Hercules

When I was little, my father would carry me on his broad shoulders in the backyard just after the sun had set. Now, my father was a very big man--”stocky” or “burly” as he would sometimes say--so much so that when the dying light would cast our shadows around the yard, it made us look like mountains. Our little slice of fenced-in land became our great outdoors, and we would talk about all kinds of things; the weather, how big I was getting, how he was a “mountain of a man” but that I made all of his hair fall out. But most of all, we would talk about the stars. We would talk about the different shapes they would make and where the different planets were and why they would make the shapes that they made. We were both always barefoot and the air was always warm and the crickets had just started singing their songs as my father would point toward the sparkling heavens, presenting to me all of its glory in a single swipe of his arm.

“You see Scorpious, with her long tail?” he whispered one night.

“Yeah,” I whispered back.

“And look, there’s Orion with his sword and his bow, seeking revenge against the scorpion that tried to kill him.”

“I see him,” I replied as I stared up in awe. “He’s really big.”

“And very strong. He once tried to hunt down all the animals on the earth.” he said.

“Was he the strongest of them all?” I asked while flexing my arms so the whole wide world could see. We both knew that my muscles weren't very big, but I was working on it--I was getting stronger every single day, and there wasn’t a day when I didn’t try since the moment that I woke up.

“No, no,” he chuckled. “That would be Hercules,” he said, pointing his mighty hand to our left. “Though sometimes I’d like to argue that it’s me.” I laughed at that while he traced the constellation against the sky, a sideways square with four zig-zag lines, one coming from each corner. “Hercules was so strong that he could lift a thousand-pound boulder without breaking a sweat.” Then he held his hands up in claw shapes for dramatic effect. “And when he was young, he defeated a lion with his bare hands.” 

“Wow. So he was invincible!” I exclaimed, pumping my fists into the night air.

“Not quite,” he said, lifting me from his shoulders. I wiggled and squirmed as much as I could against his hold because I didn’t want to go down; I wanted to be as close to the stars as possible. It was no use, of course; he peeled me off of his shoulders with ease and set me on the bench by the picnic table, the wood still warm from the evening sun. “You’re getting so big I can hardly carry you for long--but that’s how Hercules was similar to us; he was half human, half god. Because of that, he could feel pain and weakness just like we do. He got cuts and scrapes and bruises and stuff, and they hurt him really bad. More than once. But he was always able to prove his strength in the end." He took a short pause to lower himself onto the bench beside me and look back up at the stars. "So, yes, he was strong, but not invincible.” He sighed. “No one is.”

I looked up too, now about five feet farther from the stars than I was a minute ago. No one's invincible? Then how do you explain super heros? But super heros were still human, too, I guess, just stronger. I looked back at my father.

"So, the pain is what made him strong?" I asked with suspicion.

"Exactly," he whispered, still looking up. "We all must be weak before we can be strong."

I pondered that for a moment. "Will I ever be as strong as Hercules?"

My father slowly looked down from the stars to me on the bench beside him. He didn't say anything at first; his eyes seemed to scan me for something like an answer, as if the answer itself might be written on my skin; like my freckles would form a near perfect picture just like the stars did in the sky. There was some emotion on his face that I couldn't quite name; sadness, confusion, anger? Maybe none. Maybe all three.

He blinked, as if coming out of a thoughtful trance, and whispered, "Yes. Yes I believe that you will be. One day."

I don't know why he sounded on the verge of tears, as if he was choking on his own oxygen, or trying to swallow and breath deeply at the same time. Maybe it was what I saw on his face, but it was pretty dark by that point, and the back lights weren't on. The only light came from the small back window and the freckled sky above us, with it's silver sliver of a moon like Cheshire cat's grin. I closed my eyes and wished on that moon. I wished so hard that I would be as strong as Hercules one day—and I wished that I would live long enough to get that strong, because to be that strong, it would probably take a hundred years. I wished so hard that I felt like my brain would explode. When I opened my eyes my father was still staring at me, that same mix of emotions still on his face. I hugged him so that he wouldn’t feel sad anymore; or angry or whatever it was that wasn’t a good happy feeling; and he swallowed my small body with his big arms and we just sat there like that for a few minutes. Dark all around us. Crickets chirping loudly. Cheshire smiling down at us from the sky. 

He let go of me and stood up, breathing heavy. I reached my arms up towards him and he picked me up and set me on his hip. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you too, Daddy.”

He carried me back inside where mom was waiting in the kitchen. He lowered me into my hot-red wheelchair and released the brakes so he could roll me to the kitchen table. I was still pretty small so I wasn’t strong enough to roll the wheels on my own yet; but I would be soon. Like I said, I was working on that part. My parents sat in chairs across the small table and looked at me. Now that we were in the light, I could see that it was sadness that they looked at me with.

“Honey,” my mother said as sweetly as she could, “I’m afraid we have some...some very bad news.”

And I watched as a single tear rolled down her face.

-------------------------

Less than a half hour later, I was in the middle of attempting to sleep, with my head buzzing and twisting around the room, when my dad interrupted with a gentle tap on my door.

“Go away!” I was not in the mood for another pep talk on “we’ll get through this” or “we’re stronger than this” or “it’s all going to be okay.” I just wanted to be left alone.

“Hey, buddy.” my father whispered.

“I don’t want to talk,” I told him as I turned away.

“That’s okay,” he replied. “You don’t have to talk. Just look.”

“At what?”

“At this.” And in front of my face was his phone screen. It showed a map of the night sky, and one star in particular was highlighted.

“What is it?” I asked, sitting up.

“That’s your star,” he said with a smile.

“My star?”

“Your star,” he said again, pointing at me.

“But how can I have a star? It’s so far away.”

“Me and your mom bought it for you,” he explained.

I frowned heavily at that. “I don’t want a gift just because you feel sorry for me,” I declared, crossing my arms in defiance.

“But that’s not why we got it,” he assured me. “We got it on the day you were born.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t expecting that. I sat silently for a moment more. "May I see it?" I uncrossed my arms and gently took the phone from his outstretched hand. He sat down beside me, springs creaking under his weight, as I looked at the cluster of stars in which mine was perfectly nestled. It was bright. It was so far away. It was beautiful. "Why did you guys get me a star?"

"That’s something I’ve wanted to tell you about for a long time,” he said with his white grin. “It’s because when you were born, you were very sick and the doctors had to take you to another room so they could make you better. We didn't get to see you for a little bit and so we kept guessing at what the future would be like. What color eyes you would have and how tall you would get." He smiled at the memories even though I knew he was still a little sad. "And then your mama spoke up and said, 'I know exactly what our baby's gonna look like.' And she had me give her my phone so she could show me. And you know what she pulled up?"

I smiled at him, knowing the answer right away. "My star!"

“Your star,” he said grinning back. “She pointed at the screen and said, 'That's what our baby's going to look like.' We saw you in the NICU about an hour later and we both started bawling like little babies ourselves; you looked just like that bright star in the pitch black sky.”

My dad wiped away the tears welling up in his eyes, not caring if I saw them anymore. I set the phone in his lap and hugged him again. I let him sob into my hair for as long as he needed to get all of his tears out so that he wouldn't have to get them all out on mama. In that moment I was strong for him; I didn't cry and I didn't try to pull away, even after we'd been sitting there for a long time. I remained strong for him, and for me. When all his tears were gone, he breathed heavy and let me go. He looked at me and he smiled  and ruffled my hair saying, "My strong little man," like he knew what I was doing all along. 

He kissed my forehead and stood up. I lay back down and he tucked me in, swallowing me in the quilt that was slightly too big for my bed, and during all of it I stared at the glowing star stickers that were on the ceiling above my bed--and I thought about having my very own star, how it was the best gift I had ever gotten, and about how I would be up there with those stars one day soon, just like Scorpious and Orion and all of the planets in the universe. 

Dad opened the door and stepped out, and just before he closed the door he turned to me and whispered, "Goodnight, Hercules."

And the door shut behind him with a click.