It's Such A Beautiful Day

why do we keep making children?

A family outing.

~

Heat rises from the ground and burns through the soles of the cheap slippers I chose to wear as we walk through Niagara with the family. There is Dad walking alongside his son of thirty-two like it's his first time meeting the man. Strange distance stands between them and awkward laughter fills the air, followed by tight silence.

There is Mom making small talk any chance she gets as if it'll distract her from the longstanding shit history between my father's children and her. Every once in a while, she'd ask if anyone wants to take a picture beside a dying shrub or a statue of a man long dead even though each one of us has been here every year, without fail, but nobody reminds her.

There is my eldest brother, the one who disappeared to Calgary a few years back when I was around eight years old, and never came back. He holds a close resemblance to what Dad would've looked like, which I'm sure freaks the old man out. He looks at me now and then with some sort of weary fear as if seeing me walking there with my short shorts and tank top is too much for him. At times, he'd shake his head and say, "Eighteen. Seriously?" like repeating the phrase enough times will convince him that this is the truth. This is reality. I'd only smile and look away shyly even though it kind of pisses me off, and Mom notices, so she'd ask if anyone wants a picture of the damn peonies again.

And there is his son, my nephew. A surprise to the family, though a good one, I guess. Anytime I look at him, I remember that phone call I got a few years back from Dad expressing how glad he was his son was even capable of bearing children.

He's named Jamal. Beautiful, just like the first time I set eyes on the picture Dad sent. He's six now, chatty, and already more sarcastic than I'll ever be. He holds onto a DS in one hand and a bottle of water in the other, not even taking in the scenery. Sometimes Mom would shake her head and say he isn't disciplined enough. Sometimes Dad would excuse himself to go to the bathroom, though I know it's just a cheap form of escape. And me, well, I notice the little things about him, like the way he pulls at his long lashes when he's bored or the sudden backwash he makes into the water bottle when he thinks his father isn't looking, doing this over, and over, and over again.

He doesn't consider me his aunt. He said it himself. "Aunties are adults. You're not an adult," he says, and proceeds to go on and on about the middle-aged aunts he has back home in Alberta. He can wear a person out 'til they're thin, and my brother confirms this, though I still smile and laugh and play along because he's blood. They're all blood.

Soon enough, they'll depart for Calgary again, though this isn't a bitter loss. Maybe in another ten years, we'll be back in the same place again, down at the Niagara park, hoping the singing birds and the loud tourists would save us from small talk and overpriced water turning into ninety percent spit.