What is love?
XAVIER:
Love, you see…
What is love?
Is it the warm, fuzzy feeling in your chest when your mother hugs you?
Or the sound of laughter with family — about nothing and everything?
In my world, I never had the chance to find out.
Not until I met Mr. Elijah Parker.
He was kind. Stern, but wise. Rough, but loving.
Everything I ever imagined a father could be.
This is my story.
The story of how I met my dad —
not by blood, but by love.
---
January 9th. My birthday.
We rushed to the hospital after the most devastating call of my life.
Mother was losing her battle — heart cancer we hadn’t caught in time.
I sat outside that waiting room with Jonathan Ivanov, my father.
He waited, trembling, watching doctors move in and out, praying someone could do something.
I was only eight. I couldn’t yet understand the weight of it.
But I saw the fear in my father’s emerald eyes, glistening with tears.
And I knew: this was serious.
Hours later, the doctor emerged — his face a quiet apology.
And then the words. Cold. Final.
She was gone.
Father cried.
Tears of terror. Desperation.
He couldn’t believe it.
The woman he loved more than life itself had simply… ceased to live.
I reached for him. Small hands. Wanting to help.
He pushed me away. Looked at me as if seeing Her . Then something changed .
Aggressive. Violent. His eyes burning with something I’d never seen before.
Hatred.
As if it were my fault.
---
I’ve always looked just like her.
Same white hair. Same yellow eyes. Same freckled face.
That wild glint she carried. A smile that could melt the coldest heart.
Albinism runs strong in her blood — has for generations.
Our skin, white as snow.
Father never minded before. He loved me for it.
But in that moment, I was vermin.
Trash on the side of a godforsaken road.
That day, I understood:
All the love my father had for me…
died with my mother.
---
Years passed.
Everything changed.
I was homeschooled.
I did all the domestic work — cooking, cleaning, maintaining a perfect A+ average —
while learning guitar, piano, violin, and the suffocating chore of etiquette.
My meals depended on my perfection.
Even when I cooked them myself, I wasn’t permitted to eat until I’d played flawlessly, worked correctly, met his impossible standards.
Sometimes that took days.
And then there were the beatings.
When father was angry — which was often — anything could trigger it.
The wrong fabric on his bed sheets. A misplaced book. The sound of my breath.
---
But I had one thing left.
A gift from mother.
A handwritten encyclopedia.
Everything she couldn’t teach me in person, she wrote down:
Cooking. Painting. Life. Sewing. Mathematics. English.
Even carpentry.
And what she didn’t write, she gave me.
Her recipe books. Her tools. Her albums. Her manuals.
Mom loved me — not the way father used to, but the way he couldn’t now.
With her whole heart. Her soul.
Even in death, she made sure I could live.
She left my inheritance with my uncle:
A house. An estate. A car.
And a gift for every year until I turned thirty —
each one picked, hand-wrapped, and tagged by her own hands.
A little card tucked inside every one.
Oh, how she loved me. Little did I know I'd feel that love again...... soon..... Very soon.
I’m looking at it now , that old encyclopedia. The spine is cracked, pages warped from teenage tears and kitchen flour. But I still reach for her handwriting before I reach for a recipe.
I don’t write about the beatings to make you pity me. I write about them so you understand what it cost him to be gentle with me, how grief changed my father to the extent that I had to run away. This is my story , I'm Xavier Parker now not Xavier Ivanov anymore, this isn't a fantasy this is my life and as I sit in my new room today on my 16th birthday , 8 years since mom died , I tell you my story, the story of how I met Mr Elijah Parker , my dad not by blood but by love......
