Infinite

Infinite

His hands moved with practiced ease; an ease that was depicted through every crack in the skin of his hands, and by all the calluses that had built up on his fingertips. His hair was a silver sea of threads, much finer than the threads he used every day, as he sat at his seasoned workbench and stool. Aria was still a small child at the agile age of seven, but she looked at her father thoughtfully as she watched his steady hands move, as though they’d always known the steps to binding a book, as if he’d been born doing it. She studied the defined lines pinching his eyebrows and squinting his eyes, a look that some might interpret as angry, but Aria only knew as focused. He finished his stitch and looked down at his patiently watching Aria, bringing a soft smile to his tired face. “I’m glad you watch so intently Aria, one day you’ll be able to do this, and this bookstore will be yours' ', he gave her face a soft caress before once more returning to his work.

Emiliano loved his daughter; with every look at her soft lightly curled auburn hair, and deep roasted almond eyes, he saw the beauty of her mother she’d eventually grow into. He looked down at his little inquisitor, his angle, and saw the pure heart of his love Catalina. Looking at little Aria the gift they’d given each other, and knowing she was the only thing that kept him going, without Catalina by his side. His hand brushed through Aria’s hair that was pulled back into a half ponytail. He closed his eyes remembering Catalina’s smile and warm laugh. He Looked at Aria opening his workbench drawer, and pulled a leather journal from the back corner, it was well worn with love and use. He undid the leather cord along the front and proceeded to open the brown book. He quickly flipped through the pages, looking at the charcoal art that seemed to nearly capture the essence of his wife’s eyes, he skimmed the love letters, and poetry they wrote to each other. Emiliano Sighed, with a longing that would stay with him for the rest of his mortal life, a longing for the love he lost. Glancing back at his daughter once more, he stood from his workbench, and went to kneel in front of little Aria. “Aria I want you to have this, I know there’s no way I can bring your mother back, but maybe you can experience who she was through this journal we shared together.” He set the book softly in her hands.

Aria held the book tight, like a sacred object that needed to be protected. She felt her father’s initials impressed on the back, along with the phrase ‘to new beginnings, a life shared, when two become one’. She ran her fingers along the impressed words over and over, she looked at the spine of the book, and the way the leaves sat in the spine. The pages sat crooked, the spine itself was falling out, she looked at her papa with astonishment. “Papa is this your first journal?”, he smiled at her “good eye Aria, you're very smart”. Aria looked at the book with a newfound conviction, and reverence. She opened the first page, and she stared ever so carefully at the women captured on the pages.

Aria stood up from her father’s tired workbench, that had sense become her work bench. She picked up the five journals she’d finished binding, her father had taught her to put impressions of her initials, and the number of how many she’d made on every journal. Aria remembered him telling her ‘if you work hard Aria, you’ll make four times as many journals that I have, in your life’. She set each journal on the shelf, admiring how she seemed to hone her skill more and more, with every book she bound. After she’d put the new journals out for sale on the shelf, she stepped back into the workshop, and sat down at her bench. A sorrow seemed to weigh on her shoulders, as she opened her father’s first journal. She had repaired it more than once, to keep it from falling completely apart. Ever since the day her Father had given her the journal, she had opened the book every day, looking at the perfectly crafted drawings of her mother. The way her father seemed to give the art life, when he drew an art piece was a little unnerving. He recreated the warmth in her mother’s eyes, and Aria could almost imagine what they would have been like in person. She stared at picture, after picture of her mother, their resemblance was uncanny.

After reading her mother’s letters, and poetry, in a way it felt as though Aria had always known her. Aria thought to herself ‘with the exception of not knowing the pitches of her voice, the softness of her touch, or the warmth of her hugs’, but her soul Aria was certain she knew her soul. She savored every line her mother wrote, especially the ones that described her dad, and the way he made her feel.

‘He’s my sturdy and smooth trunked tree,

we fit as though we were always meant to be.

A woman happily at ease leaning against her evergreen,

letting in the firefly’s light,

that seems to always find her at night.

When he is near,

she never has to be scared,

even when the sky is at its darkest,

they can stay in the warmth of the light,

that shines through all the darkness’.

Aria thought of the time she’d woken from the thunders of a horrible storm, and her father came to her side and held her tight. In that moment she could feel the strength in his warmth, and she knew, she would never fear the storm if he was close. A tear tipped at the brim of Aria’s eyelashes, but she told herself she wouldn’t cry. She cried for months after her father had passed. He left her the store, and the loft above they called their home, but it all felt so empty without his humble, warm presence. Six months, the first six months are the hardest her father’s lawyer had told her. It had been ten months and Aria was still waiting for the throb to be gone it wasn’t though.

The woman, who now sat at her fathers work bench, closed her fathers first journal, and put it safely back in the far corner of the work bench drawer. Aria reached for a different book in the drawer pulling out instead a book that was smaller, and black. It was the last journal her father had ever made. She thought, ‘where there is a beginning there is also an end’. She opened the journal to the first page, where her father had written her a letter.

Dear Aria,

My time for the next life has come, I am sad to depart from the happy life we’ve shared together, but my journey's end is long overdue, and your journey my dear beautiful daughter, is just beginning. There are some things I need to tell you before I’m gone. Aria I want you to live! Go where your heart calls you to go, be who your heart wants you to be. Remember what I told you Aria? On your thirteenth birthday, when I gave you your first book binding kit. I said, “journals are a special enigma, that fit into every empty space, metaphorically speaking. They are the universal tool, for the dreamer, the believer, and the thinker. Whether you’re the owner of a company, an artist, a philosopher. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are. Every person has a personalized book of thoughts, or dreams, or beliefs and that’s what journals are made of. That is what we hope to make, when we make journals, but I didn’t raise you to make journals Aria. I taught you to work hard, so that you would have the means to work hard, if that’s what you wanted to do. We shared art so that you could do that too, and you believe because you were meant to. Aria I want you to live, and if that means closing the bookstore, close it. It’s your home! It will always be there for you, when you’re ready to come back to it. See the world, meet new people, try new foods. Take the end of my story, the life I shared with you, and build your own story. One that you can tell your mother and I when we’re all together again. Fall in love like your mother and I did.

I never told you this, but we met in Italy. I come from a rich family there, and your mother was a woman with many dreams of America, and books. We got married and ran away to America, to live a quiet, happy, simple life with you. The bookstore started when I decided to bind books, and make journals, my specialty. She was a writer and taught classes in our shop. Fall in love Aria, run away, maybe you’ll have better luck starting, where we ended our wild journey. Your uncle, and aunt, still run the family winery in Italy, they’ve been waiting to meet you. I taught you Italian young, you’ll do fine there. You’ll like the food, and the romance, but mostly I think you’ll fall in love with the journey. Your aunt and uncle are located at Antica Librandi, via Roma, 1, 78610 Barolo CN, Italy. When you're ready to go don’t bother calling, just go, show up at their door. They remember your mother, they’ll recognize you. Their names are Antonio, and Sofia. My last gift I leave to you, is the rest of my inheritance from my father. It’s only twenty thousand dollars, but I’m sure you will make it last, I love you my angel, until we meet again.

Forever Love Papa

Aria held the journal closed. On the front of the journal one word was impressed, ‘Infinite’. Infinite as in her parent’s love, as in the name of their family bookstore, infinite as in the need for journals. She rubbed her fingers over his initials, on the back corner. She let out a decisive sigh, grabbed her father’s first journal from the drawer once more, and now with both journals in hand, she grabbed her backpack, hanging on her work bench. It was already packed and had her passport on top. She put her two journals safely on top of her other belongings, zipped up the bag, and looked at her flight ticket. Four hours until her flight to Italy; a car honked out front. Her best friend, who would be looking after her shop while she was gone, was there to take her to the airport. She gave her home one last glance, watching the memories of her father and her disappear, like a movie in reverse. Aria even tried to imagine her parents here, before she had ever even been a conceived notion. She Closed her eyes to ensure she’d walk out that door, and with one foot in front of the other she did stride. Aria was not entirely sure what awaited her, but she continued forward never looking back. She was ready to keep a dying man's last wish, ready for new beginnings, and ready for her own infinite love story. Whatever would look like.