Me and My Dad

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Me and My Dad

When I was seven Dad told me he was an alien. I giggled and hugged him hard. I loved it when he joked with me. But then Dad held me away from him, and he looked into my eyes.

“It’s true, Christina,” he said.

That time I didn’t giggle. I didn’t even smile. I stared back at him and waited to hear what else he would say because I didn’t know how I should respond.

But let me stop and tell you about myself first before I continue the story. My name is Christina Anne James. My mom and dad are schoolteachers. I’m an only child, and we live in a normal house with a lawn in the backyard, a swing set and a dog named Rufus. My mom is very pretty with long cocoa-colored hair that curls when the weather’s misty. She has green eyes and freckles across her nose. She isn’t an alien. She’s from Bakersfield, California.

Dad looks like every other dad I’ve seen. He’s very handsome, of course, but that’s because he’s my dad. He has large, dark-brown eyes, wavy, black hair, and crinkle lines under his eyes because he laughs so much. I know he’s very tall, and that scares some of the kids at school, until they get to know him. When I used to hear kids say they were scared of my dad, I’d tell them that he was part giant, and they’d laugh and look up and up and up, and then they’d smile because Dad’s always up there smiling down at them. That’s how he always is for me, too.

My father has very large hands which always hold mine gently when we cross the street, and he sometimes gives me pony rides on his back. So you see, he doesn’t sound like an alien, does he?

That’s why that day when he told me that he was from another planet, my mouth flew open, and I had the worst urge to stick my thumb in it, but of course I didn’t. I just sat and stared at him, waiting for him to tell me more. But he didn’t speak. He just got real quiet and started humming.

Dad always hums. I don’t know what the song is. No one can pinpoint it. It’s nothing anyone can remember either, but his hum is comforting. Everyone says so, even though nobody knows why. I began to wonder that day if the hum was because he was an alien.

I was going to ask about it, but instead out popped a different question, one I hadn’t known I was even going to ask. “Does Mommy know you’re an alien?”

That was embarrassing because I was seven years old and hadn’t said “Mommy” for a long time.

But Dad didn’t seem to notice. He just ummed a little louder, and then he said, “She knows. She loves me just the same. Will you?”

“Of course, Dad,” I told him, nodding my head. I thought that was a really silly question. Being an alien wouldn’t change him into somebody different, not if he’d always been an alien and I was just finding it out.

Then a thought hit me. “Am I an alien, too?”

Dad laughed and the humming stopped again. He picked up a strand of my hair and rolled it around my finger. “Yes,” he said. “That’s why I told you, and because the three of us are going on a trip. We’re going to introduce you to my parents.”

That was pretty exciting, except I knew that Mom didn’t like to travel. She got carsick every time we drove to the city to go shopping in the mall. She wouldn’t go on trains or planes. How would she ever fly on a spaceship?

That was my next question. Dad laughed and said, “Maybe she’ll surprise us. We’ll see.”

I had to go to school for another week before vacation started. That was really hard. I kept looking at all the other kids and wondering if they could tell I was an alien. Nobody seemed to notice. I guess they couldn’t tell.

Then the time came for us to leave. That night while we were discussing our plans for the next morning’s departure, Mom got all pale. Then she blurted out that she felt sick and couldn’t go with us. Dad nodded calmly, but I was ready to scream. I didn’t want to go to an alien planet without my mother. But I didn’t say anything. I didn't want to hurt Dad's feelings.

That night I hugged my mother extra hard and told her how much I loved her. She started to cry. Then she kissed me and ran out of the room. When my father came in later, I pretended to be asleep. I loved him, too, but I just didn’t want to talk to him right then.

In the morning I got dressed and picked up the suitcase that Mom and I had packed the day before. It was kind of heavy, but it made me feel grown-up that I was able to carry it down the stairs by myself.

Mom had made pancakes for breakfast. She'd even cooked the hot blueberry compote she fixes sometimes from frozen blueberries. That was my favorite pancake topping, but I could hardly swallow anything that morning. I managed three bites to make Mom see I liked it, then I put my fork down and drank my orange juice.

“How long will we be gone?” I asked Dad.

He glanced at Mom and then back at me. “Two weeks, honey. It takes a while to get there, even using Supersonics.”

I didn’t know what that was, but I nodded my head like I did. I looked over at Mom. She was still in her nightgown. Her eyes were red, and her hair was all curly like she’d been out in the mist that morning. I stood up, threw my arms around her, and kissed her. The tears were streaming down my eyes too, making her hair even curlier.

“I’ll miss you, Mommy,” I said.

Again, I’d betrayed my age, but I didn’t care. I lay my head against her chest and sobbed.

Dad waited patiently. I knew he’d put on his coat and picked up his suitcase and mine. I knew he wanted to leave. Gently, I pulled away from Mom, swabbed at my tears, and said, “Bye, Mom. I love you.”

Then I put on my jacket, and Dad and I walked out to the garage where the spaceship was hiding. He helped me up the stairs and then shut the door. Inside the ship, he stowed our suitcases in a rack on a sidewall, telling me that later we’d move them into our rooms. Next, we walked into the control room where a big picture window took up the entire wall. We sat down in the desk-like swivels chairs, fastened our seatbelts, and Dad prepared for take-off.

I kept hoping all that time that Mom would come running out and knock on the door, saying she wanted to go, but she never did. I heard the engines start up. They purred so quietly, I knew none of the neighbors could hear them. Then Dad coasted out of garage, lifted straight up, and shot up into the sky.

Our house looked very small as we flew into the clouds, but I stared really hard at the ground, and I think I might have seen Mom waving goodbye. I hope so.

In a moment we were out in free space, as Dad called it, and heading into Supersonics. Once he pushed that button, there were rainbows everywhere, with lights so intense they almost hurt my eyes. I couldn’t look away; they were that beautiful. When the rainbows ended, Dad unbuckled his seatbelt, and told me that I could unbuckle mine.

Then he showed me around the ship, and pointed out where everything was kept. Dad had filled one whole locker with games like Checkers, Chess, and Monopoly for playing on our trip. He’d packed books for me, too. And when he showed me my room, there was old Raggety Bunny who I used to sleep with when I was six.

I’ll miss Mom on this trip. I miss her already, but I think it’s going to be okay. In fact, I bet it will be great because this time, it’s just “me and my dad.”

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