Diana And The Shoulder Seat

Winslow, Arizona

1996

I'm always wondering about the surrounding things, analyzing their structures and movements. It's unusual that I sometimes do think about the high pace of our progress won't end us in bombs or starvation. All these thoughts are always flowing until Diana interrupts me, being a single father isn't just about being around your children but the responsibility of providing the love of a mother as well as yours. Diana never knew there is someone called a mother when one day she was asked by her classmate. I lie to her by saying that momma's gone on a vacation, and she's gonna take a while coming back. 

Yes, I had to, not because I didn't want her to know that she is dead but to keep a light burning within her till she is old enough to handle it.

One thing which Diana really is obsessed with is the piano in the living room and she takes pleasure in playing the same four-chord progressions that I've taught her, even after which includes a broken C note and would sing along a song that I wrote along with my beautiful wife.

The song meant a lot because it was like a bridge for me towards her aura. I don't have the nerve to forget the day she bid a non-intentional farewell, and still have a picture somewhere in my memory of her sitting at the dinner table, frequently pulling her hair behind the ears, right opposite of me while writing out the song. 

A day after we wrote the lyrics, Julia got a call and had to leave for a work meeting in South Dakota. With an entire week of no communication with her, very shattering news trembled around that her plane crashed into the ocean due to engine failure. I was broken, mostly into minute pieces. She made a promise to arrive soon as Diana was going to be 3 years old, and we both had in mind to gift the song by singing it together before her.

The song went like this:

Wonderful, O' wonderful 

Shining pearl, O' Beautiful

Sweep in sudden peace

Sailing through, O' Graceful.

Lift higher to the oceans

Lose the pouring benediction

Wonderful, O' Beautiful

Struck me down, O' Powerful.

Sympathize with my soul

When I fail to control

Lend your hand, O' Merciful

Bring me down, O' Faithful.

Touch and feel the pain

The hearts will rearrange

Beatings never wait

But the sound's still the same.

Wishings never fail

The pleading will be the fame

Settle down, O' Unnamed You

Make me just like you, O' Cheerful.

Wonderful, O' Beautiful

Sailing through the cape of good

Wonderful, O' Graceful

Make me just as good as you.

Though Diana never learned to play the piano, she loves to act like a professional while playing it and at that moment she perceives herself as more than just a 10-year old kid.

At times in the evenings, we wandered at the beach with the sand pleasing warm and an eye-relaxing sunset. She would at times open up her arms indicating that it's time to pick her up, not in the arms but on my shoulders. 

Once Diana asked me, "When will I grow up like you?"

"As your age grows older. What's the hurry?" I asked.

"The world looks bigger and different from up 

here." She replied.

Indeed the world looks different if you climb the Eiffel Tower or Mount Everest.

"If I do the same as you then I'd experience that too, baby," I said.

"Do you call it something?" She asked.

"I don't know--neither ever gave a try. What would you name it if you're asked to? " I asked.

She named it "The Shoulder Seat". 

In the words of Diana, the summers are divine and captivating with the numerous layers of colorful strokes scattered across the sky and winds like water to the deserted skin. Every year as the fall passes and another wave of summer arrives with a new year, holds a gift to her. Diana's halt for her most beloved flowers is the wait that she can do for the entire lifetime, even if nature declares "No Summer". A tree in our backyard blooms every summer and floods in with a bunch of fallen flowers, Diana has a belief that it blooms better if she gives a hug to it because the tree presumes her as its queen. Even I do believe that she is true, there is always someone living for us. 

1996, I don't know why but there is something that I'm feeling right now this year.

I might have hardly spent such a grateful time with anyone else than my daughter, kids are amazing but I fear that time would change everything as we go ahead.

Maybe when Diana gets older she wouldn't be as interactive as she is now. A disadvantage of science has gradually caught its grip on us now, perhaps it will dissociate us sooner or later. Can't stop wondering about how the world would be twenty years later, streets might get empty or else something terrible than a nightmare I saw about the World Trade Center getting hit by a couple of airplanes, I hope it remains a dream. I have less time or not even that too, and I'm raising her alone so it's better to keep her close or else the world is already evolving, can't foretell the future.