Home to the Owl

When I was a child, the hazy golden summer days stretched on forever, woodland fairies drifted through the towering trees of ancient forests, the wind whipped up tidal waves of dust containing fierce monsters vanquishable only by mighty swords made from wooden sticks, and bedtime stories were told to us by an owl in blue moonlight.

When I was a child, I ran with my brothers and sisters across meadows filled with violets and bumblebees, swam with them in a lake churning with leviathans and mermaids, and settled down with them at night in a pile in the barn with ears perked for tales.

When I was a child, my father was alive.

Aelius Hardak was a man of legends and mystery, known as A.C. Hardak to the world - a writer whose words dwelt in every library and university classroom that considered the fantastical and the extraordinary. To his many children, however, he was simply a doting father who protected us from those who would seek to harm us and gave us our own little worlds in which to live and love and play.

He found us in orphanages, on street corners, and occasionally stole us away from homes where an open palm was considered gentle. He was a powerful Peter Pan, whisking us away from a painful loneliness to our very own Neverland: a farm with wide rolling fields and woods for us to run through, cows and chickens to teach us how to care for creatures outside of ourselves, a house where we never had to worry about being cold or hungry, and a huge, lovely barn with blue tinted windows.

At night, when supper was over and the animals had been brought into the barn, all the children snuggled together in a big pile of hay and waited for the stories. Father would slink out of the shadows, a dark cloak pulled over his face, and ask if we would like to hear The Tale of This, The Story of That, or The Legend of Everything. When he received a resounding affirmative chorus, he would whip the cloak about and produce The Owl with a flourish.

The Owl would perch on his lap as he arranged himself in a seat that was more a throne than a chair, and the bird was somewhat less out of place in the barn than he was, with his cloak and his throne and his glinting eyes. Once my father and the creature were settled, and the clouds shifted to allow the moonlight through, turning blue as it streamed through the azure windows, the barn was suffused with a magic that made anything possible. In that light, huddled close with my brothers and sisters and waiting to be regaled with tales of the fantastic, I firmly believed every word he’d ever said with all of my heart. Of course the dragons were real, just curled up in mountains awaiting an age where to be different did not mean one would get hunted by knights in shining armor. Of course the fairies dwelt in the woods, just out of sight for fear that we might accidentally crush them beneath our careless feet. Of course the leviathans and the mermaids swam beneath the surface of the pond, just waiting for one of us to stray too far in so they may grab us and pull us down. Of course magic was real, and of course The Owl knew of all such things.

For it was through The Owl that Father spoke to us. A magnificent creature, with brown and white feathers and a sharply curved beak that seemed to warn that it would nip if we didn’t listen. Its dark eyes gazed at us with infinite wisdom and finite words, so we hung on to each tale that poured from its mouth with reverence, storing away every detail and drawing maps in our heads of the lands his stories took place in, as though the information might prove useful when we traveled there one day ourselves. How I miss those days of wonder and belief in the infinitely possible.

When we got wind that my father had passed, we flocked from all corners of the globe to congregate in the town where we’d become dreamers, explorers, and, most extraordinarily, loved. As Aelius Hardak’s children tucked years beneath their belts, safeguarding and closely treasuring each one, we had gradually migrated away from our Neverland to see where we might land.

Rowan is an acrobat traveling with an international circus, entrancing crowds with seemingly impossible feats of agility and strength, though I remember when he was a scrawny boy with rusty hair and band-aids forever on his knees who refused to wear shoes and insisted on running through the trees themselves rather than on the paths like the rest of us. Father read him tales of woodland pixies who delighted in making mischief for their companions.

Phoebe is a widely-respected doctor who recently shifted her practice from cardiothoracic surgery to pediatrics, citing her fatigue with cantankerous adults and her wistfulness for her own children as the cause. But I remember the waifish child with hollow eyes that started to regain their light when Father presented her with her very own doll - a toy she carried with her everywhere. I also remember how the man who abused her so horrifically that she would never be able to bear her own children disappeared so mysteriously, and how little effort police put into finding him.

Alex is a kindhearted teacher, primarily working in school districts filled to the brim with “troubled children” who absolutely adore him. I recall a certain sullen teenager with matted braids and a penchant for eye-rolling who was also labeled a “troubled child” by the orphanage that practically begged Father to take him. I remember how his entire demeanor changed when he worked with the animals on the farm, and how his feigned disinterest in life turned into passion when he read stories to us when Father was away.

Akisha is a lawyer who fights every day for the rights of those whom society would rather pretend do not exist, a woman whose powerful presence commands the attention of everyone in the room, though she still cracks her wrists when she’s nervous. A lanky, awkward girl with the same name would do that when the others dared her to climb a tree. That girl always had a book in her pocket (the little law books for beginners Father got her were her favorite to tote around), and would talk your ear off for hours about it if you gave her the slightest inclination of interest.

John is an author whose books center mainly around a family of characters that bear striking resemblances to our own, but as he always calls us up to read our sections to us before he sends the manuscripts to editors, none of us really mind the secondhand celebrity, and we all smile to hear the enthusiasm in his voice that so closely matches Father’s as he reads. How funny that a boy who came to us completely mute, refusing to speak for several years as his scars faded, is now known for his words.

Sal is an artist, living out his dreams in Manhattan in a sprawling studio apartment near his gallery. His works have been featured in museums and exhibits across the world, and he’s been to every country that I can name, and some that I can’t. He is leaps and bounds away from the little boy who drew with sticks in the mud and cried when Father presented him with his very own watercolor set. His first masterpiece was a depiction of our family standing in the eastern meadow with a few cows nearby. Father hung it proudly in the barn, so that we could all listen to the nighttime stories together, even as we started to leave home.

Bartholomew is a chef with his own restaurant in France, and he’s been cast and immortalized in shining platinum by every food critic who has lifted a fork of his food to their mouths. When I look at his broad smile in newspaper pictures, I can still see the dusty little boy who carefully gathered the eggs from the chickens each morning to make us all breakfast, for he knew all too well what it was like to not have a breakfast, or a lunch, or even a dinner for that matter.

And then, there’s me, the bookshop owner whose favorite part of the day is unlocking my beloved store and greeting all of the stories that created each and every one of us, for beside Father and John’s books, which are proudly displayed in the window, are books of my very own making, where I carefully reconstructed each of the tales told by my father and loved by us all. The rambunctious child I once was has grown a bit more quiet, a bit more thoughtful, and a bit more grey as the years wear on. I was the last to leave home, staying long enough to make sure I had enough notes from my father to write my stories as they were intended to be told, and I didn’t go very far, purchasing a shop with a little apartment above it in the next state over near a beach Father would take us to on the occasional winter vacation. My siblings were spread wide enough across the world that I got to see an abundance of it while still having comfortable roots I could return to. Before I was taken in by my father at age twelve, I’d never lived in the same place for more than a few weeks, and I was reluctant to leave behind the only home in which I’d ever been allowed to stay.

But now, it seemed, we were all going to return home. Father had left detailed instructions in his will for a children’s center to be built upon the farmhouse property, complete with a massive library, a new barn full of animals, a sprawling recreation area, and little apartments for kids who needed a place to stay. He’d already hired a full staff and paid them a year’s salary in advance. We were allowed to visit the property and help run it if we wished, but he did not want us to feel as though we had to. Even in death, he still wanted nothing more than for us to believe that we could live our own lives, make our own choices, and find our own happiness.

Perhaps that is why I was the only one to return to the farm before it was taken down and rebuilt for future generations of children to live and love and play. It was not until I returned, seeing the farm for the first time since I’d left, for my father always came to visit me instead of inviting me to go to him, that I realized the true reason behind their choice to stay away.

My brothers and sisters had wanted to preserve the memories they had of their childhoods and did not want them sullied by their critical adult eyes. But I, well, I always had a difficult time with goodbyes and letting go. And this was not the first, nor do I think it will be the last, time I ruined the perfection of a moment by lingering in it for too long.

The forests edging the property were pale, scraggly things, their undergrowth choked with weeds and treacherous patches of poison ivy we’d called “monster grass” as children, giggling as we jumped over the shiny green leaves. Now, the branches we’d used as magnificent swords looked dried out and flimsy. The treehouse we’d built was just a few spare boards nailed to a tree that looked a lot smaller than the towering castle it had once been. Perhaps it had shrunk over the years.

The massive lake filled with sea monsters and mermaids was a little green pond that now appeared to be more algae than water, and I could not imagine ever having felt the desire to swim in it, let alone swing off of the cracked tire swing nearby in a noble attempt to get close to the “bottomless” middle. The sheer amount of joy we’d experienced splashing about it was lost on me. But perhaps it, too, had shrunk over the years. Perhaps it had once been as grand as it was in my memories.

The house was faded, its rooms much smaller than I remembered. The painting Sal had done was still hanging in the living room, and before I looked too closely and noticed all the flaws in the peeling wallpaper, frayed couches, and chipped antiques, I pulled it down to take it with me and walked out of the door. I was having movers come by later that day to tote out the rest of my father’s things, which my siblings would sort through and deem what was worth keeping, what was worth donating, and what was worth sending to the recycling plant.

With the painting tucked under my arm, I turned at last to the barn: that place of wonder, of familial love, of belonging, of blue magic, and of tales told by an old owl whose strangeness still echoed in my mind. I debated whether I wanted to go in at all, if I wanted the barn to also lose its magic.

How I hate adulthood, I thought to myself as I braced my hand against the door.

But the barn, albeit a bit more dusty, was much the same as I remembered. The vaulted ceilings still spiraled up to a dizzying height, the blue-tinted windows were still intact, letting in broad swaths of azure sunlight that lit up the barn beautifully, and my father’s throne was still resting peacefully in the corner, waiting to be dragged out for a story once again. I smiled. At least this part could remain as it once was - a place of quiet and magnificent possibility.

I headed over to my father’s chair, running my hand over the intricate whorls carved into the rich wood, feeling the softness of the red fabric stretching across the plush seat. As I inspected it, my mind unconsciously searching for details that could take the magic away from me, I noticed something underneath the chair. I knelt down, and pulled out The Owl.

The puppet’s eyes were scraped and faded, its feathers dusty and dull. That beak, which had shaped our young minds and let us believe in infinity, was not nearly as sharp as it had seemed. I sat heavily on the floor of the barn, my father’s storyteller clutched in my hands as the weight of everything I’d lost came crashing through me. The owl vanished in a blur of tears as I cried, clutching the stuffed toy to my chest and wishing with all of my heart that I could go back.

I wished I could go back to the hazy golden summer days that stretched on in the forever of a child’s afternoon.

I wished I could go back to visit the woodland fairies who drifted through the towering trees of ancient forests now withered with time and reality.

I wished I could go back to the wind that whipped up tidal waves of dust from the long driveway, wished that fierce monsters were tangible and vanquishable with frail sticks pretending to be mighty swords.

I wished I could go back to the bedtime stories and believe they were being told to us by a living, breathing, speaking owl in magical blue moonlight.

I wished I could go back and run with my brothers and sisters across now-dead meadows that were once filled with violets and bumblebees, and swim with them in a lake churning with leviathans and mermaids instead of grimacing at a scummy pond.

I wished I could go back and settle down with them in a pile in the barn with ears perked for tales.

I wished I could go back to when my father was alive.

I sat there for a long time, likely longer than I should have. But it’s hard to say goodbye forever, especially when you’re profoundly terrible at just goodbye-for-now. So I sat until the sun set, leaning against the chair and watching the moon rise as the tears dried on my cheeks. I sat there quietly with the owl in my lap, listening to the wind in the trees and the sound of my own heartbeat, as the moonlight streamed in, turning blue as it passed through the barn’s azure windows. The painting, which I’d set against a pile of hay so much like the one we used to settle into at night, faced me as we had faced my father. Without really knowing why, I moved from the floor to settle into the chair, letting the owl perch on my lap as he had done so long ago. Something clicked then, as I locked eyes with each of my family members wearing their best smiles, the ones we reserved only for each other.

“Thank you,” I whispered into the empty air, “for the magic.” The tears threatened to choke me again if I said more, so I simply got up and walked back to my car, with the owl tucked under one arm and the painting secured in the other. And I did not look back, wanting that final moment to be my lasting memory of home, that moment when I realized what my father knew all along. While childhood has its own breed of magic that inevitably fades with age, the lessons we learn and the choices we make with that magic in our hearts have the power to forever alter the courses of our lives. And though it’s heartbreaking to feel its absence, perhaps we may one day glance at a picture, or a painting, of who we once were, of how we used to be so wild and free, and understand that a piece of that magic still lives in our hearts and attaches meaning to a faded barn owl puppet that we can’t quite explain. We label it “sentimentality”, but perhaps it’s where all the magic goes when we don’t use it so much anymore.

Perhaps, it has not shrunk, has not decayed, has not vanished. Perhaps it is just a bit different than it used to be, a magic not for surrounding yourself with, but for tucking away in your pocket to pull out on rainy days and remember every bit of magic that went into making you who you are. And perhaps, once in a blue moon, you will feel it again.