Bongos

Bongos


The story takes place on a hot day in July. The main character is a young man named Paul.
Paul is headed to the attic, when his mom suddenly tells him to stop. In her hand she has a small opaque vial half-filled with brownish water which she uses to bless him. Paul felt very awkward each time she did it. By his reaction it was not like it was the first time this has occurred.

Paul was young and had long hair and a full beard. His mom ran her fingers across his hair, and commented his “mountain man” looks, which had recalled memories of Paul’s father, who had Alzheimer’s.
Paul was in the attic trying to clean up some of the clutter. His mom had refused to trash anything, so Paul wasn’t so enthusiastic to continue with the cleaning. Instead he looked through some things and found various photograph of his family, pictures of times when they’ve had fun, graduation, new cars, and mandatory school. While looking at the pictures Paul felt as if it was a collection of stranger, because when he was at the age of ten, his brothers and sister were all married, and had families of their own.

The attic is full of old memories “Without standing, he moved a pile of old 70’s magazines; underneath them was a half-crushed cardboard shoebox which softly rattled when he lifted it. Inside were loose photographs, all shuffled together” (p.2.l. 53-55) which are hidden away. This could be a sign that the mother is trying to suppress the past, and is having a hard time accepting the new changes, and is hiding the picture up there. But the mother is not the only one who is being skeptic, you see, because now it’s Paul who is left with the frustrations that his mother is having, and has to deal with all these problems all alone, because his siblings aren’t there anymore, so maybe that’s why he feel that they have become strangers. Paul also finds an older photograph of his mother and father, when they where younger, in the picture they’re laughing and are surrounded by people who are close to them. In the picture you see Paul’s father playing the bongos. Paul takes the picture with him and goes down to his mother to ask her about it. His mom doesn’t comment it, she only cries. Paul then wants to tell her that everything will be all right but it refused to come out. “He wanted to whisper that everything would be okay, but some sharp sense of honesty refused to let the words form.” (p.3 l. 90-91)

He can’t say that everything will be all right because he knows that it won’t. After all the things his mom has been trough with their father’s illness, and the past few decades of deterioration, has made her frustrated and miserable.
Her religion is the thing that helps her get through the day. The blessing could be a way for her to come out with her frustration. Paul doesn’t see thing getting better for them, he just hands her a tissue and says nothing.











Translation

Everyone knows that “The lord of the rings” is written by the British narrator J.R.R. Tolkien. But only a few are aware that Tolkien in reality was an intellectual professor in ancient English at the University of Oxford. It is told that Tolkien was correcting papers when he suddenly came up with the idea to the story about Middle Earth. Some say that “The lord of the rings” isn’t serious literature, but there can be no doubt that it’s succeeded Tolkien to create an extremely fascinating universe.