Reflection 1
“Papa why you’re hands so cracked?” I would ask when I was younger.
He’d smile his white-clouded shade of color teeth at me, tickle my belly and then watch me laugh.
“Because I love you”, he’d say in return.
But as he said that something in me thought that wasn’t a good enough answer. So I’d ask again.
“Papa why you’re hands so cracked?” somehow asking it differently to satisfy my hope of getting a different answer.
But still he replied the same.
“Because I love you”, he’d say softly, almost sounding like the hushed fall wind against the leaves.
Even asking him what seem like hundreds of times, papa always answered the same. Somehow every time I asked, there was a burning desire in my heart to ask of his cracked hands so he would love me more. It was moments like this between me and my papa that lasted the longest.
Most frequently now-a-days I remember those times, those moments, the ones from the past, and Papa truly loved me. And as I think I believe he still does, even when I be planted roses on top of his grass, and the sun shines and guards his little spot of rock.
“Faith” he said one day. “Just because I ain’t going to be here forever, don’t mean I don’t love you, I always be watching you.” He’d then smile and point as his cracked hands in true love.
Papa never wasted time to make to tell me he loved me. He always made that clear to all his children’s, but for me and him it was different. For me and him he wanted it to last. He wanted it to last so much that even when I was sad he would make more than effort to make sure it was said. To him everything mattered. Memories were life, and they were essential things that needed to be remembered. He was the type of person that liked things like that. Things that he thought should be handed down. He is the man that made things like cracked hands into something better. No because he had to but because he wanted to. Papa was my every thing no other person did I connect with more than him alone. It was him who I strove to please. My papa.

End of Reflection 1