"I Will See the World," I Told My Father at Four
At four years old, I demanded a tool with which to understand where Nick was going to all the time. The images he had drawn were flat, and I had no idea what to do with it.
It began with a simple question: where are we? What is this place? But what is it? "Los Angeles," but what is it? My ability to communicate complex thoughts might have been limited, but where man? A city. We got to world, finally. There’s a world Maria. What IS IT????? Nick only spoke in gibberish!
“A planet…”
“What is dis?!”
“We’re turning.” With two fingers he demonstrated the “axis” of the Earth and its rotation around the sun. I couldn’t believe it. I threw my hands at the man.
“Well, Maria, it’s space! Gravity! Centripetal and centrifugal forces! I’ll show you!”
The graph paper came out. He drew some lines, curves, arrows.
“There’s a core” – he drew it – “at the center of the Earth that’s very hot!”
He snuffed.
“Very hot.”
“Maria, how else am I supposed to explain it to you? You’re the one who asked!” He sniffed. “Now, do you want me to continue with my diagram?”
The man drew balls. What was this? “The solar system.”
“What’s that?”
Soon, our conversation veered into Galileo, for how did we know such things? Telescopes, “an instrument” that brings objects closer. “It’s an illusion,” he chuckled. I snapped. He requested that I look at my reflection in the GLASS. “Are you IN the glass, Maria?”
But when he informed me that Galileo was killed for telling people that the Earth revolved around the sun – I lost it. You cannot kill Galileo. “Galileo!” I cried. Enough of this, I stomped around. I needed to SEE this world floating around in a thing called space, that kills Galileo because he was right? I never heard of anything so absurd.
“People get killed for a lot less than that, Maria,” he admitted. I was furious. What WAS this world? Why would I want to be here? If such phrases were true? Killing Galileo, people getting killed for less than balls in space? This was wrong, all wrong. WHY am I HERE? I wanted answers.
He brought home a globe for kids one evening after one of his so-called “trips” into this "world." We needed to address this at once! It could not wait. He had barely put down his suitcase, how he had to dispose of it was not my concern. This world, however, was.
Our faces in an aqua glow, my hair up in a “Hale Navy” bow, I pointed “HERE?” I wanted to know where in the world he had been, and everything he knew about it – now. “HERE?” This so-called “world traveler.” “HERE?” It was becoming clear to me peering through little holes through which I could spot a picture of a city, that he was no world traveler. Which made him a liar. He only went to the same places – EUROPE with some exceptions. “HERE?” I touched Japan. He hadn’t been anywhere. Yes, he defended himself. HERE? I kept going. WHY? WHY had he been nowhere? Because he had no INTEREST in going there. WHY? WHY? I insisted he provide me with a suitable explanation…
“You can’t do everything in one life, Maria!” How dare this man. “You cannot see the whole world in one life!”
I objected. “I will see the world!”
"Impossible," he pleaded with me. “Can’t do it, Maria!”
What did he know? UH HUH. NAH HUH. UH HUH.
“Maria, do you know how large the world is?! Come to your senses!”
I ran to the other side of the living room, determined. “I will see the world.”
“Maria, you can’t.”
I tried to reason with this man, but he did not stop! This man! I had to get him out of my head at once for he was trying to convince me! I shut my eyes tight as well as my fists. I had to drown him out. I pictured the globe spinning in my mind’s eye – and I imagined my footprints covering its surface with all my might, fists tight, until the world wide world disappeared…bright white. I vowed to prove him wrong, the first time. I felt better.
Maria Mocerino is a writer who lives between Istanbul and Naples. Her work has been published in The Irish Examiner, The Rogue Mag, and Business Insider. She is finishing her first book, Christmas in Naples Is a Sport.