Sun spread wide across the fields. Golden, endless, alive.
The house on the hill looked smaller in summer because outside stretched a world so vast that my legs alone couldn't cover it—but oh, how I tried. Barefoot and daring, I ran.
I remember the grass brushing against my ankles, the smell of dirt rising with every hurried step. There was laughter too—not just mine, but the laughter of others.
The other village children.
I can still recall their faces, even though time has blurred them. Some names I've forgotten; others I whisper to myself like secrets.
"Catch me if you can!" one would shout.
And off we went, chasing each other until our lungs gave out, hearts pounding, eyes burning from the sun and dust.
In those hours, I wasn't the boy stuck between silence and argument. I wasn't just "the son" sitting quietly at dinner. No, I was free. A runner. A dreamer. Someone whose legs could carry him faster than the weight of worries at home.
There was a river too. People washed clothes there, but for us, it was a kingdom.
We skipped stones. The older boys dared each other to swim across, even though the current was stronger than we wanted to admit. I stayed close to the banks, collecting smooth pebbles and marveling at the colors hidden under the running water.
It was simple, unremarkable. Yet, those memories shine brighter than most of adulthood ever did.
Funny, isn't it? How the smallest moments stick with us more than the years spent chasing wealth or recognition.
Of course, even in that warmth, shadows followed.
I remember coming home after a long day in the fields. My shirt was torn, my knees scraped from a fall. I entered the house with a grin, expecting my mother's sigh and my father's scolding—that strange mix of care and reprimand every child knows.
Instead, I found silence.
My parents weren't talking. My mother's arms were crossed, her jaw tight, her face turned away. My father's eyes were fixed on the floorboards.
"…Eat your dinner," was all she said.
No one noticed my wounds.
That night, I sat cross-legged, poking at the stew. The scratches stung, but what hurt more was the absence—the simple truth that joy outside didn't always survive inside those walls.
And so I learned: freedom could be borrowed, never owned.
Still, I held on to those blazing afternoons of summer. Even now, in this frail body nearing its end, if I close my eyes hard enough, I can feel the earth beneath my feet, the taste of sun on my tongue, the laughter echoing across the valley.
For a boy caught between distance and duty, summer was salvation.
It was the seed of something greater, though I didn't yet know it.
The first realization that the world held more than the boundaries of my home.
The first time I thought—perhaps, just perhaps—I was meant to reach for something beyond the hill.