We have been here on the island for two weeks. I woke up early this morning; when I came out, he was just sitting in front of the easel. He is really old and taciturn. I come a little bit closer in order to watch the painting clearly. It is amazing; he painted the west beach with the fabulous sky above the peaceful low tide. It was a sunny day I guess, because the painting is mostly composed by gold and purple.
“Are you sad?” I ask him.
“Sad?” he turns to me, but his eyes are looking at another point right behind me , “I am not sad, girl, you don’t understand.”
I know what he was looking at—my grandma’s flowers.
This old man is my seventy-year-old step grandpa Patrick. I have never met him before because he and my grandma moved to this island fifteen years ago.
However, a few weeks ago, my grandma died.
My mom said she had no father when she was born, and her sixth birthday party was where my grandma and Patrick fell in love.
He loved my grandma so much, and promised that he would take her to everywhere she want, and never leave her alone. He did, actually, right after I was born, they came here.
It is a beautiful island with only a few families. My grandparents lived in an artistic wooden house near the west beach. They have a lovely garden with hundreds of flowers in it. The flowers were my grandma’s job. She liked flowers, she liked their smell, their bright colours, and their different ways of growing.
In July, some of visitors would come here by ship and live about two weeks. The scene of this island is famous, especially the beach. The sky is colorful and wide, and it is just like an extremely fabulous mantle covers above the sea water. When you walk on the beach, you can feel the warm sands flow through the toes, and the mild sunshine mixes into the air and murmurs near your ears. Sea gulls' songs break people's sweat dreams in every peaceful dawn, day after day, the old island seems to be the same from the beginning to the end.
The house is on the conner of cliff. Go back through the garden, is a stair towards the beach under the cliff, and kids often play on the beach, there are many small pebbles can be used to build castles. Most of the residents here are some old people with their grandchildren. Little girl Jenny told me playing in my grandma’s sweet garden was her favourite part of the whole day.
Every morning Patrick would make two cups of coffee, and set up his easel out on the mountain. He always works in the morning, before the sunrise. I don’t know why, maybe it is just one of the artist’s weird eccentricities.
“Do you miss her?” I did not talk with him a lot, but now there are just two of us; I think it is good to start a conversation.
“Look at mountain, what can you see?” He points at one of the conner of the painting. “Trees. What is that mean?” I look straight into his eyes, but he is still looking at somewhere else.
“We planted them, me and Joanna, your grandma. Now they are as old as you are.” He smiles, “ and look at the sky; you can distinguish the colours. The clouds are not just white and grey; there are yellow, lilac, pink, and sapphire. And look at the sea water, there are beige, gold, and navy blue. We used to argue a lot about the colours. I am the painter, but Joanna always won. She was very sensitive on the colours, and that did make her really excited and talk about them for the whole day.”
He puts down his pen, and sinks into memory.
“The first time I met her was forty years ago. I was just some guy who traveled through the town, and going to find my uncle in the next village, but I saw her. She had amazing brown hair as a waterfall was poured from the sky, her cherry-like mouth, attractive eyes, and my favourite white dress. She was laughing with your mom among the flowers; I can never forget that smile; I loved her with my whole life since the first second I saw her.”
“I don’t even know her much,” that is true, because the only thing I heard about my grandma form mom was just she was far away from us with her husband, “ I am glad to hear these.”
“ You remind me of her,” he gets the pen again, and adds a little black on it, “she liked to stay here with me and talked whatever appeared in her head.”
“ Joanna missed you a lot. Every time she found there were some kids playing in the water she would start telling me about your mom in her childhood and you brother when he was little, and you, who she was not lucky enough to take care of.”
Patrick paints some little black outlines of people on the beach. They are playing together, water fight maybe.
“ But you asked me if I miss her,” he stares at the sea water with smile in his eyes, “ No, I don’t.”
“She is just like the low tide in the morning; the new leaves of an old tree that we used to planted; the soft wind fly though my hair.”
“She is a part of my world.”
He adds two people leaning together behind others.
“She is a part of me.”
