I am running my boy. Always running. Chasing the memories that my mind seems unable to preserve. I wrap them, in nylon. Like vinyl records left for posterity. I chase them in the deepest recesses of my mind. And once I have caught them, I cherish them. I play them over and over on my aging gramophone. Always I dread their annihilation by my new son. He is a demon and an angel.  Each day his achievements drive the memories of your life further and further away. So the chase begins, my desperate search to cling onto your memory.  When my new son took his first steps, and arrived safely in my loving embrace, I wept fearing I had forgotten yours. I imagined our home in Krakow. I searched for the smell of your mother’s cocking, the sound of your grandfather’s ranting. Yet still I could not recall your first steps. Then, you came to me in a dream. You took pity on me. So I wrapped that memory in nylon and moved onto the next.

He does not know that you lived, my demon angel. I have never spoken your name, or told of your laugh or described your tears. For if I speak of your life, he will ask me of your death. But that is one record that I refuse to play, even though it is the one memory I need not search for. Your cry when you were ripped from my arms, or when you head was smashed on the wall, is etched into my mind and scarred onto my ears.

Yet your hair. I cannot remember your hair. Was it brown? Light brown? Black? The hair I combed daily, that I cut monthly. Your walk is alien to me. My new son walks tall. He walks with confidence. Like an old man strolling in the park. How did you walk? Was it with haste? Did you wobble? Did you also stroll through life?

Yesterday my son started first grade. Together, we arranged his pack. Prepared his cheese sandwich, sharpened his pencils. The school here is different from yours. Tel Aviv is warmer than Poland and the children wear shorts with sandals. The parents have no God. They have forsaken him. They do not wear the black hats and tzizit of Krakow. When we walked to the school his shirt grew moist with sweat. So I gave him my dry shirt, kissed him and left. Did I kiss you on your first day of school? Did you cry as I walked off? Or maybe it was your mother that took you. Perhaps I was too busy. I was always to busy. Too busy to love you, too busy to stop your head from smashing on the wall. 

I cannot remember. The demon angel has eaten that memory. So the chase continues.

Will you come to me tonight, my boy? Will you remind me? Of your first day at school, your first homework assignment, your first bruised knee and first school brawl. Come to me my boy. I beg of thee. Together we may fight the demon angel and my aging, feeble mind.

S.