What is my name?

What is my name?

By

John. D. Kennedy

The dark and numbing years from this pandemic, unraveled to a wheezing, imperceptible end. A strange sense of returned normality to a life that lived and died before COVID19, began to spin its unrelenting gears. Compressed and widespread glittering booms, of mask-less commuters in a broken chaos of words and honks, polluted the airline filled skies.

But for Ethan and his 8-year-old daughter, Skylar, nothing had changed. Their home was now a house, a tomb with a passive, grieving silence. Every room and peripheral served as a stabbing, and often, illusionary reminder of Jenny who painted colours of all that was once good in their world. The agonizing sense of no time passing struck Ethan like an ice pick as he lay on their bed replaying in his mind the idiosyncratic moments with his wife. Using a pillow Ethan drew out a recent memory when he gently lay his head on his wife’s belly, feeling the early heartbeats of a son who never saw his father’s face.

For Skylar, she left her bedroom door opened for a tuck-in kiss goodnight. Staring into the vertical light beam from the doorway with the hope that her mother would walk in with her new brother in her arms as though nothing had happened.

They now lay in a graveyard. The cold soil bulged like a womb. He placed his ear to the ground waiting for one last heartbeat.

Ethan and Skylar moved with a numbing routine. Like ghosts. Each weekday, Ethan picked up his daughter from school with empty smiles, like empty notebooks. Skylar’s eyes would glue to the ground as they walked home watching their shadows holding hands and imagining that it was a character that could come and save her, perhaps even fly her above the cloud lines to a new and happy world.

One morning, after dropping Skylar off to school, Ethan drove to the grave to lay down flowers and talk with his wife and unborn baby from the belly of the earth. Approaching their graves, he noticed a black Moleskine notebook resting against the tombstone. He looked around to see if anyone was close by, but the grounds lay empty. Squatting down, Ethan held the A5 book in his hands. The smooth black cover of the Moleskine felt like flesh with beveled corners. Removing a strap that held the book closed, Ethan opened the notebook to the front page. It read…

…To Ethan and Skylar…

He turned to the second page which read…

…Look under the Daffodils…

It was then that he noticed a cluster of newly planted daffodils dancing in the breeze. Ethan once again looked around him as though he was about to perform a criminal act. As he pulled away the flowers, he discovered a golden, tin box that he instantly recognized. It belonged to his wife, Jenny who used it to store her dreams. Opening the box, he finds enclosed the sum of $20,000. Returning to the book is a black and white illustration of a young boy on the ivory, stitch-bounded pages, whose face is obscured. It reads:

…I am an unfinished character. Please accept these gifts to help create and finish my character. Take me on a journey. Guide me to a wealth of stories, teach me, happiness and love so that I can know more of myself.

Ethan’s hands clenched onto the gifts, trembling through restraining tears. A renewed feeling began to take over him, like a rare, hydrating breeze. Everything around him began to transform into a new possibility. He gathered pedals from the Daffodils, opened the notebook and placed them inside the moleskin pocket.

Opening the notebook, a new drawing appeared with the young boy sitting in the same car smelling daffodils while peering out of the passenger window as they drove straight back to the school. Moments later his daughter left the school office baffled as her father leant against the car with the black notebook to his chest.

‘Is everything okay dad?’

Ethan squatted himself to level with his daughter. She observed that he had been crying.

‘Everything is fine, in fact, something incredibly amazing has happened.’ He continued, adjusting his glasses. ‘I-I know it has been rough for you…for both of us.’

Skylar lowered her face to the ground only to have it lifted back by the gentleness from her father’s hands.

‘How would you like to go on an adventure…leave all this for now and see the world out there… with dad?’ Ethan continued holding onto Skylar’s arms. ‘I-I can’t keep going the way I am right now. I need this…and my guess is you need this as well. What do think?’

A smile slowly emerged in Skylar’s eyes while glancing at the opened notebook, then back to her dad.

‘What is it?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Ethan continued. ‘It was left at the Grav…it was with your mum.’

‘Who is the boy in the book?’

‘I don’t know, and he doesn’t know…I will explain in the car.’ Ethan stood up, motioned back to the car and turned back to his daughter. ‘Shall we?’

‘Yes, I would love to.’ Replied Skylar, running into the car.

As they drove away from their town, Ethan explained everything to Skylar. He spoke in detail about the money found under a blue flower, but most of all, he told her about the boy in the book. They both found themselves united to help this mysterious and unfinished character.

‘So, all we need to do is show him places and it will help him?’ Asked Skylar.

‘I guess so. He hasn’t experienced what we have. We can only truly know ourselves by experiencing our own stories...’

‘Stop the car!’ Skylar shouted with excitement.

‘You okay…you’re not sick…’

‘No, no.’ Skylar looked outside of the car window that led to an open wheat field.

‘Can I have the book for a moment. And a pen.’

Granting her the requests, Skylar stepped out of the car and walked towards the yellow ochre fields that swayed in rhythms from an unfelt wind. Opening the Moleskine to the ribbon bookmark, she wrote down; this is what wheat looks like. Skylar then turned the book open, like a phone to show the boy the fields. Skylar skipped a breath when she turned the notebook around to see a picture of the boy looking at an ink wash of wheat fields. She shakingly returned to the writing and wrote; this is what wheat feels like. With the book opened to a perfect flatness, Skylar ran through the wheat fields, along with the unnamed boy from the pages in open arms. Her father stood back and drew in the site of her daughter floating through the fields. It triggered observed memories of Skylar sitting on her mother’s shoulders in scattered moments of time. His daughters arm motioned like opened wings, teaching the notebook how to fly. For the first time, in a long time Ethan felt the breeze of freedom raising Skylar into flight.

Regathering her breath, Skylar returned to her dad showing the ivory pages filled with drawings of the boy flying amongst the wheatfields adorned with words to describe the feelings with samples of wheat pressed inside the notebook pocket on the inside back cover.

‘This is beautiful.’ Said Ethan as his eyes travelled over the sketch. ‘You know, I think there’s an art shop not far from here. How about we use some of this money and get more creative?’

‘YES! That’s a great idea dad!’

The money was treated like extended pages to the Moleskine notebook granting them to journey across the world, enhancing and enriching their healing lives through storytelling. As the book began to fill with visual and written storytelling, so did the mysterious boy.

On their first international flight, the boy drew himself flying alongside the plane. As they scaled the Eiffel Tower a drawing of the boy stood next to them. When Ethan and Skylar looked up at the wonderous Sistine Chapel, the boy in the notebook drew himself between the fingers of God and Adam.

The epic journey with their unnamed boy in a sketch book, led them as a united father and daughter straight to the wonderous heights of the Himalayas. Songs that seem to sound the final skin of air across the monolithic peaks ignited the heavy pounds of the finale, and the letting go. Ethan opened the notebook to the final curved pages and fell to his knees above the clouds.

‘What is it dad?’ But Skylar knew what had unfolded.

The page opened to a drawing of the boy, floating on clouds with his mother. It read:

…Thank you for bring my son home…

I can fly now. Mum’s here. It is time for our goodbyes. I just have one final request from you.

What is my name?

The notebook fell to Ethan’s knees as he cried an uncontrollable release. Skylar held onto her dad.

‘What is his name dad?’ Skylar asked hugging her dads arm.

With a moment of courage Ethan reclaimed his voice between his tears.

‘H-his name was…his name is…Oliver.’

Skylar took out a pencil and wrote back to her brother with his name long awaited name;

‘O-l-i-v-e-r’.

As the book lay on the snowy ground, a whisper in a breeze flipped the papers to the final page. Displayed inside was a drawing splashed in ink and colour with Oliver in Jenny’s arms floating above the Himalayan mountains. Accompanied by the drawing were Oliver’s final words:

…I love you dad and Skylar. I now know who I am because of you. Your stories are my stories. I am ready to Fly with mum…Good-bye dad and good-bye my sister until next time we meet.

Pedals from the daffodils that hid the money in the grave floated out of the Moleskine pocket along with the wheat and floated up to a cloud in the shape of Jenny. The book then began to feel the wind under its pages and take flight. Ethan momentarily took hold of the notebook to prevent it from leaving. Then Skylar took his hand.

‘Dad, we need to let them go.’ Skylar took out a brand new and untouched Moleskine notebook from her jacket and presented to her dad. ‘We still have so many stories to tell…you and I.’

Ethan turned to look in her daughter’s teary eyes. Their foreheads kissed each other as Oliver was released from Ethan’s grip.

They watched the book take to the air in amongst the daffodils as it disappeared in the arms of the clouds. Skylar began to imagine how many notebooks of unfinished characters there must be around the world waiting for the courage and creative affection from others to complete them.

The End.