It had been almost two months since that rainy night when I felt, with a painful clarity, that my presence in my daughter’s house was left over. During that time, she called me just twice. First, to ask if he was okay. The second, to know if I still kept the old drill in the garage. I responded kindly to him both times. I didn’t blame her, I didn’t tell her I missed her, I didn’t ask her when she thought to invite me. I just stopped holding on to a life that no longer included me.
The encounter that changed everything
On a Wednesday morning I was sitting in the park when a man my age settled on the bench next to me. His name was Mircea, he was sixty-seven years old and had been a music teacher. I used to go almost every day to the park with a board of chess under the arm.
“Do you play?” he asked.
“Too bad,” I replied.
“Perfect. Me too.
We laughed. That’s how it all started.
A new network of friendships at 64
Through Mircea I met three other people. We started meeting on Wednesdays to play chess and on Fridays in a small cafeteria in the center. When they learned that she had a guitar kept at home, they insisted that she take her. I hadn’t played in front of anyone in almost thirty years.
The first night I played in front of them, my fingers trembled. But something happened that had not been experimenting for a long time: no one looked at the phone, no one looked at the clock, everyone listened to me. It may seem like a small, insignificant detail. For me it wasn’t. For me it was everything.
The unexpected call
One Sunday the phone rang. She was my daughter.
“Dad, where are you?” he asked, with a surprise I couldn’t ignore.
“On the mountain,” I replied.
On the mountain?
“Yes, I came to spend the weekend with a few friends.
There was a long silence on the other side. Then he said:
I didn’t know you had friends you went on a trip.
I smiled before I responded.
You never asked.
I didn’t say it with a grudge or with the intention of hurting her. Maybe that’s why it hurt so much.
