Dad

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The memories that choose to stay in our heads are strange things, often illogical. These small shards of the past lodge themselves deep in the recesses of our mind without rhyme or reason. If I could remember more things about my father, I would. I'd have remembered his smile. His faded globe and anchor tattoo, and the exact ways it needed some touching up. He always said he'd get to it, though. That there would be time.

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All at once though, there wasn't. He was gone. The world stopped spinning for me. Every color was a shade less vibrant, every breeze blew just a bit softer, and each passing cloud provided less shade. All of these things, logically, had to be the same. Yet they weren't - because I wasn't - and nothing could remain how it was once was.

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"That's the way it is sometimes. Shit comes and goes. Every now and then, though - here and there, you get pieces of it back. So just wait a little longer. For now to pass and there to come."

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It wasn't really as profound as I think it sounds. Something he said after my first girl broke up with me over text. College.. what can you do, right? But for some reason I hear that in my head a lot. Not the words, but his voice. The ways his eyes squinted from his smile as he said it. He didn't smile too much, which is maybe why I find it so critical, so important, that for that moment he did.

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Of course with my Sarah, I try to do things different. My old man was far from perfect. Mom said it was the military that made him all rough around the edges like that. Clean cuts that never quite got sanded down, even by the gentle grit of family life.

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I try to do some things his way, though. The Chinese buffet after each first day of school for my daughter. The drive up to that rinky Hawaiin themed waterpark each summer. Collecting the best bits and pieces. Of course, now she's getting older. Too cool for it all.

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The other day, though, she was telling me about her friend moving - how she felt like a piece of her was leaving to Colorado, too. Then it just bubbled up.

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That's the way it is sometimes...

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So then, for a moment, the sky seemed deeply blue. The autumn gust more crisp. The sound of the passing cars on the freeway was less of a drone, and more of a comforting hum. For a small instance, the fractals of time and love and memory coiled themselves into a twist. They brought him back, if only for a minute.

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It ended, of course. As all things must end. Yet somehow I felt maybe now and again, here and there, these little slip ups might keep coming.

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So I wait, but ever shorter. Look forward, but know he's closer.

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I love you, Dad.

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[WC: 499]