1My father drew maps for a living, and our small flat was always covered with charts of places we would never visit.
2Every evening he pointed to a different coastline and told me stories about the sailors who had named each island.
3When I asked why he never travelled himself, he only smiled and said that someone had to keep the maps accurate.
4After he died, I found a locked drawer in his desk containing a single map I had never seen before.
5It showed our own city, but every street was marked with tiny notes written in his unmistakable handwriting.
6One corner of the park was labelled as the place where he had first met my mother on a rainy afternoon.
7A bridge near the river carried the date of my first steps and a small drawing of my red shoes.
8Almost every corner of the city held some small moment of our family life that I had almost forgotten.
9At the bottom of the map he had written that this was the only country he had ever wanted to explore.
10I finally understood that all of his maps were never an escape from home but love letters written to it.
11Now the map hangs above my own desk, and my children ask me about the tiny notes every night.