Tag: dad
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Cheerleaders at Sonoma State
The first time I came to California was the summer before seventh grade. Dad was in a Jack London seminar at Sonoma State University and drove the family there from Vermont in a red Ford Taurus station wagon with a car carrier on top my sister and I packed full of stuff to keep us…
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Little Valkyrie
When my sister was a baby dad would fly her around the house singing “Ride of the Valkyries”. His voice operatic, he swooped her low so she bombed us with drool and we laughed, smiling up at her, little steward of Valhalla.
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Bloody Mary
Dad would often have a Bloody Mary after he finished mowing the lawn, the spicy tomato juice concoction in a tumbler that said “Name Your Poison” with a glass swizzle stick he used to stir it. He strode up the back yard to our house in a sweaty, gasoline-stained t-shirt, walked into the kitchen, took…
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Hospice Notebook
Dad’s Hospice Notebook His oxygen mask kept him from speaking, so they gave him a pen and a small notebook placed beside his bed. He scribbled words in order to communicate with us: my mom, fifty-one, the same age as him; my sister, who was barely a teenager; and me, a college senior, jealous of…
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Ghost Story
Grandma Tells Me a Ghost Story “Seven years after he died, I saw your dad standing in the doorway of my bedroom. He had on a shirt you all gave him: navy blue with a thin, burgundy stripe. His beard was trimmed short and he wasn’t wearing his glasses – you don’t need them in…
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Recurring Dream
Dad once said he had a recurring dream where he saw a photograph of himself in a Civil War soldier’s uniform. He never told me it was blue or gray. Maybe combat paints everyone the same in the recurring dream dad used to have. Though he grew up south of the Mason-Dixon, the color did…
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Last Words
The tiny lamp on my nightstand with its brushed aluminum base and yellowed shade covered in dust spreads light all over my bedroom. It lends a glow to each wall spills lumens on the carpeted floor and makes shadows evaporate from the corners of the ceiling. Tucked away on a shelf below rests a draft…
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On Top of My Dresser
The memento I used to keep of dad was a photograph of him and me when I was little, walking down a hall in the high school where he taught English rows of lockers on either side of us like parts of the mind where memories live. My small hand in his, we were silhouettes…
From the Firefly Galaxy 