Lara, I learned of your
death yesterday. I was stunned, then
sad, then sick. I felt ashamed – I
hadn’t seen you for over ten years – what right did I have to grieve?
Lara, I remember sitting
with you on the floor of your bedroom. Bright
colors, your shoulder-length brown hair framing an unusual harlequin face. That face, your mother told me, arrested people
in the street. They had seen cute
children, lovely children, adorable, pretty, precious children. But Lara, you were beautiful, in the way
children aren’t supposed to be beautiful.
Lara, your unsettling
beauty did not make you any less of a child, a normal child. You liked dinosaurs. At your mother’s instruction, I spoke English
while you played. You did not understand
a word I said, but you understood everything.
I felt silly and ridiculous, but you – you growled and handed me a
little plastic dinosaur and showed me that you didn’t care. I thanked you silently for accepting me.
Lara, the worst thing
about all of this is the inscription in your father’s book. I caught but a brief glimpse of your father,
a philosopher, an academician, a serious man in serious clothes. He waited sixty-three years for your
arrival. You were born on the day he
published his treatise, and he dedicated it to you, expressing his hope that
you and the book, born simultaneously, would meet by chance someday.
Lara, I am furious at the
thought that this day will never come, because time stopped when you were seven
years old.
