My dad loved aliens, until they showed up.
His friends would say they were “not religious, but spiritual”. Dad wouldn’t even go that far. His love of aliens was based on the firm belief that they were physical, corporeal beings, “just like you and me”, he repeated, “but probably better.” After Mom died, he got a lot out of the idea of there being someone else out there, even if he didn’t think there was any beyond.
“At least not that we can know,” he would tell me, for the 400th time, or maybe it was just that I was 16 and parenting seemed repetitive — even with only one parent left to repeat things. I got more patient with the repetition after college, when I had my own place — it was just Dad, like the bizarre way he folded the towels and his insistence on putting shredded cheddar in tuna salad. I knew I was home when I heard either the Eagles’ ‘New York Minute’ or Dad’s latest theory about what aliens might know that we don’t — what they might have seen, how they might have seen it.
It helped that he was happiest when he was discussing stuff like that. He relaxed, almost like he used to be when Mom was alive. As close as I could get now, anyway.
So when the Githrum landed, I expected my dad to be the most excited person on the planet. I expected that he wouldn’t be able to stop talking about new developments — that he would get as close as he could to the landing site, maybe even sweet-talk his way into a volunteer team to interact with them directly.
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But from my first call to discuss the news, I could tell something was off. He sounded subdued, flat. All the words right — “Yeah, kiddo! Amazing! You know I’ve been waiting for this moment!” — but he sounded like he was reading them off a card. I told myself he was having a bad day for unrelated reasons — hadn’t slept well, maybe? He’d shake it off and be right there with the wide-eyed enthusiasts.
It never happened. Every conversation I started about the Githrum provoked the same limp indifference, the same sighs and staring off into space. I finally saw what was bothering him. The possibility of aliens was numinous — magical, even. But the reality of aliens was logistics. A person who had to raise a teenager solo had already had more logistics than he really wanted. For some of the world — for me, even — the prospect of figuring out what foods an alien could eat and how they could travel safely and comfortably now that they were on Earth was an exciting puzzle. For my dad …
For my dad it was as though the stars in the sky had become lamps, plugged into our grid and turned off and on more or less at will. Or maybe it was like getting to meet a movie star and discovering that she had an annoying habit of clearing her throat every few seconds — barely noticeable in a loved one but unbearable in the epitome of grace and charm.
This became a problem when I made friends with a Githrum named Selly. I was worried about how down my dad seemed, but I was also absolutely determined that he should not brush off getting to know a good friend of mine. And when I proposed bringing Selly over, he rallied enough to behave like he had with my friends when I was a kid, asking what snacks he should buy and whether there was anything else that would make them comfortable. He learnt the looping hand movement the Githrum used for a handshake instead of up-and-down.
Selly settled in at the breakfast nook, its high stools the best place in Dad’s house for accommodating their myriad legs. Conversation was no less awkward than friends meeting parents ever was, but also no more so. Until Dad asked Selly whether Earth had been their chosen destination.
Selly hesitated. Their English was excellent, but just like anyone else, they sometimes had to figure out how to handle a question politely. “It’s very nice here,” they started.
Dad raised an eyebrow, nodding encouragingly.
“But I hope to travel on. The Universe is so large, this is just one planet! Who knows what else might be out there — who else might be out there? I’m very glad to have met your daughter, of course, and Earth is lovely — have you eaten buckwheat honey? We have nothing like this at home. Absolute highlight of Earth. But I hope that I am permitted to see more.”
Dad looked thoughtful. After Selly left, he suggested that we go to our backyard stargazing spot for the first time since the Githrum arrived. We lay in our stretched out lawn chairs in companionable silence for a long moment.
“Nice kid, that Selly,” said Dad.
“Mm,” I said, not volunteering that Selly was 117 years old.
