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Dear Reader,
One of my idols once said, “The worst part about growing old is that I don’t get any ideas anymore.” Those words have never quite left me since I first heard them, because this would be my greatest fear: imagination giving up before the body does. I guess I’m not alone in this. Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying.
This is a story about memories and about letting go. It’s a love letter and a slow farewell between a man and his grandson, and between a dad and his boy.
I never meant for you to read it, to be quite honest. I wrote it just because I was trying to sort out my own thoughts, and I’m the kind of person who needs to see what I’m thinking on paper to make sense of it. But it turned into a small tale of how I’m dealing with slowly losing the greatest minds I know, about missing someone who is still here, and how I wanted to explain it all to my children. I’m letting it go now, for what it’s worth.
It’s about fear and love, and how they seem to go hand in hand most of the time. Most of all, it’s about time. While we still have it. Thank you for giving this story yours.
Fredrik Backman
There’s a hospital room at the end of a life where someone, right in the middle of the floor, has pitched a green tent. A person wakes up inside it, breathless and afraid, not knowing where he is. A young man sitting next to him whispers:
“Don’t be scared.”
Isn’t that the best of all life’s ages, an old man thinks as he looks at his grandchild. When a boy is just big enough to know how the world works but still young enough to refuse to accept it. Noah’s feet don’t touch the ground when his legs dangle over the edge of the bench, but his head reaches all the way to space, because he hasn’t been alive long enough to allow anyone to keep his thoughts on Earth. His grandpa is next to him and is incredibly old, of course, so old now that people have given up and no longer nag him to start acting like an adult. So old that it’s too late to grow up. It’s not so bad either, that age.
The bench is in a square; Noah blinks heavily at the sunrise beyond it, newly woken. He doesn’t want to admit to Grandpa that he doesn’t know where they are, because this has always been their game: Noah closes his eyes and Grandpa takes him somewhere they’ve never been before. Sometimes the boy has to squeeze his eyes tight, tight shut while he and Grandpa change buses four times in town, and sometimes Grandpa just takes him straight into the woods behind the house by the lake. Sometimes they go in the boat, often for so long that Noah falls asleep, and once they’ve made it far enough Grandpa whispers “open your eyes” and gives Noah a map and a compass and the task of working out how they’re going to get home. Grandpa knows he’ll always manage, because there are two things in life in which Grandpa’s faith is unwavering: mathematics and his grandson. A group of people calculated how to fly three men to the moon when Grandpa was young, and mathematics took them all the way there and back again. Numbers always lead people back.
But this place lacks coordinates; there are no roads out, no maps lead here.
Noah remembers that Grandpa asked him to close his eyes today. He remembers that they crept out of Grandpa’s house and he knows that Grandpa took him to the lake, because the boy knows all the sounds and songs of the water, eyes open or not. He remembers damp wood underfoot as they stepped into the boat, but nothing after that. He doesn’t know how he and Grandpa ended up here, on a bench in a round square. The place is strange but everything here is familiar, like someone stole all the things you grew up with and put them into the wrong house. There’s a desk over there, just like the one in Grandpa’s office, with a mini calculator and squared notepaper on top. Grandpa whistles gently, a sad tune, takes a quick little break to whisper:
“The square got smaller overnight again.”
Then he starts whistling again. Grandpa seems surprised when the boy gives him a questioning look, aware for the first time that he said those words aloud.
“Sorry, Noahnoah, I forgot that thoughts aren’t silent here.”
Grandpa always calls him “Noahnoah” because he likes his grandson’s name twice as much as everyone else’s. He puts a hand in the boy’s hair, not ruffling it, just letting his fingers rest there.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Noahnoah.”
Hyacinths are blooming beneath the bench, a million tiny purple arms reaching up from the stalks to embrace the rays of sunlight. The boy recognizes the flowers, they’re Grandma’s, they smell like Christmas. For other children maybe that scent would be ginger biscuits and mulled wine, but if you’ve ever had a Grandma who loved things that grew then Christmas will always smell like hyacinths. There are shards of glass and keys glittering between the flowers, like someone had been keeping them safe in a big jar but then fell over and dropped it.
“What are all those keys for?” the boy asks.
“Which keys?” asks Grandpa.
The old man’s eyes are strangely empty now. He raps his temples in frustration. The boy opens his mouth to say something, but stops himself when he sees that. He sits quietly instead and does what Grandpa taught him to do if he gets lost: take in his surroundings, look for landmarks and clues. The bench is surrounded by trees, because Grandpa loves trees, because trees don’t give a damn what people think. Silhouettes of birds lift up from them, spread out across the heavens, and rest confidently on the winds. A dragon is crossing the square, green and sleepy, and a penguin with small chocolate-colored handprints on its stomach is sleeping in one corner. A soft owl with only one eye is sitting next to it. Noah recognizes them too; they used to be his. Grandpa gave him the dragon when he had just been born, because Grandma said it wasn’t suitable to give newborn children dragons as cuddly toys and Grandpa said he didn’t want a suitable grandson.
People are walking around the square, but they’re blurry. When the boy tries to focus on their outlines they slip from his eyes like light through venetian blinds. One of them stops and waves to Grandpa. Grandpa waves back, tries to look confident.
“Who’s that?” the boy asks.
“That’s . . . I . . . I can’t remember, Noahnoah. It was so long ago . . . I think . . .”
He falls silent, hesitates, and searches for something in his pockets.
“You haven’t given me a map and a compass today, nothing to count on, I don’t know how I’m meant to find the way home, Grandpa,” Noah whispers.
“I’m afraid those things won’t help us here, Noahnoah.”
“Where are we, Grandpa?”
Then Grandpa starts to cry, silently and tearlessly, so that his grandson won’t realize.
“It’s hard to explain, Noahnoah. It’s so incredibly, incredibly hard to explain.”
The girl is standing in front of him and smells like hyacinths, like she’s never been anywhere else. Her hair is old but the wind in it is new, and he still remembers what it felt like to fall in love; that’s the last memory to abandon him. Falling in love with her meant having no room in his own body. That was why he danced.
“We had too little time,” he says.
She shakes her head.
“We had an eternity. Children and grandchildren.”
“I only had you for the blink of an eye,” he says
.
She laughs.
“You had me an entire lifetime. All of mine.”
“That wasn’t enough.”
She kisses his wrist; her chin rests in his fingers.
“No.”
They walk slowly along a road he thinks he has walked before, not remembering where it leads. His hand is wrapped safely around hers and they’re sixteen again, no shaking fingers, no aching hearts. His chest tells him he could run to the horizon, but one breath passes and his lungs won’t obey him anymore. She stops, waits patiently beneath the weight of his arm, and she’s old now, like the day before she left him. He whispers into her eyelid:
“I don’t know how to explain it to Noah.”
“I know,” she says and her breath sings against his neck.
“He’s so big now, I wish you could see him.”
“I do, I do.”
“I miss you, my love.”
“I’m still with you, darling difficult you.”
“But only in my memories now. Only here.”
“That doesn’t matter. This was always my favorite part of you.”
“I’ve filled the square. It got smaller overnight again.”
“I know, I know.”
Then she dabs his forehead with a soft handkerchief, making small red circles bloom on the material, and she admonishes him:
“You’re bleeding; you need to be careful when you get into the boat.”
He closes his eyes.
“What do I say to Noah? How do I explain that I’m going to be leaving him even before I die?”
She takes his jaw in her hands and kisses him.
“Darling difficult husband, you should explain this to our grandson the way you’ve always explained everything to him: as though he was smarter than you.”
He holds her close. He knows the rain will be coming soon.
Noah can see that Grandpa is ashamed the minute he says it’s hard to explain, because Grandpa never says that to Noah. All other adults do, Noah’s dad does it every day, but not Grandpa.
“I don’t mean it would be hard for you to understand, Noahnoah. I mean it’s hard for me to understand,” the old man apologizes.
“You’re bleeding!” the boy cries.
Grandpa’s fingers fumble across his forehead. A single drop of blood is teetering on the edge of a deep gash in his skin, right above his eyebrow, sitting there fighting gravity. Eventually it falls, onto Grandpa’s shirt, and two more drops immediately do the same, just like when children leap into the sea from a jetty, one has to be brave enough to go first before the others will follow.
“Yes . . . yes, I suppose I am, I must’ve . . . fallen,” Grandpa broods as though that should have been a thought too.
But there are no silent thoughts here. The boy’s eyes widen.
“Wait, you . . . you fell in the boat. I remember now! That’s how you hurt yourself, I shouted for Dad!”
“Dad?” Grandpa repeats.
“Yeah, don’t be scared Grandpa, Dad’s coming to get us soon!” Noah promises as he pats Grandpa on the forearm, soothing him with a degree of experience far beyond what a boy his age should have.
Grandpa’s pupils bounce anxiously, so the boy resolutely continues:
“Do you remember what you always said when we went fishing on the island and slept in the tent? There’s nothing wrong with being a bit scared, you said, because if you wet yourself it’ll keep the bears away!”
Grandpa blinks tightly, as though even Noah’s outline has gotten blurry, but then the old man nods several times, his eyes clearer.
“Yes! Yes, so I did, Noahnoah, I said that, didn’t I? When we were fishing. Oh, darling Noahnoah, you’ve grown so big. So very big. How is school?”
Noah steadies his voice, tries to swallow the trembling of his vocal cords as his heart pounds in alarm.
“It’s fine. I’m top of the class in math. Just keep calm, Grandpa; Dad’s going to come and get us soon.”
Grandpa’s hand rests on the boy’s shoulder.
“That’s good, Noahnoah, that’s good. Mathematics will always lead you home.”
The boy is terrified now, but knows better than to let Grandpa see that, so he shouts:
“Three point one four one!”
“Five nine two,” Grandpa immediately replies.
“Six five three,” the boy reels off.
“Five eight nine.” Grandpa laughs.
That’s another of Grandpa’s favorite games, reciting the decimals of pi, the mathematical constant which is the key to calculating the size of a circle. Grandpa loves the magic of it, those key numbers which unlock secrets, open up the entire universe to us. He knows more than two hundred decimals of it by heart; the boy’s record is half that. Grandpa always says that the years will allow them to meet in the middle, when the boy’s thoughts expand and Grandpa’s contract.
“Seven,” says the boy.
“Nine,” Grandpa whispers.
The boy squeezes his rough palm, and Grandpa sees that he is afraid, so the old man says:
“Have I ever told you about the time I went to the doctor, Noahnoah? I said, ‘Doctor, Doctor, I’ve broken my arm in two places!’ and the doctor replied, ‘Then I’d advise you to stop going there!’ ”
The boy blinks; things are becoming increasingly blurred.
“You’ve told that one before, Grandpa. It’s your favorite joke.”
“Oh,” Grandpa whispers, ashamed.
The square is a perfect circle. The wind fights in the treetops; the leaves move in a hundred dialects of green; Grandpa has always loved this time of year. Warm winds wander through the arms of the hyacinths and small drops of blood dry on his forehead. Noah holds his fingers there and asks:
“Where are we, Grandpa? Why are my stuffed animals here in the square? What happened when you fell in the boat?”
And then Grandpa’s tears leave his eyelashes.
“We’re in my brain, Noahnoah. And it got smaller overnight again.”
Ted and his dad are in a garden. It smells like hyacinths.
“How is school?” the dad asks gruffly.
He always asks that and Ted can never give the right answer. The dad likes numbers and the boy likes letters; they’re different languages.
“I got top marks for my essay,” says the boy.
“And mathematics? How are you doing in mathematics? How are words meant to guide you home if you’re lost in the woods?” the dad grunts.
The boy doesn’t reply; he doesn’t understand numbers, or maybe the numbers don’t understand him. They’ve never seen eye to eye, his dad and him.
The dad, still a young man, bends down and starts pulling weeds from a flower bed. When he gets back up it’s dark, though he could swear only a moment had passed.
“Three point one four one,” he mumbles, but the voice no longer sounds like his own.
“Dad?” says the son’s voice, but different now, deeper.
“Three point one four one! It’s your favorite game!” roars the dad.
“No,” the son softly replies.
“It was your . . .” the dad starts, but the air betrays his words.
“You’re bleeding, Dad,” says the boy.
The dad blinks at him several times, but then shakes his head and chuckles exaggeratedly.
“Ah, it’s just a graze. Have I ever told you about the time I went to the doctor? I said, ‘Doctor, Doctor, I’ve broken my arm. . . .’ ”
He falls silent.
“You’re bleeding, Dad,” the boy repeats patiently.
“I said, ‘I’ve broken my arm.’ Or no, wait, I said . . . I can’t remember . . . it’s my favorite joke, Ted. It’s my favorite joke. Stop pulling at me, I can tell my favorite bloody joke!”
The boy carefully takes hold of his hands, but they’re small now.
The boy’s are like spades in comparison.
“Whose hands are these?” the old man pants.
“They’re mine,??
? Ted replies.
The dad shakes his head; blood runs from his forehead, anger fills his eyes.
“Where’s my boy? Where’s my little boy? Answer me!”
“Sit down a minute, Dad,” Ted begs.
The dad’s pupils hunt the dusk around the treetops; he tries to cry out but can’t remember how; his throat will only give him hissing sounds now.
“How is school, Ted? How are you doing in mathematics?”
Mathematics will always lead you home. . . .
“You need to sit down, Dad, you’re bleeding,” the son begs.
He has a beard; it bristles beneath the dad’s palm when he touches the boy’s cheek.
“What happened?” whispers the dad.
“You fell over in the boat. I told you not to go out in the boat, Dad. It’s dangerous, especially when you take No—”
The dad’s eyes widen and he excitedly interrupts:
“Ted? Is that you? You’ve changed! How is school?”
Ted breathes slowly, talks clearly.
“I don’t go to school anymore, Dad. I’m grown up now.”
“How did your essay go?”
“Sit down now, please, Dad. Sit down.”
“You look scared, Ted. Why are you scared?”
“Don’t worry, Dad. I was just . . . I . . . you can’t go out in the boat. I’ve told you a thousand times. . . .”
They aren’t in the garden anymore; they’re in an odorless room with white walls. The dad lays his hand on the bearded cheek.
“Don’t be scared, Ted. Do you remember when I taught you to fish? When we stayed in the tent out on the island and you had to sleep in my sleeping bag because you had a nightmare and wet yourself? Do you remember what I said to you? That it’s good to wet yourself because it keeps the bears away. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit scared.”
When the dad sits down he lands on a soft bed, freshly made up by someone who isn’t going to sleep there. This isn’t his room. Ted is sitting next to him and the old man buries his nose in his son’s hair.
“Do you remember, Ted? The tent on the island?”