friends of mine ask me why I don't wear a hat in the winter. The answer I give them is simple: I do not wear hats.
Next week will be the thirty year anniversary of her passing. Some weeks after that chilly evening in November, I decided I could not wear her top hat anymore. Every time I'd see my reflection in the mirror, I would see her face, but not smiling and shining like daylight as it should have been. All I saw was her disappearing form; her glowing hands and tearstained face as her body prepared to go back to her time... It's a picture I know will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Her top hat is under glass in my bedroom now. It's faded and warn from ten years of constant wear, but it's still more beautiful to me than the day she gave it to me. Because even in her dying moment, Claire was more beautiful than anything this dark and dismal world had ever seen. She was too pure for this earth, and so she had to leave it. Or so I once told Alfendi when he earnestly asked me where his mother was.
Alfendi just came out and asked me one afternoon in September, after I'd picked him up from school during his first week of first grade. Perhaps one of the other children said something to him, or perhaps at six years of age, Alfendi was beginning to realize on his own that there was someone important missing from his life. I had never known Alfendi's birth mother, so I could not tell him where she was, nor did I have any desire to. Instead I chose to tell him of the mother he would have had.
"She had red hair and brown eyes, and she was very beautiful." I told him as we sat together in my old rocking chair, Alfendi sitting in my lap. "She was very smart, just like you, and she was very kind. She would always be smiling when we were together; She loved her life, and was happy just to live it."
"Where is she now?" Alfendi turned to face me, eyes wide with curiosity and wonder.
I imagine he could easily read the pain in my expression, despite my best efforts to hide it when I told him she was in Heaven.
"She's dead!?" I'll never forget the way he cried out, his brown eyes beginning to fill, and then overflowing with tears. He barely knew what a mother was, and now it seemed his only hope of ever having one had been ripped away by the cruel hands of time.
Time... I didn't dare tell him about the time machine accident. It was far too intricate a story for his six-year-old mind to fathom, and I had not told the story myself in many years. I believe after the funeral, I swore to myself I would not tell it again.
So I told the sweet child the first thing that came to mind.
"Claire was the most wonderful person in the world. The kind of person who shines so brightly that merely being near them makes you happy. I believe God noticed this about Claire, and he decided she deserved a greater place to live than among all the bad people and pollution of the earth. And so he took her to Heaven, and there she now lives with the angels. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if she were watching us right now, looking down from Heaven, telling all of her angel friends 'that's my son down there, and his father.'"
It came as an utter surprise to me the following morning when I found a drawing of a red-headed woman dressed in a long white gown, with large white wings and a golden halo over her head, the word 'Mommy' childishly printed in gold letters underneath, hanging on the refrigerator door.
I still have the picture to this day. It's framed beside the photo of Claire I keep on my nightstand. The two pictures are still the first things I see every morning, and the last things I see before bed at night.
I turn the corner of a London street, passing by a hat shop, and catching my reflection in the window. I'm not as tall as I used to be, and as of lately I feel as though my hair has gotten much greyer, and much thinner. It's difficult for me to keep the weight on, and the lines in my face are now heavier set. But the folds at either side of my mouth are from many years of smiling, and the circles under my eyes are from countless nights of staying up late reading history books, and solving puzzles. My life has been an extraordinary one, and although I am now passed retirement age, I do not intend to slow down any time soon.
But then I come to a place between two blocks of buildings. I pass this alleyway every day on my walk to and from Gressenheller, and I've probably passed it a thousand times since that evening, thirty years ago. But something about the time of year it is... The type of day and the way the snow is falling so gently, and landing on my hatless head...
I turn down the alleyway and look up to the sky. I have lived for sixty-seven years, and I hope I live many years more.
But the sky is overcast in London this morning, and I hope she's still watching me through the clouds. I hope she'll remember me when I see her again. And I hope she'll understand why I've stopped wearing her top hat.