Greetings to regular readers and guests of this site! “A Gift for Coming of Age” is a young man’s story about his family, grief, resentment and joy. Listen …
Few of my friends have families that would be complete and prosperous. The vast majority of those around me have already been married, divorced, and then started families again.
There are a couple of women I know who are raising children alone. But not because they cannot find a mate, but because they no longer want to get into marriage bondage.
Two families
My family, alas, was also not prosperous. Rather, it was. Very happy. But until a certain time. Then everything went to pieces … My parents separated when I was 15 years old.
Frankly, it was a shock for me! Until the last, they kept the appearance of a normal family, not even letting me into their problems. And what could I see at that age when teenage complexes and school conflicts overshadow everything around. Friends, the street and first love were in my head.
To say that I was dumbfounded when my parents announced their divorce is to say nothing. As it turned out, my father had already lived with two families for 3 years, giving us noodles about business trips. And in that second family, a child should be born.
Mom handed me a gym bag and told me to pack my things. An hour later, a taxi was supposed to take us to her parents’ house. Still refusing to accept what I was told, I folded clothes, textbooks, photographs as if in a dream … Father guiltily looked into the room and timidly offered his help.
“Don’t,” I said through clenched teeth. I, who had just learned about my father’s meanness, did not want to hear or see him.
“I hope you will understand me someday and forgive me,” he sighed.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I snapped.
My mother and I moved in with my grandparents, having stopped communicating with my father. This is not because he no longer wanted to know us – quite the opposite. Feeling his guilt in front of us, he called and wrote to me, offered to help my mother, but I refused to make contact. Be that as it may, but every birthday I continued to receive gifts from him through my mother.
Old album
Unlike me, my mother, stepping over her pride, did not refuse financial assistance. I remember that by my eighteenth birthday he gave me an old album with our photographs. I leafed through it and recalled the times when we lived together: here is their wedding, my mother is so young!
Here they carry me out of the hospital. Dad is holding me so carefully! Here we are at sea, he teaches me to swim … Here I am in a bunny costume at the matinee. If it were not for male pride, I would have burst into tears over these testimonies of a happy past.
After I came of age, my father stopped appearing on the horizon. It was said that he and his new family moved to a neighboring region, selling his small business, which brought in a small but stable income.
By this time, on the contrary, my mother’s affairs had improved: she was raised, her salary was increased, we did not need financially. In addition, having entered the institute, I was able to get a part-time job, adding, albeit small, money to the family budget.
Mom always said that, despite his deed, his father was a good man, and she does not hold any grudge against him. And I kept it, I confess.
Black streak in life
Life is unpredictable. You never know which side she will turn to you the next moment.
At the mother’s firm, there were massive layoffs due to a change in management, and the post of chief accountant, occupied by my mother, was given to a new person. And then, as luck would have it, my mother also ended up in the hospital. The doctors shocked me with a message that a serious operation was needed …
Here I grabbed my head: study; looking for money, paying for a nurse for mom … One thought in my head: “How to save up for an expensive operation?” After all, according to quotas, we will wait for her for years! The banks refused to give me a loan. I sold my mother’s car, but this money turned out to be negligible.
In desperation, I climbed the shelves and mezzanines in search of some valuable things that I could take to an antique store. Among the junk that has no serious value, I found an old photo album, given to me once by my father.
Flipped through it again. I remembered my mother’s words: “He is a good man!” I was furious: “Where is he now, this good man, when we need him so much ?!”
I dreamed about my father that night. He sat at my feet on my bed, showed me the same photo album and said: “Do you remember, son, how we went fishing? But look, this is the first time we went to the zoo! You could not be led away from the elephants. Nobody else interested you … Oh, here we are at my grandmother’s anniversary! “
In that dream I was still a child, about 14 years old, that is, at the age when we still lived together, when I did not suspect about the impending catastrophe. I looked at my father with tenderness and pride.
Three envelopes
In the morning, having pierced my eyes, blinded by anger towards him, I rushed to the album with the intention of destroying it – tearing it up and burning it … It’s stupid, of course, it’s stupid. What does memory have to do with it ?! But in that situation, I was already at the limit, too much fell on the 20-year-old boy …
And suddenly, when I grabbed the album, three envelopes fell out of it. And weighty. Weird! I have not seen them before, although it was impossible not to notice them, these three huge envelopes!
I ripped the first one. It contained two wads of money and a postcard. “Son, I sincerely congratulate you on your birthday. You have become a real man and I am proud of you. Be happy and take care of your mom. Dad. R. S. Here is a gift for you to come of age ”.
I tore open the second envelope with trembling hands, then the third. There was money there too. A lot of money – 3 million! They were more than enough for an operation for my mother.
Call my father
Six months later, she was in full health at home. I was happy and for the first time in recent years I remembered my father. I wanted to call him, to thank him for the gift for coming of age. After all, the envelope contained immeasurably over 3 million. Mother’s life was there!
The cell phone didn’t answer. Rather, such a number did not exist, as the robot told me. Then through old acquaintances of my parents, who, I suspected, continued to keep in touch with my father, I tried to find out his home phone number.
The phone number, of course, was given, but there was no one to call. My father died of a heart attack that very night when we were “looking at” the family album with him. But I still pulled myself together and called.
I called my father’s widow and his son – his little brother. We became friends. The little brother was funny. He is still funny, although, it would seem, is already an adult. I am sincerely happy, I love him. I often visit them. Barely permitting business, I pack my bags, get on the train and go to Marina and Sasha.
Mom approves of me, although she has never seen Marina. I think it pains her to look at the woman for whom her father left her. But that’s mom’s business. And Marina and Sasha and I are going to the forest, having a picnic, chatting incessantly, laughing.
On the second day we go to the cemetery to visit our father, clean up the grave and show ourselves to him. Let him see that we are not quarreling, that we are together. I’m sure he sees everything and makes him happy.
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