I thought that such stories were only shown in women’s series. It was nerve-wracking, of course, to become the main character in such a story. When I was seven years old, my father left the family. My mother raised me and my two sisters, who were two years old. At first she said that my father had gone away for work, but then she admitted that he would never return. It’s hard to remember what was going on in my childhood mind. I was very angry with my father, always replaying in my head the words I would like to say to him if he suddenly came home, but he never did. And my mom never got married. Many years have passed, I am already thirty and have children of my own.
I stayed in the village and rented some land. I grow corn and sunflowers in my garden, and have a small walnut orchard. One day a man calls me and introduces himself as an entrepreneur. He says he wants to talk about buying corn; I agree. On the appointed day, a bald old man drives up in an old car. With a smile on his face, he comes to me and hands me a package. I open it, and there are coffee, cookies, and candy. I was shocked: who is this entrepreneur? When he introduced himself, I realized that he was my father. I didn’t even know what to say to him, even though I had always imagined this moment as a child.
It was the shortest conversation of my life. He was not going to buy corn, so I said goodbye to him. He turned around and walked away, and I caught up with him to give him the bag of shit he had brought back after twenty-three years of his absence. Did he really expect me to throw myself into his arms and cry? I called my sisters and warned them about what had happened. As it turned out, it was not in vain: their father also wanted to visit them under strange pretexts. They were very young when he left and, of course, did not want to see him. I wonder what a person thinks when he leaves his family and then returns with a can of coffee and candy?
