Monday 1st January 1967

I used to take you up on my shoulders and down the hill through Kirkton field and you used to play with me there, every Monday. Ducks, flowers, puddles. Everything was new to you – all colour and smell and ‘daddy what’s that?’. I remember taking you down from my shoulders and watching you play.

I remember watching you poking everything with your stubby fingers, right at the start. You were feeling for your childhood. Your first.

I was looking in your face and remembering mine. I could see myself, in you. I could reach out and touch the past. And I could still see her face in yours.

So much potential, so much of my hope. You could be a Doctor or a model, councillor or athlete maybe and I could be oh so good with kids. Why not? I watch you wrestling with a dandelion, sorry, ‘daddylion’, give up, set your eyes on some tree. Why struggle? I pick you up again like you were nothing.

You said you saw a sparrow fall from a tree, and then you rushed over to it desperate to help. I rushed off after you. I don’t remember seeing it fall, or seeing it lying there but I remember how everything stopped for you. You knew right away that it was dead but couldn’t let it go, you and nature. You took it in your hands, carried it to the river, and laid it down on a bed of daddylions, thinking it might heal.

I don’t remember the bird.

But I remember you.

Tuesday 10th March 1971

It was only fair I think, for me to go to the school play. Your mother went through sixteen hours of labour and half of one without me. Her travail was over, now it was my turn.

The thing was late as well on account of some nervous co-star – I tried to catch your eye, gave up, and thumbed through the programme. Apparently a story about a millionaire’s heir who uses emotional blackmail to part half his father’s fortune from him, spends it, spends it again, and spends years in slavery to pay it off until coming back to his father with a bad makeup job. The father is overjoyed to get his son back: parties, tears, more money. Sounds good. Hope it doesn’t give you any ideas.

I slept more than your mother did but I think you were in a few scenes near the end there.

Everyone clapped and stood up and I woke up to find myself standing and clapping.

I filed out with the other sleeping parents, who said they hadn’t seen you, but thought their own child was the star.

Wednesday 19th June 1981

I woke up again. I dreamt that you lied to me and slammed the door, oh Anna. I know that you’re not home. You tell me nothing but I already know, night after night I knew.

I was your best friend! Of course I knew where you were and I prayed to God you weren’t falling in with the wrong crowd and being led astray.

I was your Dad, waiting for you to come home once popularity bored you.

Before you and those other friends led me astray as well.

I worried sick for you, whilst you –

What happened there, by night in that field? Maybe you were simply talking there, making friends. Or maybe that company was corrupting you and you found these friends cheering on each other in a race to make mistakes. At first I convinced myself you were ‘only growing up,’ a phrase I found comforting then ominous.

Can’t you just settle and stay? You have taught me more than I had ever learned before, you in your childhood had made me grow. I wander to your room, looking for some place where it doesn’t feel so long since you’ve been there. Now I shrink back to the living room, then to bed, but I won’t sleep, not until that door slips shut again.

I want you back, your smile filling my room. I want to have a fight and then to hug, I can’t stand this. Your teenage years are gaps to me, I want long conversations filled in with all the parts of you I missed. I miss the times we spent together, oh I want you back, I miss walking and playing and cooking. We used to be able to speak, we talked for hours and the more we talked about you the more I felt expressed. But the night just slips away.

Friday 28th September 2006
When Rachael first appeared I guess you must have wondered, who I thought was replacing, your Mother or you. I never lost a second with you, I never dropped a minute, you were always first for me, and Rachael first as well.

I promised you on one of our walks together that we wouldn’t stop spending time together, we wouldn’t stop talking until late, we wouldn’t stop squeezing each others’ hands.

And we walked together down that ‘aisle’ in Kirkton field, her hand in my hand, and my hand in yours.

I swore an oath. I made a promise.

To be loving and faithful.

To cherish and keep.

Until death do us part.

It had to be out here, the only place I’ve felt proud of myself, with her smiling at me and you smiling right at me. A hundred people smiling.

There was some nonsense in the air that day, dresses and suits, dancing and jazz, and our closest friends chatting in machine gun fire to one another, so excited. I still wonder what you thought of it at the time, at some points you seemed quiet. It was the most beautiful thing, in the most beautiful place, with her and with you. I remember the wedding cake and the speeches, which seem silly now. I remember the vows and the kiss. I remember you being there, for me.

I meant for this whole thing to be just a start, not a ceremony climaxing our relationship, the three of us…but something beginning. I was going to take Rachael as my wife, a new beginning – and every day I felt myself only getting started to know you more.

We found out about knitting, you and Rachael. We found out we all loved bad television, and that she wanted to be a social worker too. And we found out about her illness in September.

Saturday 31st December 1970

I can’t stand it in the house for long, I just pretend to live there. The ghosts there are evil. I came to Kirkton field wanting to be near you. I laugh at it, awkwardly. I’m old, wrinkled through and starting to grey but Kirkton is still this fresh new green. It’s a wavy line of bumps then sand, dandilions and tree, birdsong, dog walkers and kites.

Everything here is the same, except you. Her. Me.

Every day I relive the past like it was still tomorrow.

I bring you flowers every day and wonder how I’ll save you.

It was a terrible, stupid thing to imagine, that somehow if I brought you back here…

I don’t think I have ever aged just so very much, than when I buried you, all of three years ago.

Body, box, flower. No, daddylion.

I remember you rushing to the tree, for the bird that fell.

There’s a field for you, Anna, you’re the sparrow in my hand, I lay down your body and heal.