The Traces of Destiny
Sleeping Flower

Later that night, after Raka sleeps, Garin inserts an old cassette into the VCR player and sits back down, Maudy bought the rare device at the Edison Electronic Shop in Tunjungan Surabaya when he and Maudy visited there in the early years of Raka's presence.

At that time, Garin had offered to buy an alternative device that was easier to use. But Maudy insisted on getting it, as nostalgic documentation was privately owned, he said at the time.

Garin watches Maudy and Raka play on the beachfront of Teleng Ria, Pacitan. It is four and a half hours from Surabaya. Raka was still a toddler at the time, no more than three years old, Raka looked cool with a pile of sand and a small shovel in her hand. Maudy made simple lines flattened with her hands. Maudy is almost twenty-six years old - in a blue dress widened, she looks more like a student than an actual mother.

In the film, she hints to Garin to put down the video camera and join the play, but on that morning, she remembers he is more interested in just observing the two. She likes to see them both, she likes her feelings, knowing that Maudy loves Raka in a way she has never felt.

Her parents were not very affectionate. They are not bad people, they are just uncomfortable in expressing emotions, even to their own children and with their deceased mother and traveling father, he felt almost as if he had never known them at all.

Garin sometimes wonders if she would have been like that if Maudy had never gotten into his life.

Maudy started digging a hole with a small plastic shovel a few feet from the edge of the water, then started using her hands to speed it up. On her knees, she was the same height as her son, and as Raka noticed what Maudy was doing, she stood by his side, gesturing and showing, like an architect in the early stages of construction. Maudy smiled and spoke to him - his voice was not caught by the recording device, muffled by the endless roar of the waves over and Garin could not understand what they were saying to each other.

The sand came out in clumps, stacked around him as he dug deeper, and after a while he gestured for Raka to get into the hole. With her knees pulled to her chest, Raka makes herself fit inside Maudy's artificial hole, very mediocre, and Maudy begins to fill in the sand, pushing and flattening it around Raka's small body.

Within minutes Raka's small body had been covered up to her neck, a sand turtle with the head of a small boy sticking out at the top.

Maudy added more sand here and there, covering her arms and her fingers. Raka moved her finger, causing some of the sand to fall, and Maudyv tried to cover it again. As she put the last lump in place, Raka did the same, and Maudy laughed. Raka put a lump of wet sand on her head and she stopped moving. Maudy approaches and kisses her, and Garin sees her lips forming the words: "I love you, Mama."

"I love you too, "he said with his lips. Knowing that Raka would sit still for a few minutes, Maudy turned her attention to Garin.

He had said something to her, and she smiled - once again, her words were gone.

In the background, above his shoulders, there were only a few others in sight. It's the new May, two months before the crowd comes up with enthusiasm in the holiday season.

Maudy looked over here and stood up. She placed one hand on her hip, the other behind her head, looking at her with half-open eyes, sensual and voluptuous. Then he let go of that pose, laughed again as if embarrassed, and drew closer to her. He smelled the camera lens.

The tape ends there.

These tape tapes were valuable to Garin. He kept it inside the fireproof box he had bought after the funeral, he had already watched it a dozen times.

In it, Maudy is alive again, she can see him moving, she can hear his voice. He could hear her laughter again.

Raka didn't watch those ribbons and never did. Garin doubted his son knew about the existence of his precious collection, as he was very young when most of those memories were made.

Garin stopped recording the moment after Maudy died, for the same reason Garin stopped doing so much after Maudy's death.

The effort is too heavy. He did not want to remember anything from the period of his life that was immediately welcomed after Maudy's death.

He wasn't sure why he felt like watching those ribbons tonight. Maybe because of Raka's previous comments, maybe because tomorrow will bring something new in her life for the first time in a time that feels like forever.

Regardless of what happens with him and Saras in the future, things change.

He's changing.

But why does it seem so scary?

His answer seemed to come to her through the flashing television screen.

Perhaps, it seemed so, it was because he never knew what had really happened to Maudy.

Only the power of memories can bring him back to life.

And the dimness of the night, washed Garin too far away, that Saras was not there for the night. Fatigue spread to his eyes, Maudy re-entered their dream togetherness.

"Good night, sweetie."

As usual, his kisses felt so real to Garin.

"I love you."

His smile still remained so warm, so calm, that Garin put to sleep in an endless long dream.

And night knows, not only Garin but also Raka. Little man, sleeping innocently in his mother's arms. Cowering like a wolf child.

"Great dream, hotshot."

"My mother's hug I like the most."

"Sure, sleep well, my son"

"Who will get up early?"

"I'm.."

"It must be me."

"Who?"

"Me!"

"Of course I."

"We'll see it tomorrow morning, and who's gonna tell you first about tonight."

A caress for the little man and another caress for the big man.

"Good night...."

The night wind whizzed and disappeared with him. Garin's panic suddenly followed the sound of screaming from Raka's room.

"Mama!"

"Dad.... Ayaaah....!" raka's screams are back.

Garin quickly got up and ran as lightly as possible towards his son's room.

The nocah's eyes are still closed. "Shh... Shhh... Dad's here... Calm down..," Garin voiced out among his efforts to calm down the restless Raka.