Blue
11-22-2011, 09:42 PM
A bit back, NPR ran a contest where you had to submit a story that could be told in 3 minutes or less. Needed a break from working on my novel and, I tend to over-write and my wife thought it would be good practice and I thought it would be fun to share.
So for the story: I lost my dad on 2003 and this was a bit of me just talking through some of that.
Feedback welcome, like or hate.
Dad's voice: I try hearing the tone it would make or the syllables he might have used when telling a joke. There are parts of him that I remember: the glasses, the mustache, the thin gap between his false teeth, but those are all cosmetic. His voice had some gravel to it. Gravel being laid onto an old dirt road, maybe. Gentle gravel. That kind. And while I can remember the rhythms and the words he would often use that as a child I couldn't, the meat of his inflection is more a mystery now. Seven years gone and I can't remember what he sounds like. Sounded like. I find myself forgetting his mannerisms, too, though there are shadows of them, faded photographs you'd have to squint to better see despite having been there when the picture was taken. Does that make sense? I don't know.
When driving home to his funeral, that wasn't something that struck me; the forgetting. Stories of Dad I remember easily. At his viewing, we swapped them like baseball cards asking "Hey, do you remember when..." instead of "Hey, do you have a so-and-so for a..." and those I've managed to keep. Like any good treasure, they're hidden safely away in the rolodex upstairs. Strange, isn't it, that when reminiscing out-loud I can paint the details of his life in fine strokes but the minuteness between is so terribly vague. Just... papery smoke I can't seem to get a grasp on. Ask me the way he would start every sentence with his hand on my shoulder and I could talk for hours but ask how he sounded when he did and poof.
Gone.
He called me "buddy" a lot. And "tiger". My brother calls my nephews that now and it's his voice I hear instead of Dad's.
I haven't visited his grave since the funeral. The road I take in and out of town snakes between the cemetery and the golf course it overlooks but I've never felt compelled to pull in. Maybe it's because I know he isn't there. Not really there. I still drive past his house, though. Seems a better place to me. More him. He had this bike that he would ride everywhere opting for it instead of the car with the passenger window that wouldn't roll up. It was an almost-yellow, both a color and not-quite at the same time. The bike isn't there now, though I guess it wouldn't be.
Sometimes I'll stop a few houses down and just sit. From the car I can swap out the teal curtains for his flower-printed, trade in the porch swing for two plastic chairs and a bike to lean against them because we need a place to sit when I visit. I don't think I really expect him to ever come outside and start watering the plants that aren't his, though I suspect a part of me does. Deep down. The same way I still pick up the phone to give him news.
Imagine I did. Imagine on my way home, I dialed and he answered. Miraculously. Would I recognize him? I can summon furniture and fleeting tapestries, anecdotes and contours, but simple dialogue? Paper smoke.
Maybe if he called me "buddy". Or "tiger."
Definitely then. And I could come back and tell you how it lifts and it falls and of gravel dirt roads.
So for the story: I lost my dad on 2003 and this was a bit of me just talking through some of that.
Feedback welcome, like or hate.
Dad's voice: I try hearing the tone it would make or the syllables he might have used when telling a joke. There are parts of him that I remember: the glasses, the mustache, the thin gap between his false teeth, but those are all cosmetic. His voice had some gravel to it. Gravel being laid onto an old dirt road, maybe. Gentle gravel. That kind. And while I can remember the rhythms and the words he would often use that as a child I couldn't, the meat of his inflection is more a mystery now. Seven years gone and I can't remember what he sounds like. Sounded like. I find myself forgetting his mannerisms, too, though there are shadows of them, faded photographs you'd have to squint to better see despite having been there when the picture was taken. Does that make sense? I don't know.
When driving home to his funeral, that wasn't something that struck me; the forgetting. Stories of Dad I remember easily. At his viewing, we swapped them like baseball cards asking "Hey, do you remember when..." instead of "Hey, do you have a so-and-so for a..." and those I've managed to keep. Like any good treasure, they're hidden safely away in the rolodex upstairs. Strange, isn't it, that when reminiscing out-loud I can paint the details of his life in fine strokes but the minuteness between is so terribly vague. Just... papery smoke I can't seem to get a grasp on. Ask me the way he would start every sentence with his hand on my shoulder and I could talk for hours but ask how he sounded when he did and poof.
Gone.
He called me "buddy" a lot. And "tiger". My brother calls my nephews that now and it's his voice I hear instead of Dad's.
I haven't visited his grave since the funeral. The road I take in and out of town snakes between the cemetery and the golf course it overlooks but I've never felt compelled to pull in. Maybe it's because I know he isn't there. Not really there. I still drive past his house, though. Seems a better place to me. More him. He had this bike that he would ride everywhere opting for it instead of the car with the passenger window that wouldn't roll up. It was an almost-yellow, both a color and not-quite at the same time. The bike isn't there now, though I guess it wouldn't be.
Sometimes I'll stop a few houses down and just sit. From the car I can swap out the teal curtains for his flower-printed, trade in the porch swing for two plastic chairs and a bike to lean against them because we need a place to sit when I visit. I don't think I really expect him to ever come outside and start watering the plants that aren't his, though I suspect a part of me does. Deep down. The same way I still pick up the phone to give him news.
Imagine I did. Imagine on my way home, I dialed and he answered. Miraculously. Would I recognize him? I can summon furniture and fleeting tapestries, anecdotes and contours, but simple dialogue? Paper smoke.
Maybe if he called me "buddy". Or "tiger."
Definitely then. And I could come back and tell you how it lifts and it falls and of gravel dirt roads.