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An ode. To the one who did not teach me, but gave me the chance to teach myself.
You must have known I would find myself in books. You must have known that when I saw the children my age make diaspora between rote memorisation and the desire to run and play,
I withdrew myself. I could not relate. You must have known I was always going to be different.
You let me cut my teeth on any and all knowledge you could hand me. If it fit between my hands, I would read it. You let me draw the curtains in your old library, twist and turn a thousand times in the chair where my mother used to sit.
Maybe you wanted my mother to read me bedtime stories from that chair, and my father to sit me on his knee, teach me how to read. Perhaps that’s what you wanted, but they are dead and buried. It was you who sat there, speaking aloud, watching me run my fingers over inked symbols until the patterns started to make sense.
You poured me tea from the moment I woke in the early mornings, speaking low to me while I winced at the dawning light. You brought me tea whilst I lay wrapped up tight in the throes of a story, or came back to the same encyclopaedia for the fifth time. When the candle beside me burnt low and I was still awake, straining my eyes to study an ancient tome of history – you poured me tea then, too.
No other guardian would have listened as much to my words as my silences. You let me have those long gaps: those times wherein I would stare into space at nothing, touching each of my fingers to my thumbs, lips moving soundlessly. When I wanted you to hear my discoveries, brook my arguments, you did. When I needed you to sit beside me as I worked out the conflicts of the Red Sands, the atrocities beheld by King Deshret and Kusanali both, you stayed.
You answered my out-of-nowhere questions. (Why do we say “Lord Kusanali” instead of “Lady”?) You wrapped your hands around my burgeoning doubt. (Why do we have words separating girls and boys at all?) You became a well into which to pour my uncertainties. (Do I have to be a girl? What is a girl? What if I do not like this new shape I am taking?)
I know you were something of a mechanist, but never did you tell me there were footsteps I had to follow. Every time I wrapped my tongue around unfamiliar words and enchanting dialects, you found fodder for the fire aglow inside me. You tried, as best you could, to speak with me in new languages. You were not ashamed to be led by a child’s hand into the unknown. You let me cast a shadow upon you and did not fear dissolving beneath it.
And I thought, what was it that made you so unselfish? Why were you my peer amongst peers – a child’s unhesitating courage, and an adult’s wisdom and gathered patience? Why did the others my age refuse the enthusiasm I tried to share, and why did those older scorn me when I displayed prowess beyond them? How is it that home, with you, welcomed the unknown, yet the unknown and outer world so hated exploration of knowledge?
You are one of a kind; that’s why. People like you come once a generation. Wisdom does not naturally fall hand-in-hand with curiosity; it makes bedfellows of ignorance and foolish pride.
I only wish I knew how phenomenal you were while you were still alive.
Now I look back on the dirge of memories you left me. I stroke the notes you left in the margins of your favourite stories. If the time comes that I am lonely – and it arrives all at once, breaking the alexithymia with a wicked urgency – I return to the dedication you left in novels you knew would stay in my library.
It never mattered to you that I become renowned or evolutionary or brilliant. The only thing you ever asked of me was that I embrace myself. You asked that I nurture the spirit of learning in me for as long as it might live, and never stop asking questions.
You were there to hear the questions that unravelled me from a young woman into a young man. By the time I had begun to ponder the nature of romance, you were gone. Yet you left your principles to guide me.
I asked questions of lips and mouths and limbs. I put others to the test by being fervently myself. I hypothesised; I experimented. I drew conclusions and took what was valuable. Discarded the rest.
When they called me mad, I remembered you. With every suggestion that I was frigid or confused, I remembered you. To every proposal and confession and hate-filled insult, I worried your principles between my teeth. I remembered you.
I remember you.
In the spirit of knowing myself, I remember you. I take the shape of a man and refuse all romance. The bonds I forge do not define me. There are hands I hold; kisses I deflect. I might never make a family from my body, but I’ve found one.
I think you would see me: my loveless self, and all the love I have cultivated despite that.
I think you would be proud. I hope so.
With the curtains drawn and a cup of tea ready beside me, I fold myself into a chair much like the one where my mother sat. I open that tome you told me was your favourite. I finger the dog-eared pages and the much-loved spine.
In these rituals, I remember you. I lift the cup of tea in a toast. An ode, to you.
To the one who let me find myself in books.
To you, the grandmother I will always love.