STAMP OF APPROVAL - a selection story

the sunflower

L E V I

I delicately pick up the pressed sunflower out of the box.

Many other sunflowers are pressed against the frame. Too many. There's been too many birthdays passed since Mom died. It never gets better, no matter how many birthdays I go through where I glue the sunflower to the frame, near the picture of her face, the face I didn't get to see for so many years, and it was too late to see it when I came back.

I'll never forgive myself for that. For being gone for so long that I missed so many moments with her. It was her and me against the world for so many years when Dad was alive, and for me to leave for so long... I know she never openly said she didn't wish I had left, but I know that's how she felt. And I'll never say I openly regret leaving to join the Coast Guard, but it will always be a truth anchoring me down until I die.

Abri has spoken to me about how badly she wished she wouldn't have left either, even if it was only for a week. Everyone knows it could have never been her fault, but I know Abri feels that weight as well.

But she wasn't gone for years.

The years I served were good for me. I realize that. They shaped me into the person I wanted to be, the one Mom always thought I could be, even though she wasn't alive to see it when I came back. I probably would have stayed longer if I hadn't gotten Abri's letter. I didn't want to come back home to a place where I only saw my dad. Life was easier far away. Where everything was do or die. It wasn't always filled with regret and guilt and hurt, and though it was at times, it seemed more bearable than remembering home.

Now that I'm back, now that I'm out of that house, I can breathe easier. I thought that that was what was weighing me down, but there is so much more to remember than that house.

My dad still lives inside me. Who he is will always be there.

Too much of him is still alive in me.

Maybe that's why Abri's comments about me finding love rubs off on me the wrong way. Because I don't know how I'll be in that kind of relationship. How do I know that I won't treat my wife or my family the same way my dad treated us? Treated me?

I don't.

And unless I can fully trust myself and know for sure I won't turn into him, I'll stay as far away as I can from it.

I finger the frame. I pull out the glue and spread some on the back of the sunflower. I press it gently onto the frame. Another flower. Another year passed. Another birthday missed.

Another year without my mom.

I desperately want to stop the tears from falling down my cheeks, but they've always had a mind of their own, and eventually, I stop fighting it.

It's something Dad would have scolded me for doing.

And it's not much, but it's a small rebellion against him.

And I try to keep in my mind that I can't, I won't, be like him.

Even if I doubt myself sometimes.

The tears should say otherwise.