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Many talk about fairies and magical creatures but nobody had ever really seen one. Titania was a made up place, there are so many of them when you are a child. It was a place of make believe, of genies too, and lands with mystical trees, multi coloured flowers and unnaturally perfect skies, it was a place where dreams came true.
I was an imaginative child, I had very few friends and my family life was quite Hellish. I loved worlds and places of make believe, places to let my mind escape to. Often escaping to them for hours at a time. Although I couldn't tell you how or why I forgot this in adulthood. But I was a braver kid when I found myself tripping into a world of fairies and genies, with frozen lakes and blue skies, through the bottom of my toy box.
Suddenly, trees that looked like they belonged on alien planets or in hot countries that I had never yet seen. Rivers and streams, and green fertile paradise was abounding all around me.
Flowers of all my favourite colours grew on hilltops, and purple poppies shimmied up out of cracks in the sandy herringbone pathways that I followed, then sprouted into beautiful plants before my very eyes. Every shrub had several rainbow roses blossoming out of it evenly and so perfectly balanced. If love could be a planet, then this was almost certainly what it would look like.
It was like an oil painting, and I knew that once I stepped inside I would not want to leave. Even though there was nobody else that I knew there and no people, only animals that talked and strange beings that appeared then disappeared as soon as you met their eyes. The world was like a good book that you start reading then can't get your head out of, because the story is so perfect that you get lost inside of it.
I had been looking quite innocently for my favourite toy, inside my toy box on my own, as I often was in my nursery. Left to my own devices, no nanny no mum or dad, they were far too preoccupied to be around me. I was too clumsy and loud, brutish at times, I might have tantrums if somebody told me off. I was not a strong kid, but I was quick on my feet and strong willed, quite defiant at times.
I once fell in, being very young and very small. It was a very big and colourful toy box which my dad in a moment of creative madness had decided to build out of old chipboard, he even painted it in primary colours for me. All my toys were kept in it, but the hinge was not stable and when I fell in I nudged something and the lid closed on me.
I screamed until I was blue in that box, for what felt like hours, until somebody rescued me. My grandma in fact came and put the lid back up, she had come to visit me, which she only really ever did once a month. So I suppose I had been lucky in that moment. I was red and sweating, and covered in my own tears and had wet myself. Mum felt so bad she cradled me and rocked me, it took her a long time to settle me down.
But I kept that toy box for years, I had it as a toddler, and as I grew up. I fell into it again or rather chose to hide in it, when mum and dad were arguing and I couldn't stand the sound I got stuck in it time and time again.
The black out period from the first incident never came back to me, neither did the second. I have no idea of how long I was in there for, or what nightmares would ensue when I found myself trapped there in the most evil feeling darkness.
A fear of the dark did develop though, and after the age of about 4 or 5 I had to sleep in my bed with a night light on. It was shaped like a mushroom, with holes and shapes cut out of it, and decorated all around it painted ever so delicately and intricately, were fairies of some Peter Pan like world that somebody elses imagination had clearly thought up.
I loved that night light, it stayed with me for years after, and became an essential part of my night time sleep routine.
As I got older dad decided it would be a cool idea to put a lock on the toy box as it was getting very full, and so the second incident that I fell into it again, somehow it locked itself on me while I was still inside it. 5 year old me, screaming again and crying my heart out, feeling god knows how many different traumatic emotions, and not getting rescued until mum came to my aid hours later.
But once again, I could not remember what went on in there. Still I loved my toy box, it was practical and useful, but also the only thing my dad ever built for me, because he rarely took any interest in me most of the time.
Oh yes, going back to the 7 or 8 year old me, who chose to hide in it. I didn't get stuck in it this time thankfully. But I did fall asleep, and then I ended up dreaming of being somewhere else.
This happened several times, between the ages of 7 and 10.
This toy box of mine, surprisingly did not trigger any bad memories in me as one might expect. My living life with a mum and dad who only ever argued, was terrorising enough in the waking world, that I was no longer fearful of dying in a toybox that seemed like the devils trap to me, locking me in or closing in over me.
I think my imagination of other worlds and places, must have stemmed from there, and started this regression and transformation in me.
I can't really remember now, what dad had painted on it. Yet I had this toy box for so long, that I should really remember it well now. But I find it hard to picture what it looked like on the outside. There were pictures and glyphs on the inside, and I can remember them more.
I remember seeing stars that were painted in neon yellow, and they glowed in the dark like real stars. Although I am sure they were added much later on, after the first clumsy incident where I fell inside.
I think that on the outside there was something like a rainbow in the early days. But things like purple flowers, trees that curved and curled like they belonged to an alien planet, were also added much later on in my young life. The colours of the leaves seemed to change with the seasons, so my dad must have carried on evolving that painted toybox, because it never stayed the same, and that might explain why my memory of the way it looked is foggy.
According to my mum on reflective talks we have had since, I used to sit in it with cushions, and it became my happy place to read a book to myself. I was quite the book worm and was fantastic at reading for my age, always ahead of the other kids in my year. There were several nights when I?d read myself a book then fall asleep in it.
The first time, age 7, I woke up in a tree whose branches had wrapped around me like a crib, and I remember it being warm and comfy.
At age 8, I woke to find myself lying in the middle of a storm cloud, and I tried to stand up but it was slippery, because I couldn't find my footing very well and nearly fell right through it. Gripped by something like fear and adrenaline.
Then the thunderbolts happening beneath me tickled my toes and sent a wave of electricity up my legs and spine. A hole appeared and I fell through the cloud. Screaming, I woke up instantly, and there I was back in the toy box.
I pushed the lid up to get out, my body covered in bath bubbles. Yes, weird! Mum thought so too, she didn't know how I fell asleep in my toy box with the raging storm going on outside, and she certainly couldn't remember giving me a bubbly bath at any point that day.
When I was around 10 years old, I finally had my own life outside of the house.
Once I disappeared for a whole day. Mum and dad only realised I was missing at about 4pm, though they had not seen me since 8am in the morning, when I had my breakfast cereal at the dining table like usual.
Mum says I had been dressed up as an explorer, and told her I was going to go on an adventure that day. When she asked me where I was going to go, I told her Titania and I was going to catch fairies there and find a unicorn. I said I might be gone over lunch if it took a while.
She had laughed at me sweetly, doubtful of course, because I always came downstairs when I needed food, but she thought it was cute that my imagination was so vivid. I really seemed to wholeheartedly believe in these other worlds, and we had an attic so sometimes I would spend time up there too, with the Scalextric and the lego, making up worlds and stories of my own.
If anybody picked on me about these adventures I truly believed in, apparently I could get quite sensitive and cry sometimes.
But I can't remember doing anything like that, I only remember having the odd tantrum when I couldn't get my own way, and running away upstairs to shut the door on the world, when arguments would bring discord to my idea of a peaceful home life.
I tripped into the toy box on my 10th birthday, and I fell through the box into this other world I named Titania that day.
I fell through the clouds there was no storm brewing this time. The sky was blue and there were frozen lakes, streams and rivers I could see as I fell, and I wasn't afraid. Because it felt very much like floating gently, as oppose to hurtling tremendously fast towards the ground, and feeling as though it's going to be the last thing you see before splitting like a melon upon the ground and bleeding out.
I landed with a gentle thud by way of two or three well positioned and leafy trees, then got caught hanging upside down I eventually fell through the gripping claws of a sturdy beanstalk, and landed softly on a grassy verge.
It was soft like a down mattress, and a short stone throw away from me was the cutest little robin twiddling a berry in its beak. It looked at me with one eagerly curious eye and whistled, then it jumped and flapped its wing at me, and whistled again.
It was as if the robin was pointing its beak in a certain direction, and with its whistles and twiddles of the bare stick now, having consumed the berry, it was telling me in its own way where I should go.
I walked towards it and it briefly flipped up in the air and moved further ahead. So I began to follow it, curious to find out where it was taking me.
It disappeared and then reappeared again, as I followed the dusty path through the trees. It kept on doing the same thing, flapping its wings a bit and tweeting its vocal harmony. If I tried to take a wrong turn, it chirped in a sharper tone, and I knew it was telling me that it was the wrong way to go. I had no idea why, but I felt as though I needed to follow it.
I ended up in a meadow with the brightest yellow and white daisies, and there were marigolds and daffodils too. Suddenly little sparkles started falling down all around me and seemed to be everywhere, as though the sky had started raining stars, and the sky appeared much bluer and brighter here. Like I had stepped out of winter and suddenly walked into the summer.
A grey rabbit accidentally tickled my foot as it sped by me, I felt it before my eyes caught it running through the long grass towards the North. Then I noticed lots of bobbing long grass stems waving all around me, and I saw thousands of rabbits running everywhere.
As I turned around to take it all in, there was the most beautiful elegant horse I had ever seen standing not far ahead of me, it chewed on some long seeding strands of grass, and stared right at me with purpley blue eyes. Not only was its coat sparkling, but it had a spiral horn upon its head. I had found my unicorn!
It was an enamouring sight my eyes warmed, I was awed so much that my legs felt weak and I nearly fell backwards.
Then I fainted, the last thing I felt was my feathered robin friend and spindly legs landing on my chest. I felt it pecking my skin, a communication I only looked into later in life, like morse code spelling something out to me.
I remember then being lifted, at first I thought it was the unicorn somehow picking me up, because I felt a warmth like the sun, and a sensation of being held in an embrace by a loving mother.
I opened my eyes again and much to my disappointment it was my mum, lifting me up from the toy box. I was back there in it again, and I was covered in dandelion seeds. She was in tears and had some sad news to deliver to me.
My father had died that day of a heart attack. She had to tell me that he wouldn't be coming home, and he wouldn't be decorating my toy box or making any alterations to it ever again.
I never seemed to find my way back into that other world after that, as much as I tried to go there time and time again in the years following his death. Until the toy box he had built me, quite literally fell apart because I got too big for it.
Here I am sitting with my mother now, and she is seated in her armchair in the care home that looks after her. Her mind can remember such things sometimes, with a clarity that I had never gotten from her before. Yet some days the dementia is so bad, she doesn't even remember who I am.
Her smile is still the same, her hugs are also still as warm, but I know we never hugged enough, and growing up at times felt so lonely.
She tells me tales of my childhood with such love in her eyes, and such spark in her voice, even if her perspective is of a different viewpoint now. But on a good day like this one was, she will often tell me these stories and they are no longer hidden from my mind.
These days when I see a robin, I will always think of my dad with fondness, and remember the beautiful thing he did for me, even though he did not give me his time.
It sticks in my memory now, as one of the good ones!
I was taking my evening constitutional through a well-kept graveyard when I saw, at a distance, the tombstone bearing my name. The Hamilton marker stood there, gaunt and gray, like a foul-smelling intruder loitering at the edge of a convivial garden party, an intruder keeping an eye on someone who owed an impossible debt.
I was already in a somber mood, what with constant news of the pandemic, and my recent heart irregularities, which had led my cardiologist, Brent, to recommend this daily walk. So yes, the tombstone gave me pause. I asked myself, ?What am I doing with my life?? and its shadow question: ?What should I do with the time remaining??
By the end of the walk, however, I realized: the tombstone had nothing to do with me. My name is exceedingly common, and I am constantly confused with other David Hamiltons. I returned home, and all thought of the eerie coincidence vanished when my wife, Jeanne, passed along an urgent message regarding a patient whose hand I had repaired earlier that day, a fifth metacarpal fracture, commonly called the ?boxer's fracture.?
The next evening, I ventured closer. ?My? tombstone, made of black polished granite, stood among a dozen bearing that surname. A small curved arc on top bore the epitaph, ?Loved by all who knew him,? and this irritated me. I suppose clichés are inevitable when it comes to millions of tombstones the world over, but why choose an obvious lie? Who can claim everyone who knew him loved him? Not even Mother Teresa. I know of her?yet I do not love her. Therefore it's a lie.
When I got home, Jeanne already had my slippers out and a pot of chamomile tea for us to share. I said, ?I think we should start a Society for Truth in Epitaphs.?
?Oh?? She brightened.
?To lobby against slogans like ?to know him was to love him',? I said, ?and ?asleep in the arms of Jesus'.?
She laughed. ?Sure, let's change ?remembered with love' to ?remembered with a faint sense of puzzlement'.?
***
Due to road repair, I couldn't visit Mount Pleasant cemetery again, not until late fall, when most bushes were bare. I was walking the main circuit, the one around the grand mausoleum, and, with a start, I found myself staring at the gaunt gray intruder again.
At the bottom, the year of birth was visible?and it was the same as mine.
Ah well, I told myself, that's the curse of the common name. It's the bane of the internet search. ?There are 2300+ professionals named ?David Hamilton',? says LinkedIn, and this obviously does not include the forests of family trees that include my name among the ancestors.
Over chamomile tea, I mentioned the odd occurrence to Jeanne. ?Ooh, wow,? she said. ?I'm sure there's a deliciously blood-curdling story in this.? She's an illustrator of kid's books, and loves to pass along story ideas to her talented clients.
She began humming Twilight Zone theme music. ?Of all the thousands of David Hamilton on the internet,? she said in a sepulchral voice, ?twenty of whom live in this city, what is the likelihood that one of them shares your year of birth??
I chuckled. ?Perhaps Brent has a new, creative way to remind his patients to keep working on their cardiac health?
?Hey, did you check the year of death??
?No, I didn't. I wasn't about to climb all over the??
?Oh come on, surely you checked!?
She knows me too well; I had checked. ?Sorry to disappoint,? I said. ?It's not filled in. Lots of dates on tombstones are still open. It's a, you know, placeholder tombstone.?
?Ah? spooky, someone's waiting for you?.?
She clasped her hands to her warm mug. ?Wouldn't it be odd if it had a year of death five years ago? That would mean I was married to the undead!?
?Oh, stop it, Jeanne!?
She dissolved into giggles.
***
As a young child, I asked my mother, ?Who is my father??
?Zeus,? she answered.
?When can I meet him??
?Never.?
?Is he dead??
?No.? She told me she loved Papa, would always love him, and had promised to keep ?their arrangement? a secret. ?He is a famous man,? she told me, ?but you mustn't go telling anyone else. This is just for you and me to know. Okay??
As I grew older, I learned my mother, Dorothy Broussard, was ?the other woman? in the life of a famous man, someone unable to leave his wife. Dorothy refused to give up her art and her activism.
***
Things got busy at my clinic. The pandemic brought a spate of broken hands: amateurs doing home renos, acrobat-wannabes doing too many handstands, and frustrated Type As smashing their fists into walls (the aforementioned boxer's fracture). Meanwhile, the new protocols in hospitals were elaborate and time-consuming. When we became extremely short-staffed, all hand surgeries ceased, and I was even seconded into the Covid wards for two weeks, until Brent intervened. ?Although the arrhythmia is not so pronounced,? he said, ?nonetheless, you have a risk factor.?
So, back to orthopedics, my true passion. Repairing hands is a source of great intellectual satisfaction, like getting to solve a 3-D jigsaw puzzle every day at work. As I scrutinized X-rays and snipped rows of sutures, the notion of the gaunt and gray intruder nibbled at the edge of my consciousness. A new puzzle.
A tombstone, once it is properly in use, does not belong to you, does it? This is contrary to most things?a gift, a knapsack, a university diploma?where having your name on it means it belongs to you.
As a kid, I once found a ball with my name on it. I was shy and unpopular, with all the natural ease of a wind-up toy. My school chums loved soccer so much that the shiny new ball brought me instant popularity, even more so when someone recognized Rinaldo's autograph on the leather. ?Keep playing the beautiful game,? it said.
When Mom saw the new ball, she said, ?Oh drat, you found your birthday gift ahead of time.? I could tell it was a fib. For years I harbored the suspicion that Zeus knew I loved soccer and he had covertly left the ball where I would find it.
Why did the soccer ball pop into my head just then? I was supposed to be examining a nondisplaced phalangeal fracture.
***
The ball was not the only instance. Another day, after a lovely thick snowfall, we were all sent home early from school. While digging high and low in the coat closet for my snow boots, I discovered a new violin case with my name on it. Christmas was in the air, and my school orchestra was rehearsing carols. I could hardly wait to try out my new violin. I was convinced my little solo would sound better on the new violin?if only my secretive mother would let me have the new violin. One night I slammed shut the geography text and informed her the gig was up.
?I can't believe you'd do this,? she cried. ?Weeks of lying to my face!?
?How about ?Santa',? I countered in my aggrieved twelve-year-old voice. ?You've been lying to me for years!?
?Oh, pfft, that's Santa-wink-wink. You've known about him since you were five, Davey, and I know you've known, and we've just pretended to each other.? She smirked. ?And didn't we have fun with our little white lies??
?Like you've pretended my father is Zeus??
?Exactly. We both know that's not his real name.?
?Tell me the truth?who is he??
?I can't tell you. I promised not to. Remember The Watchman's Oath?? She named a movie we'd watched together and both loved, a film about a French resistance fighter who stood firm and did not betray his comrades?even while the Nazis crushed his hands, one finger at a time.
***
Blame it on lockdown boredom, but Jeanne would not let the tombstone go. ?I don't get why you're not more curious about this,? she said over our clamshells of takeout sushi.
?Put it this way,? I said, ?Once upon a time I used to Google my name. Ego surfing, remember that? I've met a few David Hamiltons in my time, all rather boring.?
?Could one of them be the David Hamilton with the tombstone?? she said.
?Maybe.?
?Or is somebody? bwa-ha-ha-ha? vaiting for you?? She does a very good Bela Lugosi vampire accent.
?You're letting your imagination run away with you,? I said. ?Pass the wasabi, please.?
?Where there's smoke, there's fire.?
?Where there's smoke, there's one exhausted busboy on break between shifts.? I rubbed my eyes. I was the busboy.
?Where there's smoke, there's a crrrematorium?bwah-ha-ha-ha? with a pine box on a conveyor crrrreaking toward a rrroaring fire.?
?You are impossible.? I smiled.
She tossed her mane of thick dark hair in a beguiling way. ?And ze pine box has your name on it.?
I caught her by the wrists and kissed her. ?Mm? Let's start a fire this weekend.?
***
I may have acted as if the tombstone was nothing, but it did have positive effects. Brent praised my efforts and told me the arrhythmia seemed to have dissipated. ?Steady, moderate exercise; good diet?the muscle is responding well.?
Also, I took care of some things left undone. Jeanne and I updated our will. We arranged a Celebration of Life for my mother, who had died early in the pandemic. Third, we set up the Dorothy Broussard Foundation to protect endangered species, the subject of most of her artwork.
***
The voice on the phone sounded old and querulous. I replied that, yes, I was Dr. David Hamilton, orthopedic surgeon, but the caller would have to go through regular channels and have his GP. send a referral.
?I have just returned from Tenerife,? the man said in his plummy Oxbridge accent. ?I do not need your consultation, as excellent as it may be. I am merely replying to a message left by someone named? Jen??
I felt compelled to show age some respect, but cobwebs hung in my brain. ?I'm sorry,? I said, ?your name is???
?Basil David Hamilton. I am calling about the Dorothy Broussard Foundation.?
My fingers fumbled to grasp a pen.
***
He lived on the entire floor of a swank apartment building nestled in the heart of Forest Hill. A dour housekeeper admitted me and took my coat and shoes. She said, ?Sir Basil will see you in the conservatory.?
The hall was hung with striking and original art, as was the music room. It seemed any minute a small orchestra might emerge from behind the velvet burgundy curtains and seat themselves at the grand piano, standing harp, or pick up a violin. ?Please do come in,? a familiar voice said.
Across the Turkish carpet I approached him, the man Zeus, as I had thought of him for so long. He sat tall and ancient in his wingback chair, his hair artificially black and glossy. He had several fine lines across his forehead, like a music score, and deep lines around his mouth and glittering eyes. I recognized him immediately as the pre-eminent composer recently knighted for outstanding cultural contributions. Jeanne had briefed me with his complete bio, so I knew Sir Basil's legal wife had died two years ago, and his polyglot daughter, Erica, was currently overseas working in the diplomatic corps.
The silence grew.
I am no stranger to persons of great wealth, talent, or renown. We usually have a hand injury talk about, an icebreaker, if you will. I wished Jeanne had come along, to ease the conversation, but she had refused. ?This is your Luke-meets-Darth-Vader moment,? she'd said. ?Time to go mano a mano.? Her words made me uneasy, as if a confrontation was expected. A showdown. But where was the wrong? My mother had wanted to be out of the limelight. Sir Basil had consented to give me his surname?thus, acknowledging me as his own. And now, what, this stranger thought he could make up for lost time, welcome me into the fold, and ?allow? me to rest my bones in the family plot?
For that's what the tombstone was, I had concluded: it was to mark my final resting place. It was a peace offering of sorts; it was to be a ?gathering in? of the illustrious life of Sir Basil David Hamilton, a place where eventually he would be surrounded by distinguished forebears and extended family and, yes, even me, the lovechild who made good.
The silence grew and my mind raced. I looked at a nearby painting, an early Kandinsky, and tried to come up with an opener.
?Your mother, Dorothy Broussard, was a captivating woman,? Sir Basil ventured. ?I still recall the first time we met?? His thoughts seemed to drift.
This time, I let the silence grow. What were the attributes he had fixated upon? I waited to hear accolades of her beauty, her charm, her gift of sociability. Instead, the housekeeper wheeled in a clattering drinks cart and Sir Basil invited me to ?choose my poison.?
?Regarding Dorothy's foundation,? he said gravely, ?May I donate valuable articles for auction??
I said, ?Of course.? To the housekeeper, I said, ?green tea, please.?
?Green tea! My word, you are the epitome of moderation,? he said. ?Come closer, where I can see you better?. I have long wanted to meet you. I used to receive updates from your mother. Your precocious reading ? your MVP trophies in soccer? and your musical talent However, I was dismayed to hear of your bout with mononucleosis? and your arrest for public mischief.?
I reddened, remembering how Mom tore a strip off me for that.
?Oh, don't be embarrassed,? he chortled. ?Simply wayward youth. You see, I was young once too. Sometimes? a man needs to test the limits.?
Great, I thought, where was the loving forgiveness when I most needed it?
?I have a son, too, you know,? he continued. ?Although he would never have such escapades.?
I was stunned. Jeanne hadn't mentioned a son. Had I missed it in the bio she'd prepared?
?Yes, born the same year. Your half-brother.?
?I'm sorry, I'm a little confused,? I said, holding up my hand against the onslaught of sonorous pronouncements, like interrupting David Attenborough reading through a script. ?You have another son? I've never heard of him. Your daughter, yes; Erica's rumored to be the next Kissinger. But a son??
A tremor passed over Sir Basil's face, a brief change of expression somewhere between repugnance and regret. ?He's institutionalized. Has been from very early on. We tried caring for him at home, but he was born severely compromised. Furthermore, Audrey was having? issues. And then, complications arose.?
The housekeeper handed us each a thick yunomi cup of green tea.
?Independently, two mothers came up with the same name for their little boys. Who was I to disagree?? Sir Basil said. ?When a woman risks her life to bear a child, I don't have the moral authority to reject the name she chooses.?
?So, Nebuchadnezzar is okay?? I couldn't resist.
He blew on his tea. ?Ha ha, you're argumentative, too, I see.? He smiled, dare I say, somewhat fondly.
?So you kept the existence of this other David Hamilton a secret,? I said.
?Please understand. We didn't keep it that way; there was no conscious action on our part. It just never made the news, and for Audrey, after a series of miscarriages, it was better that way.? His eyes flickered to a photo on the mantel. ?She felt like an utter failure. Motherhood was her goal?she liked to say she dreamed of ?a quartet of our own'?and she wasn't happy until a healthy baby was born.?
?And your David Hamilton is still alive?? I was seized with an urge to meet him.
?Alas, no. He lives?lived, excuse me?in a group home. Hard hit by Covid. He died some months ago.?
?I am sorry for your loss,? I muttered, almost from reflex.
?I've made space for him in the family plot. The tombstone requires updating but? supply-chain issue for the drill bits of their engraving tool. Apparently.?
He looked again at Audrey's photo, and I stared into my cup, feeling the warmth radiate into my hand. Carpal bones, metacarpal bones, phalanges?
?Tell me, do you still play violin?? he asked, one black eyebrow raised. ?I thought?perhaps?,? he said awkwardly, gesturing toward a music stand.
I play regularly, to keep my surgeon's hands limber. But I hesitated from sharing that with him. Somehow, for all the years he was closed off from me, from us, I couldn't pretend this was a Hallmark reunion.
He misread the doubt on my face, and instead launched himself from the wingback chair and walked, a trifle unsteadily, to the piano, where he played the first bars of a Vivaldi piano-violin duet. One that I loved, and had labored a long time to learn.
?Thank you for the tea,? I said, rising. ?I must go.?
As I walked away, the music halted. Then I heard Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor.
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