Hatman! My Time Travelling Adventures (Part 8) Great great grandpa tells me a bit of family history...

Standing there by the broken gate
opening to a small untidy yard
with a narrow path of mud
leading to the back of a crumbling brick terraced tenemant
on a damp and foggy Autumn evening
in East London
in 1917
I stared into the old man's face.

His features were undoubtedly familiar. He had a very distictive 'Nadler' look, shared by my mother and her siblings and certain of my cousins. Tall and thin. The high forehead and a certain angle and slope of the nose. A quirky sort of deadpan humour behind the eyes. Well maybe that's not genetic, but it runs in the family.

Now I finally spoke for the first time since I'd arrived and he'd led me from the market to here. 'So what you're telling me, is that you're my great great grandad?' He nodded slowly, seriously, looking me straight in the eye, fixing me with a very intense stare, full of meaning. He raised his thick eyebrows just a fraction, as if to say, '..go on'. But my mind was finding it hard to comprehend the words I was trying to say. It was folding in on itself as it tried to grasp the impossible paradox. But eventually I managed to utter the words, no doubt in a strange kind of voice, unbelieving that I could be having such a conversation in real life.. 'And, also.. that.. you're... my... my.. ... .. ...son...?!'

His eyes were welling up with tears. His wizened old face crumbled up as he was overcome with emotion. He reached out his arms and gave me a great big hug. I didn't really know what to do. It was a very strange moment. Quite unexpected. After all, only fifteen minutes earlier - though the memory was already dreamlike - I had been in the attic of my parents' house in London in the year 2017.

Perhaps sensing my confusion and discomfort at finding myself in this strange situation, he pulled himself away and composed himself. 'Sorry, sorry', he said, mopping his eyes with a cloth handkerchief, initialed, I noticed, with the delicately embroidered letters in gold thread MN. 'It's just.. I've always dreamed of this moment and I've waited so long to actually meet you. Now that you're actually here...'

'But you said you are my son? How is it you've never met me?' I asked, puzzled.

'You disappeared before I was born.'

'What do you mean?'

'Just that. You disappeared. Just vanished. She said you had this big fight, then you stormed off and never came back. She was going to tell you that night that she was expecting, but then she never got the chance because you totally vanished. Poor old mum. She was always waiting for you to come back, but you never did. And now you're here. Incredible!'

'Oh my God.' I gasped. 'Who's your mum?'

'Kim.'

I sunk down to the ground, my back against the fencepost, my head in my hands, trying to grasp what I was being told. My mind was exploding.

'Come on', he said, offering me his hand. 'Let's go and have a cup of tea. Your great great grandma's dieing to meet you. I believe she's made a fruitcake.'

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(((*click the hatman tag to read parts 1- 7, which describe how I got into this situation... here are links to the story so far)))

https://steemit.com/writing/@stillgideon/5bfjrf-hatman-my-time-travelling-adventures-parts-1-to-5

https://steemit.com/writing/@stillgideon/hatman-my-time-travelling-adventures-part-6

https://steemit.com/writing/@stillgideon/hatman-my-time-travelling-adventures-part-7

*Part 9 coming soon, in which I will taste great great grandma esther's legendary fruitcake,
*and the mysteries of multidimensional time travel will be explained...
*Writing this on a timephone from the year 2047.
*Connection very limited and intermittent