Our father used to sing songs—occasionally, unprompted, and out of his own volition. I only remembered this how you remember to tie your shoelaces. You do not go over the specifics of the process day after day, but you do know it in your heart. I reckon it was not until my brother asked me earlier this evening, and it was not until he proceeded to describe a day from our summer break from school, way back when we were children with time on our side and on our hands, that it occurred to me that I, too, have a vivid memory of it. Our father used to sing songs in the summer. Since I remembered this, like how you can only focus on breathing if you become ever so conscious of it, I have only thought about it. My father used to sing songs. What stopped him? I do not know. But I reckon it was the heaviness of life, and that we all grew up and became busier. The levity of singing outlandish, almost archaic songs with somewhat comedic or idyllic undertones must have been extinguished with the lack of laughter at home. It was so refreshing. I remember this at least. It was a different time. I remember this, too.
I have seen enough of life now to imagine what could have slowly stopped him. It could have been the notorious practicalities of life, the debts of money, time and energy which suffocated the urge to riff to a tune. It could have been the other bits, the parts he never talks about, or the parts he talks about often but never to reach catharsis—an aimless rant into the ether—the betrayals, the knives and words twisting into his back, the weight of invisible expectation pushing down on his life. The same six or seven stories about how things did not go his way, the same six or seven laments, the same six or seven times the inclination could have come back but did not. It could have been the unwarranted demands. It could have been the weight, the unstoppable weight, that I, too, have begun to feel now and then. It could be the invitations, the expectations, the need to keep up appearances that ate away at the little until no song remained.
Of course, my father has grown old. So has my mother. So have those they knew, those who are still here, and so did those who left us behind: aunts and uncles and family friends alike. A lot has changed in this town, and a lot has changed in this life, and I am not a boy anymore, but I often wish I was. I wish I still had days and days to read, the never-setting sun strained through the window like the perfect glass of orange juice right into my face, the hope and the energy to sit in front of the computer screen, hungry to learn, ever-so-hungry for life. I believe a lot has changed, but a lot remains. I love my father today as I did then. I love my mother, too. A lot of it has to do with days I do not sit to sift through but which remain buried deep within the shelves of my mind. I ought to take some of them out from time to time and dust them off. Perhaps, we ought to laugh a little, be children again, be aimless and thoughtless and live together again.
I remember now. It was a wonderful, wonderful time we had. The summer days seemed as bottomless as our endless games of carrom. We had a happy childhood. Our mother would sit and help us get ready for the next school year, playfully annoyed at him for he would start suddenly with his distinct baritone, and then, we would not hear anything else but the song from him for days. Each song was its own little phase, like that of the moon, reflecting the sun’s warmth onto all of us till the summers would end.
Oh, what I would not give for him to break into a song today.