Hello World...

Hello world…this is me-e…
Life should be-e , fun for everyone…

My name is Alan and I sit on this steel grating every day. Here I am, seated in the sky, observing the city which lives, rests and sleeps, every day. And I always sits on this one, or on similars, trying to do all I can to let my family to live a decent life.

I ain't a perfect man, I have my share of sins. When angry I tend to start shouting, I maybe drink too much, but even when I'm raging, when all I want to do is to break something...I don't lay one finger on my family.
No, my wife and my children are holy to me.
And while I cannot give them all of the time that I should, I still try to do the best I can.

Still, with two jobs, I don't have much free time.

During the day, I work here, in this construction site and when I finally get home, I have only an hour, more or less, to eat a bite and to pass some time with my kids. Then from the early evening to the early night, I go as a bouncer for one of the local nightclubs.

Two jobs, double the stress. But I would do even six if this would be enough to let my children have the future I didn't had.

I don't want for them to face my same life. Former student, former soldier, and many other 'former-' that I don't want to remember. No, they have to have all the papers to change their life and to grow a better family than the one I've given them.

They don't have to suffer as I had to.



My wife? What to say about her?

An angel. That's the only way I can describer her. She's an Angel, beautiful, pure, so sweet and caring. Every evening, as I return covered in dirt and concrete's dust, she let me find the dinner already at the table, and while I eat she sits with me and start telling me of the day she nad my childs had.

Her hand is never far away from mine.

When she told me of how my daughter Kathy managed to enlist for a scholarship toward a sought out college, I burst into tears. Yes, a bear of a man like myself, crying like a little child. My always little child had the chance to go to college, and her old man didn't even had the time to be there with her.

The angel I had married moved beside me, kissing me softly on the cheek while her hand moved to my bald head as she caressed me and tried to let me relax.

With these examples, how could I not give out every single drop of my blood for Her. For all of Them. To see them smiling in happiness.


Right.

Smiling and Happy.


Why then, from some days, they act colder than usual towards me? My small boy, Jack, doesn't even look at me anymore. Kathy, instead seems to be avoiding me, trying to do all she can to not stay alone with me.
And then there is Sarah, my Angel.

She almost doesn't speak to me anymore. Just some minor tidibits over dinner, but remain silent most of the time.
I get back home lately, hoping to see her smile, finding instead a deserted kitchen, my dinner alone and cold on the table. In this coldness I eat in silence, even though I would like to call her to me, I desist. I know how late is it and I want her to rest but, the weight on my soul it grows daily making me suffer.

The more time pass, the more alone I feel. More and more like Atlantis, keeping the world upon ,my shoulders. But if before I had the presence of my beloved to give me strenght, now, from time to time, I feel myself grow weak under that weight, knowing full well it will crash on me sooner than I think.

Yesterday, at last, came the final blow.

The Site Manager had his only daughter going to be wed that day and so he gave to all of us half a day of freedom. I had just returned home,trying to do as little noise as I could, since I wanted to do them a little surprise, when I saw them.

Sarah, Jack and Kathy, seated around the table in the kitchen. They were discussing about something that was going to change their lives, the arrival of someone who was going to free them from that life. But the main point was that I had to be kept in the dark.
In that moment I heard the voice of my sweet, loving Angel, breaking my heart .

"You do know how he's made, don't you? He would only charge forward and, without any worries for those around him, he would go straight to his objective. Remember, now, your father must not be aware of this. It will be for the best when the time will come and we will be able to leave this old house."

I stood motionless, in silence. Even if I wanted to shout, I don't think I would have been able to. I was too confused and distressed to face them, so I went out again. I went directly to the nightclub where I worked in the evening shift and stayed there all night long.
When I went home, it was early in the morning and everyone was already asleep. I prepared myself something for lunch, slept a couple of hours and went back to work at the construction site.

I felt destroyed. I felt lonely. But I couldn't face them, didn't want to face them.


It's almost a month now, that I have stopped having any joyful feeling from them. And now I'm so tired of everything. I look now, while standing on this grating, suspended at hundreds of meters off the ground, watching the city as it wakes form its slumber, while I feel dead inside. All my dedication, my fatigues.

For what?

To be abandoned by those who I believed were loving me?

Is really this my future?


I close my eyes, while moving slightly toward the side, while a song that I had always loved, return to my memory....

Hello World, this is me,

Life should be, fun for everyone…

I feel the wind on my skin, the sensation of being weightless as the world pulls you toward itself, and I accept its invitation, ready to meet it, ready to abandon my problems, my fears, my pain.

Hello World, come and see…

It has to be near now, I can almost hear the screams of those ants as they see me fly toward them, on my invisible wings of freedom. I won't open my eyes, preferring to dedicate these last moments to my family. To the way I would always remember them.

Sarah, the day of our wedding, smiling to me as tears of joy fell from her eyes, radiant in the wedding gown of her mother. Kathy as a child, she smiled at me, as her nose was slightly covered in concrete, while she helped me repair a hole in the garden. Jack, in tears after falling down of his bycicle, and how he stopped and began alughing as I carried hir around the block, on my shoulders.

…This is me.

Impact.



















“Ohé, Big Al! What the fuck are you doing!?”

I open my eyes, getting ouyt of my rêverie, only to find myself where I had always been.
Standing on the steel grating, slightly exposed to the abyss below me.

I turn around and I see Toni, an old Italian immigrant that had come here in the US, he looked at me as if seeing a ghost. Before I could do anything, he place one of his hands behind my belt, keeping me steady.

"I've finally found you. C'mon, there is your mugliera...your wif-e with your little ones down stairs."

Sarah? Here?
With the childrens?

I cast my eyes again toward the abyss, maybe I could still be in time to...No, old Toni has got a steady hand on me. He may be old, but he's one of those oldster burnt from the sun, hard to die and even tougher to fight with.

I start following him, feeleing weak in my legs, I almost fail to hear as he talk again toward me, while pulling me toward the main elevator.

"Eh, Al, It's a hard time. We know how it is. Do not worry, all of us here are with you. Almost everyone has already prepared something to help ya."

Everyone? So all of them knows already? Only I was to remain in the dark? Why be so mean? I would like to scream and fight, dragging him along with him but, I can't do it, I can't feel my usual strenght in me and so, resigned, I let him take me to the elevator.


The doors opened and I see them all, the workers, the friends, even the Site Manager, with daughter and her husband. All of them, waiting motionless for me to appear. I can't stop myself from advancing slowly, almost at a crawl, unable to keep stable on my two feet as my legs seemed to have become of jello. As I move forward the crowd open, froming a corridor which lead me to Sarah and the kids.

There she is, smiling and as happy as I could ever dream, backed up by Jack and Kathy, both exhuding joy as they both keep hold onto a huge cake.

On top of this there a drawing of...
A drawing of...

Around me I hear some of the comments from the people gathered here, on how beautiful Sarah looks, on how lucky I am, on how smart it had been the cousin of one of them in requesting that cake to one of his aunts, on how marvelous that cake seems and finally, on how fantastic that decoration, made to look like a child brought by a stork, was.

A...child?

My stare turned toward my loved ones, my family, as the world begin to grow dar around me, as my knees fail to support me and let me fall on the ground. I hear a thousand voices speaking around me, but is only one which hit me in the hearth, which heal the wound that I had until now.

Sarah.

I can't hear her words,but I can feel her agonized fear, her pain, her terror. Before I could reassure her, the darkness grows around me as I fall into the uncounsciosness.


When I slowly open my eyes again, everything is foggy and blurry, but her radiant face was on me as soon as I regained my senses.

My lovingly Angel, watching over me.
I am resting my head on her thighs as she look on me with her beautiful eyes, tears are falling on me, but I can feel the happiness in them.

Around me, away from the two of us I can hear the voice of Toni as he laugh with his raucous voice.

"Ahr ahr ahr...big as he is...and still he fell like an old potato sack. Sheesh, it's not even his first one"

I keep my eyes on her, excluding everyone around us, the friend who promise to help, the SIte Manager giving me the role of Head supervisor of the Day shift for my dedication, Toni who keep on laughing with other italians as old as him.

I exclude everything except Sarah and my two kids.
I look into her eyes and I finally realize what I was going to lose, what I was throwing away. As I lose myself in her eyes I remember the words my Father said to me once. The man who had helped in shaping me and teached me to be who I am.


'Never surrender yourself, Alan. Never.
Those who give up, have already lost everything. You don't have to give away anything of what belongs to you, be just, be fair, but never, Never!, surrender without fighting.

Someday, you'll also have someone to which gift your great Hearth to. And when you will have found that someone, you will have to protect it from everything and everyone but, most importantly, from yourself.

Only in this way, one day, you will have the greatest treasure of all times.'

Slowly I rise, feeling reinvigorated by those words, remembering the smile of my father and of my mother, as they watched over me.

The same smile I give to my childrens and, which I will give to the new little one.

I hug them, all of them, as we get showered by the laughters and the applause of those around us and as I turn myself toward this world that surround us.

'Come forward, World.

This is me.

And I'll protect what's mine until the end.'