He’s a little anxious. He keeps glancing over to the darkened room where the robes probably are.
I step around the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s find the robe.”
IT’S A STORAGE room and now it’s filled with garment racks. The racks are filled with robes, just like he said.
“Are you sure you don’t mind? It’ll only take a second,” he says.
The fact that he is so humble, and hides so well his intense curiosity and longing, charms me. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s find his robe.”
They are alphabetized so the hunt is brief. We locate the letter of his son’s last name. We begin to hunt through the robes. Quickly, he finds the spot where the robe should be. But it’s not there. He checks the names of the robes on either side. It’s not there, either.
His disappointment is something physical I can feel beside me in the room.
“Oh, I’m sorry about that,” I tell him.
He’s chipper. He claps his hands together, though there’s a glisten in his eyes. “Ah, it’s okay, it’s no big deal at all. It’s nothing. Hey, the ceremony is next week. I don’t need to see the robe today, it doesn’t matter.”
And then, once more, he turns to check the rack. He slides one robe out of the way and checks the name on the robe beside it.
Quickly, I turn my back on him. The top of my head is about to blow off. I gasp once and tears spring to my eyes, fill them. Quickly, I cough, choke down the sob and I wipe my tears fast with my left wrist.
“Yeah, not here. Okay, shall we go, then?” he says.
I felt it.
The love, it was so strong. How can I possibly describe this love? It is a force of nature. It is great, like the dust bowl but wonderful instead of terrible.
The pride this man feels for his son, to graduate from Harvard Medical School, a doctor. The pride, this father’s. The love, this father’s. For his son. It is completely overpowering.
Never in my life have I felt anything like it.
Of course I know fathers love their sons. I have seen movies. I have watched TV.
I get it.
But until this moment, I have not felt it. And now, I have. And it is not even mine. It leaked out of somebody else and stained me. It was not intended for me. It is not mine. And yet, I felt it. There was so much of it, so much love, so much adoration, so much of everything that is fine and good and wonderful and right with the world inside this man that he could not contain it.
The grief I feel is crushing and as we leave the room, I follow him because my legs are shaking and I know if he were to look at me he would ask, Are you okay? and I am not. I am not okay.
Because I can feel what it is I did not have.
I never felt it before.
How can you really miss something when you’ve never experienced it? The longing is purely academic. It’s book knowledge.
But tonight, I felt it. I felt it, I felt it, I felt it.
And, God, what? What would I give to feel it just once, all for me?
As we descend on the escalator I am shaking as I sob silently. I inhale carefully so that I don’t make a sound. Tears have sprinkled the lenses of my glasses.
Out on the street, the sun hits us from its low angle and the sky is a fiery orange. Car chrome, earrings on the woman walking past—everything metallic blazes, reflecting the burning color of the sky.
Even though the sky is still bright, I can see the moon and beside it three stars, or are they planets?
I know that behind these three stars, in the darkness that is hidden now by light, are other planets and numberless stars. Whole galaxies, just like ours. Other worlds.
And maybe on one of them, there is another me. And I am wearing my green robe with my name stitched onto the chest. And I am standing on stage as somebody hands me my diploma and out in the audience, all I can see is the radiance of one man whose eyes are so shining blue they blind me. And he is smiling and weeping and he is my father and he loves me with all the force of the expanding universe. He looks up at me and he mouths the words, “Very much I love you.”
Augusten Burroughs, A Wolf at the Table
(Series: # )
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