IT was a bleak day in June when it always rained incessantly, for it was the May-June season.
Priya stepped carefully out of the minibus, flicking her umbrella open to shelter from the heavy drizzle. It had rained all night, heavily, but at the break of dawn, it had eased to a drizzle.
“Thank God for the lull in the weather,” she had said quietly.
Today was a day she had been planning for a long time, and she wanted nothing to ruin it. She walked to the boat’s landing, following the directions her eldest brother had given her. It was her first time here in this rural area of Mahaicony since her departure 12 years ago when she was just six years old. As she neared, she saw the boats moored alongside the landing of the black, expansive creek, and she smiled, a warm rush of excitement flowing within her.
At six, she had been a skinny little girl, not remembering much; just that day holding onto her mother’s skirt as they left their home in the farming area. Her father had stood watching them go, a grim look on his face, his clothes soiled with mud from the ricefields. She had kept turning back to look, wishing in her little heart, “Please stop us from leaving, Papa.”
But he just stood there as the boat sped further away to the mainland, and she could see him no more. As a child then, she didn’t understand the arguments; her father’s anger, and her mother’s tears that had plagued their lives, and it had grieved her as their home in the creek and her father were left behind.
She had grabbed her mother’s skirt when they reached the mainland and cried, “I don’t want to leave.”
But her eldest brother had hauled her out of the boat and told her firmly, “Mother can’t stay any longer with him.”
“Why?” She continued to cry, “He’s my Papa.”

Her mother, with a sad but determined look, had said nothing to the child as they boarded a bus for the city.
“Yuh going up de creek?” a boat driver asked in Creolese, bringing Priya back to the present.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Ahright, step on; two mo passenger and we gone.”
She smiled with thanks, and sat on an old, weather-worn bench to wait, questions filling her head.
“What am I going to find? Are there family still there? Is Papa alive? Would he be happy to see me?”
It had been a long time since they had left their home for a new life in the city; a new home, and two years later, a new dad. Her father never came looking for them, and she couldn’t understand why, because she had hoped that he would have come to take them back home. As the years went by, memories of her country life and her father became dim, fading with time, although she tried to hold on.
The step-dad treated them well, and seemed to have given her mother the happiness and comfort she wanted; no more arguments and fights.
But on Father’s Day every year, her heart would call to the one who was a part of her. No answer she ever heard; just a pained silence.
“One day,” she had promised herself, “I will go back home, and I will be the bridge for this broken family.”
Today was that day; today was Father’s Day.
The boat driver called for everyone to put on their life jackets and sit for the trip to begin, Priya’s anxiety rising as she neared her old home. The landing at Gordon Table was her stop.
A skinny, sad little girl had stepped off that landing 12 years ago, and today she stepped back on; a slim and beautiful young woman with determination in her eyes.
She walked slowly, but with steady steps towards the house, standing there in the short distance. A beautiful sight that filled her heart with a sense of belonging. She opened the wooden gate, and walked up the brick path bordered on both sides by a blooming flower garden.
“This is so beautiful,” she whispered.
She was halfway up the path when the door opened, and an old woman stepped out.
She looked at Priya, curiously, then her eyes lit up, and she gave a little cry of joy.
“You have returned, my child!”
Priya was not sure who she was, and asked, a little surprised, “You remember me!”
“It’s not hard to recognise family,” the old lady said with a warm smile.
“You have your father’s light-brown eyes, his nose, and that little cleft under his eye.”
She held out her arms to embrace the child she had known; now grown into a young woman.
Priya hugged her; her father’s sister, a nice old lady with a refreshing scent of lavender.
“I’m so happy one of the children has returned,” she said, wiping away the tears. “Your father has been waiting with hopes every day since that day your mother left and took all of you away.”
Priya followed her to the back of the house, and there, sitting all alone in a small gazebo surrounded by a variety of fruit trees and creole poultry, was an old, grey-haired man. Time seemed to stand still for that moment, as she looked at the man she hadn’t seen since she was six.
Her thumping heartbeats she seemed to hear as she called out to him, “Papa!”
The old man turned and for a long moment, he looked at her, then a light danced in his eyes.
“Priya, my child, my child…” His voice broke, and he rose too hurriedly, almost falling back down.
She ran to him, and helped him up, tears flowing down her cheeks.
“I have returned, Papa.”
“I have waited so long for this day,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “God has finally forgiven my wrongs, and answered my prayers.”
Priya’s heart exulted. She was home again, reunited with her father; her promise fulfilled. But there was one thing she still needed to know.
“Why didn’t you come looking for us?”
The old man sighed deeply. “I did; several times, wanting to ask your mother for forgiveness, for whatever wrongs I had done, but I never found my family again.”
Priya held his hands, touched by the deep regrets in his eyes, and she said, “I am here now, Papa. And one day, hopefully, you’ll see all of your children again.”
The old man smiled, and took a deep breath, inhaling a refreshing new hope as his little girl embraced him. “Happy Father’s Day, Papa.”