 "My dad particularly loved our dogs. Sometimes, when we had guests and it was getting late, he got down on all fours, like their littermate. We knew he was playing but this could also be an indicator that he was tired and hoping the company would go home."
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Happy New Year! I wish you all good things in the coming year.
Thank you for your continued good thoughts with your comments here, on Salon, in emails and on facebook. I am so moved and appreciative of your kindness. Below is a poem I wrote years ago about my dad. The excerpt in my memoir grew from this: MONOLOGUE The last time I saw you, you were lying in a hospital bed, in a room with bright, too bright, green and yellow walls. Inappropriate colors intended to console the sick, the dying. And as you slept, curled beneath a white sheet, I watched you breathe, willing you to. Your face, still so tan, against a pillow, too white. I thought of your morning sounds, the front door opening softly, you walking on the back of your slipper heels to get the paper, a cough, your spoon tapping the side of the coffee cup, and how I lay awake in my room beside the flower wallpaper, surrounded by all the things that mean so much, when you're ten, and listened to your sounds comfortable in their familiarity, secure in a world where, "Fathers do not die." Walking on the heels of my slippers, Tying ribbons in your black hair, (red was especially nice). You-a little boy in a grown- up suit, me-too small to see anything without standing on my toes. Wiping your forehead dry when you got sick, until you got too sick, and I could do nothing. And that wallpaper I remembered as a child, paled against that green. And now, years later, reduced to monologues with ghosts and this never ending private slide show. These images of you flashing too quickly, You on the dock, laughing so hard with your brother, you fall. You playing cards with Dick. You beside your new car. You and you and on and on until the screen goes black, because you are, no more. And the wallpaper peeled, and there was nothing behind it, only this and the smile you left in an 8X10 frame. |
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January 2015
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