It is hard, and took this long, to put the pieces of yesterday back together. The main story was textbook routine; up at five, showered, dressed, studied, and out of the house by seven-thirty, on campus through two classes until one.
But yesterday, I took a left out of the campus lot instead of a right to go home, yet I still was heading home. My home for decades, and yet unlived in for decades as well. My father’s house; forty-five miles and forty-five minutes in time and place away.
Beautiful there, peaceful. But empty until the memories filled it with five people, sometimes more, growing together, growing old, leaving and returning over segments of time in flashbacks. I put some water on for instant coffee, instant cream, because we can no longer keep fresh milk there as it will turn before it’s even half-way used. The sound of water turning into bubbles on the stove still makes me cry. I wander through the rooms that look so lived in but the people just aren’t there. I’m waiting for the furnace man to come and fix the noise my father said it didn’t make, because he tried to fix it all himself.
I spread my homework out upon the kitchen table; it looks so oddly out of place. I go upstairs to beds that look just freshly made, that no one’s slept in for two months. His room–my room–is still the celery green we painted it together. My mother’s still the cool baby blue it always was. I go down to the cellar, put some lights on, check the furnace, glance over at my father’s workbench neatly filled and organized. There’s the McCullough chainsaw that for several months he wanted us to bring to someone to have fixed. The dying weeping willow tree had bothered him, and he was anxious to cut it down. He finally once again tried to fix it himself as we lied and stalled and said that we’d forgotten. It is too heavy. It is too dangerous. We saw the weakness that we also lied about.
Continue reading →
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology