My Mother and The Peafowl

A son the stories his mother has been telling him since he was a child.

The sunlight burns through my eyelids as I try to stare directly into the blazing bright yellow ball of gas. I want to see what the sun looks like with my own two eyes. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try, my eyes never seem to cooperate.

A little blue bird creature appears from the trees in the woods and sits next to me.

“What are you doing?” the bird creature asks me.

“I’m trying to look at the sun,” I reply.

“Why?”

“I want to get a good look at it, try to see it for what it really is.”

The bird creature seems to be confused by my answer. An uncomfortable silence follows.

“What are you?” I ask the bird creature to break the silence.

“I’m a peacock,” the bird creature replies.

“Really now?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t look like a peacock.”

“What do you mean?”

“Aren’t peacocks supposed to be greener and bigger and have tail feathers that spread out like a fan and stuff?”

“You’re referring to the Indian peafowl or the green peafowl. There is a wide variety of species in the Phasianidae family you know?”

“Fasya what now?”

“Phasianidae. It’s the family of birds I belong to.”

I gaze at the little blue peacock. It has a pointy crest on its head, its wings have electric blue-violet feathers, its face and chest are covered with pure black feathers with some spots of white, its tail is marked with a kaleidoscopic pattern of blue and white -- looking like an optical illusion that reflects mystifyingly against the light. Its emotionless black eyes continue to stare at me.

“And besides, I can make my tail expand too,” the little blue peacock says as it spreads its tail laterally.

I gaze at the little blue peacock’s tail. Every feather plume has the exact same psychedelic pattern: repeating dots and lines of white with a circle of iridescent blue in the middle.

“Actually, you do look a lot like a peacock now.”

The little blue peacock contracts its tail.

“Not everything is what it seems,” the peacock says as it turns its gaze to the sky where the sun is.

I try to look at the sun again, but my eyes still disagree.

“Why are you even here?” the peacock asks me.

“Going here reminds me of my mother. This is the closest I can get to her,” I answer.

Another stream of silence flows between us. However, I don’t feel a hint of awkwardness, it was more of a silence of mutual cognizance �" a necessary silence to communicate empathy.

“Many people come here to remember things,” the peacock says. “The people who come here are the people who can’t let go.”

Let go. Just let it go. If only it were that easy.

A mild gush of wind brushes past us. One of the peacock’s feathers is blown away and conveniently lands on my lips. I instinctively try to spit it out and blow it away.

“I don’t want to let go,” I say. “If I let go, she’ll be gone forever.”

The peacock chuckles.

“That’s not what I meant by letting go. Forgetting and accepting are two very different things,” the peacock replies.

What the peacock said makes sense. I agree with the peacock, but I still cannot fathom how I can possibly let go. Emotions can sometimes be the perfect counterattack to logic.

“Why does this place remind you of your mother?” the peacock asks.

“She told me stories, stories of when she was a child she would always go here. Whenever she felt alone in the world, she would come here and sit on the grass just staring at the sky. I never understood her stories when I was younger, so I want to make sense of it all.”

The atmosphere becomes dark and bleak as clouds cover the sun. In the dimness the peacock looks more like a raven.

“I know your mother. She used to come here a lot,” the peacock says.

I sit paralyzed in shock while the peacock maintains a calm demeanor.

“The first time she came here, she had bruises all over her. She practically looked like a Dalmatian with all the dark spots on her body, never mind the huge black eye on her face. She was still just a child,” the peacock says.

“She told me that there were bad men that used to hurt her. She tried to escape before ending up here,” I say while remembering my mother’s stories.

“Those bad men were her grandparents. Her parents died a few years after she was born, so her grandparents were the ones raising her. For two years she tried to endure the abuse because she thought she had nowhere to go. Until that one night they beat her up so bad that she barely survived. She left the next morning.”  

I did not know about this detail of the story.

“And then she met a friend that would forever change her life,” the peacock says to continue the story.

“So, you’re the unexpected hero in her stories,” I say with a hint of wonder. “You’re the one who convinced her to keep running and told her where to go.”

“I showed her the path to the city. She went and found a family. A family that loved her.”

“I never knew that the hero was a peacock.”

“What difference does it make?”

It makes a huge difference to be honest.

“She kept coming back here as often as she could. She came here every time she wanted someone to talk to. We shared stories from sunrise to sunset,” the peacock continues. “This went on for years until that last day she came here, she was pregnant with you.”

I never knew about this detail either.

“She was saying goodbye. She said she was going to focus on raising you from then on -- she was ready to let go of the past. But she also assured me that I would forever remain a wonderful memory for her.”

Hearing this makes me remember my mother telling me these bedtime stories to put me to sleep when I was child. I always found them enchanting, but I never really knew what they truly meant until now.

“Now tell me, what did you really come here for?” the peacock asks me.

“To be honest with you, I came here with the hope of meeting the hero in my mother’s stories.”

The peacock chuckles again.

“Stop calling me that, I didn’t do anything. She was the one who made her own decisions.”

                “I was hoping that you would be able to tell me more about my mother. The things that I don’t know.”

                “So, you really came here to know more about your mother. Why is it so important for you to know about her past?”

“We were close, but I don’t know much about her. She never talked about herself. She never opened up. Everything I know about her are based on the stories she’s told me. I want to know more about her. I want to understand her.”

“And you think knowing more about her past will help you understand her better?”

I remain silent as I can’t really give an answer.

“Trust me kid, you know her better than anyone else other than herself. Even more so than me,” the peacock says in a very tender and sincere tone.

“What makes you say that?”

                “Just by looking at you. You remind me of her in so many ways. The pristine black hair, the inquisitive look in your eyes, and the transparent innocence, oblivious to the realities of the world around you,” the peacock says. “Clueless wanderers longing for something that can never be reached.”

                The atmosphere suddenly becomes warm and vivid as the clouds move away to uncover the sun.

                Yeah, I really get it now.

                The sunlight shines its brilliant warmth through the trees and all over me. I feel the embrace of the heat -- its affectionate touch against my skin is a nostalgic lullaby that cradles me to sleep. One more time I try to look at the sun. Unblinking, my two eyes are focusing on the blazing bright ball in the sky �" I can see it now. Despite the blinding glow of the sun, I can still continue to gaze at it, digest every detail that I have never seen before until now. It’s like the sun is now a whole other being, an ethereal existence that was always there but I never really noticed. The sun is scintillating flashes of rainbow-like colors: red, yellow, orange, blue, indigo, violet, and multiple other colors I have never seen before. It is becoming brighter and brighter, its presence becoming dreamlike, its aura becoming impenetrable. This sight is an immaculate beauty, a revelation powerful enough to turn the world upside down. Tears begin to flow from my eyes. Mother, thank you.

                “Can you see the sun?” the peacock asks.

                “Yes, clearer than anything,” I say with a smile on my face.