My father

On my windowsill I have a few ornaments. Nothing of any real value, but things that I have kept over the years. Some things are worth keeping, not everything, but people keep things that mean something to them. It might not even be completely relevant to the situation that made them want to keep a memento, but to them it makes complete sense.

Keepsakes, I think, are much better than photographs. You see, photographs only work with one sense. Yet a shiny pebble picked up the day you went to the beach, holds much more. You can touch it and feel how all the pebbles on the beach felt. How they were wet and warm from the sun and round so as not to hurt your toes when walking barefoot down to the waters edge. You could smell it too, smell the saltwater as you picture yourself walking along the water, and hear the crunching of the pebbles under your feet. You then start to hear the water breaking and seagulls above chattering about the schole of fish that has just surfaced nearby. You can hear the other people on the beach laughing and screaming as they all play in the waves, all of them hearing and seeing and feeling the same things as you.
A photograph can only tell you that these things happened, and not make you feel them.

One of the ornaments on my windowsill, oddly enough, is a camera. It sits there among the shells and stones as if it has been placed there and forgotten before a day out. It hasn't been forgotten though. It's there for a reason.
Somebody a long time ago gave that camera to me and I still have it to this day. It's not special or anything, it's not digital, it hasn't got a zoom lens or a flash. It's just an old camera with an old film in it. But when I hold it, it becomes much more than that. It becomes a portal in time that allows me to see somebody who went away a long time ago, that somebody was my father. He died when I was two. I never knew him because I was too young, but I remember what he looked like. That was partly due to the posters of him that I had seen dotted around the city. I always found the posters ridiculous, him standing on a tall building with a cape flying out behind him. He had a strong jawline and looked proud in himself. It was his eyes though, that I remember the most. He had kind eyes filled with compassion. A compassion and love that he showed to all the people who were kind and compassionate themselves. This is not the man I remember.

Like I said, my father died when I was two, and I don't remember anything about his last few days. All I do remember is him coming into my room, and sitting on the end of my bed. I was only half asleep when he came in and my eyes were blurry and sore and I had to rub them. In my sleepy state I hardly recognised the man, gone was the proud, chiselled jaw and there seemed to be a large shadowy cloud above him, weighing him down. It was the first time that I had seen him weak and troubled and vulnerable, a far cry from his reputation around the city. I remember feeling nervous at seeing fear in his eyes although I knew that what I was seeing was only for me. Not for the people out there he had tried to protect, but for me, his son, in my toy-strewn bedroom.
It was then that he gave me the camera and told me that it was very important and that one day it will all become something. I wasn't really listening to everything he was saying but I knew the gist straight away. He was saying goodbye. I don't know if I even knew what a camera was, but I knew it was special, and that my dad had given it to me and that I was going to keep it. After he left my room and my life that night, I clung on to that camera as if it were him there under my pillow and in my sweaty hands.

So when I hold that camera now, I can smell him, I can hear him, and I can see him there talking to me on the end of my bed looking at me with love and fear. That is how I remember my father. Of course I grew up hearing people saying things like, "Live by the sword, you die by it!" The word "Hero" was used a lot and "such a waste, who will protect us now?".

But I never really listened to them. I didn't need to, I still had him sitting there on the end of my bed, In my bedroom, holding that camera and talking to me and that was all I needed of him. That was how I grew up, my father getting me through life from beyond the grave, all thanks to my keepsake camera.
And that is why it sits there to this day on my windowsill, amongst a camping holiday and a christmas day. Between a first kiss and a first love, next to an oppurtunity taken and in front of one missed. There, in a windowsill, that says more about me than any amount of photographs ever could.