Fly Again

We were married in the shade of two sugar maples that had twined and grown together. Two trunks, one tree: knots and knots of a long life lived in each other’s arms, and every branch strewn with flowers. My wife knew how to make a moment special. That morning it had rained, and in the afternoon the air was still moist, like eyelashes after weeping. Clouds rolled about grumbling in the sky. But when my wife walked down the aisle, the band played and a hush fell over our families, then the sun beamed down through the clouds, and poured like silk on our wedding. The whole world looked like a memory.

In the night it bucketed down. The speeches were drowned by the thundering of rain on the marquee. All the same, the formalities proceeded. Uncles and aunts, boyfriends of school friends and second cousins – it was all so very glib! But then – miracle from Heaven! – lightning struck the marquee, the canvas ripped, and rain flooded inside. And the people ran, and the people screamed, and everyone all at once tried to carry Pop to safety, but the lights cut, and everyone was carrying everyone else’s Pop! Pop swore and hit at them with his stick, the sound man threw himself bodily over the speakers to protect them, teenaged cousins swiped bottles of wine, and young couples necked in the dark, while my wife and I retired under our table with a bottle of champagne, sat on the grass, toasted each other, and watched the high heels stampede by.

At midnight, when the rain stopped and the wind died, I carried my wife across the muddy carpark up to our chalet. No one knew we’d gone, but I preferred it like that. For beneath all the pomp and pageantry, the DJs and MCs, speeches and champagne, two fates had met that day, twined, and grown together. Marriage is a private thing, hidden in a hideously public ceremony. It was only when my wife and I were alone together that I realised my life had changed. I thought the change would last forever.

Six years later, on the night of our anniversary, we left our daughter Amy at my parents’ place, and stole off to dinner. We had pasta and wine (too much pasta, too much wine), and chattered away like happy schoolkids. The night was golden. I didn’t know where our joy came from – whether we were elated in love, or just relieved to spend a night away from The Wiggles. In my innermost heart I gloried that it was my father, and not me, currently doing the Hot Potato Dance. And I loved the woman sitting across the table.

That night it also rained, and it rained hard. I drove carefully along the highway. But something fell as I passed a truck – I swerved to miss it – a skid, a screech, lights, wind, rain, a noise, a bump, no gravity, then crunch. After that I do not remember.

I broke my spine and both my legs, the right leg very badly. Blood tests indicated I was under the legal alcohol limit. The truck driver lost his licence. I was unconscious for three days, and spent two weeks in hospital. Then they put me in a wheelchair and rolled me home, to start a twelve months’ sentence of physiotherapy. My wife did not come home with me. My body was broken, my heart bled, my eyes hurt from crying; my parents did their best to explain, but Amy was too young to learn by abstraction. She had to come to me in the morning, every day for a week, cuddle in bed beside me and play with my plaster casts, before she realised that this was my room now, and mummy was never going to share it with me again. The morning she understood she cried and cried, much more than she cried at the funeral. I cried, too. Some part of me was always in tears.

I was granted leave from work. Mum visited every day to help with the housework. With the settlement from the truck company, and the payout of my wife’s superannuation, I could afford to stay home for a year.

I learned to be a single dad. Things were strange, confusing, and difficult, but I persevered. I endured and triumphed in my own little ways. I now know the sizing of girls’ T-shirts in all the different shops, I can braid hair, I know all the male parts from Frozen and can lip-synch the female, I have not missed a single parent-teacher interview, not a single lunchbox has left my home without a little treat inside it to show how much I care. I can cook a spaghetti bolognaise full of secret veggies of which every mouthful is eaten; my daughter can tell me things I never thought another person would trust me to hear. I’ve learned to be angry without being angry at her, to be upset without cursing; I know how to feel down without pulling Amy down with me.

Things were not well with me. The pain never left. It followed me like tinnitus; it ground me down, little by little, day by day, overwhelmed me, and won. The pills were all that could make me sleep. And when, by a miracle, I quit the pills, the dreams began. Nightmares and waking, shivers and chills; the empty pillow, the hollow night, a gaping wound, a nameless dread; shallow breathing, tears, the sound of chain-gangs in the dark. I wish I could be better; I wish I was stronger. I wish I was enough! I wish I was enough; oh, how I wish I could be enough for her!
I ate too much, I barely exercised. It hurt me even to walk. At night, after Amy went to bed, I stayed up drinking wine. It is so easy to finish a bottle of wine! And it is so hard to fall asleep. I watched some truly dreadful films. I even watched the ads! I had to change position constantly on the sofa, to ease the pain in my back. At work they took pity on me. They told me I was part of the family, and family takes care of family. But I could never pull my weight. They moved me to an office job. I spent all day in a chair, and tried to hide my doughnut boxes at the bottom of the bin. But I know my colleagues worried.

The worst thing is to be loved, and feel unworthy of that love. It is hardest to receive kindness when you know you will only throw that kindness back in everyone’s face. It would be better to be alone: free, at least, of obligation. Sometimes it would be better to die. They say I must be honest, but if I was honest I would cry every day, and send my colleagues home wrecked and exhausted to their children and wives. They would hate me for that! Some things can be fixed with a kind word or a spanner, but some things take years to heal. Some pains linger for lifetimes, some wounds never quite close. Grief never dies as long as memory lives. You learn to live with the heartbreak, and carry your agony towards the death you will share with it. Sometimes it takes all the courage you can muster just to carry on, though you know there is no other choice. Most people will never understand the guts it takes for some of us just to get out of bed. Most people will never understand the nobility it can take just to be seen. It hurts, it aches; it is bleak, hopeless, and grey; but still, though you know not why, you carry on.

Amy grew up. She reminds me more and more of her mother. She has her mother’s eyes, and her mother’s laugh. Sometimes she says things to me, and I can remember her mother saying, word for word, exactly the same thing. Their voices even sound the same. And she loves me, just like her mother did. Oh, she loves me! She loves me, though I can earn that love. I will never carry her to bed from the car, I cannot teach her to swim or take her on hikes. If a robber comes to hurt us at night, daddy, at best, will give him a stern rebuke. At playgroup I sit and watch. In the park I never catch her at the bottom of the slide, nor do I push her on the swings. At our father-daughter dance she will wheel me about in my wheelchair. I am a burden to my daughter – I know that. But I will never, ever leave her on her own. Never!

One day, as we walked home from the park, Amy asked me to race her. I was flabbergasted to receive such an insensitive request. I could hardly believe my ears! I told her, Child, certainly not! Are you unaware that daddy has a bad back? There is so much metal in my spine that I jingle when I burp. Have you observed my figure? Do you think anyone could run with this burden of fat? Have you seen a seal run? Have you seen a walrus? And on one leg, mind you! Who do you think I am, darling? Jonah Lomu? Daddy does not run, angel. Nor does daddy fly!

Amy looked at me. An emotion flew across her face. Pain welled up in her eyes – and she swallowed it. For a moment I glimpsed the sadness in her, the grief; her wish that things were different. Her wish that I were different. I’d known for a long time that Amy was taking care of me, as though I were her child as much as she was mine. Now I saw how heavy a weight I had become. And I realised that no child should have to carry their dad. I am a good father, and I love my daughter. But I could be better. I could be so much better than I am.

For once, I did not drop like a stone into a well of self-pity, or make a cocoon of my grief. Something lit up inside me, something woke. It felt like anger, but I wasn’t angry. It was as strong as rage, but it burned inwards, not out. I felt furious, but the fury was full of humour. I felt tender, even happy. I felt somehow free. My madness was made of dreams.

That night I did not drink a drop of wine. I barely slept at all, but at dawn I was up, in the car, driving to the gym. I was assigned a physio called Greg. He had big biceps and the air of a man who runs shirtless along the beach. I was a flabby middle-aged office worker with bloodshot eyes and three metal rods in my spine. But I held Action Man Gregory by the scruff of his neck, looked him in his crystal-clear eyes, and told him to treat me like Rocky Balboa. To his credit, Greg did not laugh.

Then it began: 6am wake-ups, aqua aerobics, lat-pulldowns and salads. 1kg dumbbells, 2kg dumbbells, leg extension and chest press. Shoulderblades together, draw your chin back; aching calves, treadmills, sore biceps, white wine gurgling down the sink. Protein shakes, Bento Boxes, sit-ups, push-ups, step-ups, lie-downs and flops. 4kg dumbbells, deep tissue massage, brisk walks in the park. 5kg dumbbells, a new wardrobe, breaststroke and yoga.

One day Greg asked me why I was always looking in my wallet while we trained. Exasperated to waste my breath on such a stupid bloody question, I unvelcroed my money-piece, displayed to Greg a photo of Amy, and informed him shortly that every time I ask myself why the fuck I am doing the grasshopper on an empty stomach at 6 in the morning while a sports model with a shaved chest and shit for brains bellows at me about pinching my buttocks, then I open my wallet, and look at my why. My eyes were spinning, spittle flew from my lips, I waved a finger or two in Greg’s handsome visage. He endured my harangue patiently, and once again did not laugh. Again, it was to his credit. I assure you that Greg is no meathead; he knows that occasionally I need to vent. And I believe he understands that it’s healthy for him to be lectured by a fat wally from time to time, to balance out all the lectures he gives.

Finally the day arrived. I felt it in my ever-denser bones, I felt it in my perky glutes. I knew it already when Amy and I were playing in the park. “This is it,” I said to myself, “today is the day.” I did some surreptitious hamstring stretches, a few clandestine lunges and furtive hip-dips.

It was dusk when we left. It was a cool evening at the start of spring. Amy examined me in my Nike sweatsuit, and inquired why I was butterflying my arms.
“You’ll see,” I said with becoming gravity. “You’ll see.”
We walked down the street. Amy was in a happy mood, but she was wary. She sensed something was afoot. She told me I was acting weird. I refused to explain my motives. We walked on in silence.

At the corner I stopped. Amy took another half-step, then stopped, and turned to look at me. I was gazing pensively at the sunset. Suddenly I started, and looked down at Amy, as though I’d remembered something important, then forgotten it again, and was now trawling through my memory, trying to recover it.
“Hey Amy?” I said at last.
“Yeah?” she said. Her face flashed a montage of emotions: first curious, then quizzical, confused, then dubious, finally suspicious. Her eyes narrowed, and sharpened like a file; her mouth opened slightly, her lips formed the first ‘W’ of a question – but she did not ask it, and pursed her lips again. She tilted her head slightly to the side, and inspected me. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust me; more that she didn’t understand. I was exhibiting behaviour for which she had no precedent. She examined me with questioning eyes.
“You know?” I said, and before she could even say “what?” I was already halfway down the street, whooping, hollering, pumping my arms, my mouth open, my eyes beaming, blood pounding like disco in my ears, my heart ablaze, my soul aflight, as I streaked along the sidewalk, trailing fire from my feet.

Behind me was all outrage and scandal. There was screaming, there were accusations, there was rage. Then there was laughter, footsteps and happy squealing, and suddenly Amy was running next to me. I ran faster, I pulled ahead. She caught up again. She was panting. I pumped my arms. We ran like lightning towards the setting sun, and before we knew it, we were flying again.