My father lived with his head in his hands. Those clumsy, boisterous fingers forced the keys of even the most fragile laptops to be as robust as a typewriter, yet tragedy softened them enough to perfectly form a cradle for his temples, hastily pushing brow to receding hairline. It was as if the very gesture begged the memory of the one instance he ever let himself remain in that position of expressive acquiescence. The morning Grandpa died, he let those eyes –that perennially tender, bloodshot gaze– sink into the contoured blackness of his palms, possessed by a sudden need for paternal comfort he had so vehemently denied when it was there for the taking.
I'll always remember my mother as a figure of activity in the small hours. The lonely orange glow of the landing light was the dawn to her, the only light by which she made the distinction between white and black in my laundry basket. All the while I feigned a motionless slumber. My lasting memory of England isn't of the dreary rolling hills, or even the melancholy fluorescence of a suburban corner shop, but of her silent crouching on the day of our departure. Paintbrush in hand, she dappled at the scratches of deep pumpkin in our living-room walls with all the meticulousness of Michelangelo and diffidence of Van Gogh. Sometimes I wonder if she'd have her head in her hands more often, too, if they weren't always holding something.
And then there's my only sister, with her Pre-Raphaelite hair and her laugh always accompanied by a reckless tilt of the head. For years I had myself believe that a laugh that juvenescent would render her immune to growing up; give her the power to transcend a world filled with inexorable occurrences: brine-soaked pillows and teary gasps, untouched dinners and text messages that knock the wind out of you. However hard I try to maintain this faith in her preservation, the innocuous pastel blemishes of last summer's memories are still tainted by the crimson in her cheeks, which somehow found its way to the edge of her knotted sleeves.
