When I was a boy, my father would bounce me on his knee and tell me stories. Mermaids, dragons, krakens, it didn’t matter- he was talking to me and I hung onto every word. He had a loud voice and laughed often. He made me giggle with silly antics and he made my mother smile with thoughtful gifts. One day he left on one of his voyages and he didn’t come back. I remember when the men showed up at our door. “We’re sorry,” they said as they lowered their hats, almost like they really meant it.
I remember going to my room, slamming the door, and trying to convince myself that it wasn’t true. Lying was a thing people did, right? They could have been lying, or joking, or anything else. I came up with every possible explanation but the truth.
I curled into a ball on the bed and covered myself in blankets, like the heavy quilts could block out the words of the men, like I could emerge and Dad would be right there to tell me stories like always. Yes. He would be right there bearing a little trinket from his travels that I would clutch in my small hand when he inevitably left again. I didn’t come out for a long time.
Days passed, weeks, while I tried to run from the truth that waited around the corner, the grief that lurked just behind it. Before my father had left for the last time, he had given me a new book of stories, promising that we could read it together when he returned. I didn’t even open it. I was so sure. I remember clearly his smile when he boarded the boat. The one that spoke so many volumes of love. I remember the one I returned, so faithful in him, so foolishly faithful.
I kept that book in a small box in my closet for a long time. Even as I grew out of those children’s stories, it was always just too hard to think about.
One day, I did open it. I don’t know why I did. Maybe I was feeling strong that day, or I felt the need to prove myself after another day of taunting from the kids at school. I remember pulling the box from the closet, lifting out the book, and opening the cover to reveal the pages decorated with drawings of fantastical creatures. I read the entire book with more attention than anything in my life. I can still quote some of it word for word to this day. There was one part, though, that I can recall distinctly. It was an old sailor’s tale, about how seabirds were the souls of drowned seamen.
For the first time in years I felt something like hope. I knew it was silly, that it wasn’t really true, but what if? We lived in a little town on the coast, so spotting seagulls wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. I started watching their every move with a new fascination. On the way to school I stared as they picked at garbage in the street. I watched as they faced off with alley cats around town, and cawed at each other outside the window of my house.
I would go down to the docks to sit and just watch them as they screeched and tumbled through the air. Nothing lasts forever though, and eventually I lost some of that hope, stopped watching the birds as intently. That was around the time I first saw the grey-feathered seagull. I was at school, and Daniel and his goons had stolen my lunch. He was taunting me with it, holding it up in the air where it was too high for me to reach, when a seagull came swooping down at him. As it squawked and snapped at him, all I could think about was how the shiny grey feathers on its head looked so much like my father’s hair.
Over the next several years, I had multiple experiences in which what I swear was the same grey-headed seagull protecting and helping me. Once, a bird landed on a discarded lunch box in the street, reminding me that I had forgotten mine. Years later, I woke up one morning to find an indignant seagull had made its nest on my front porch. I didn’t want to hurt it or its potential eggs, so I called in a man to gently move it somewhere safe, and while I was dealing with that whole debacle, I avoided a fire in my workplace. A flock of seagulls stopped me from crossing the street right before a speeding truck careened around the corner. I swear, each time something strange happened, a seagull with shiny, grey head feathers was around.
For years I was convinced that my father had come back in the form of a bird. Eventually, I stopped seeing the grey-feathered one. I don’t know what happened to it, but to this day I still consider seagulls to be my lucky animal.
My mother found a statue in my father’s belongings, and after I got over how stupid my stories sounded and told her, she said I should have it. It sits on the living room windowsill now, its elaborately detailed feathers catching the morning sun. A little iron seagull perpetually flying toward the sea.
I never did decide whether that bird all those years ago was really my father, but I have decided that it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I loved my father, and I am absolutely certain that he loved me, right up until the very end.
Maybe my father came back to help me, or maybe I was just seeing miracles in some common gulls, but I found acceptance. I’m passing this little iron seagull on to you now, so when I am gone, you will know I loved you more than anything in the world.
I think it’s what your grandfather would have wanted.