A couple of factors lent themselves to the aide of the
sandman last night.
1. We (as a family) are at a place where my father’s name is coming up
a lot these days
2. I watched far more than the daily recommended amount of
HGTV just before lights out.
The house was a buzz just as I was coming downstairs.
Nothing was really a reflection of reality in the sense that the stairs I was descending,
while understood to be mine in the dream, really belonged to the Victorian house number 3
from House Hunters International.
There were
contractors everywhere doing what contractors do, carrying buckets and paint
brushes, never really working but in a spitfire hurry to get somewhere to do
so.
Then the familiar faces started popping up. There’s Lora
Baker and her husband Ron (whom I have never really met in person but imagine to look like a mix between Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. and Al from Home Improvement) making business phone
calls in the kitchen. So very nice of them to make the middle of the night trip
from Georgia to work from my house.
A knock at the door produced this large, pale faced woman
who insisted on coming in and sitting down. She proceeded to say that she hasn’t
been in the house for years and she used to play cards with my parents. She was
very excited to see them again. I was so sorry, as I am when this happens, to
have to inform her that he passed away 4 years ago.
“What do you mean child-he’s right there”. And she was
right. He was.
My dad, an unnamed man and I adjourned to the small table
outside, away from the bustle to catch up. The conversation will always be mine
and mine alone, but it was as familiar as yesterday. I could just about smell
it.
Suddenly we found ourselves in a room in the house. Soft
light pouring in the window and bouncing off the semi-dusty hard wood floor. I
was standing in the doorway half in the room half in the hall. The unnamed man
sat on the on trundle bed and my father sat on the floor like a teenager.
Around the corner and in an unbalanced hurry, a 1 ½ year old
Carrie (my sister) came ripping around the corner. Wearing only her diaper and
towing a head full of magnificent curls. She made way towards our location.
I told dad to lay down on the floor. “Let’s see if she sees
you”.
She drunk toddler walked past me into the room and went
directly to where my father’s silhouette was and draped her small body across
his chest. She raised her head and looked back at me, but now she was my son.
Wispy dirty blond hair and those blue eyes, turned back to my dad, laid his
head on his chest and spread his arms wide in the form of the cross to put his
tiny hands in my fathers and lay there…still…comfortable.
I went and sat next to the unnamed man on the bed and buried
my head in my hands. I do not cry often but when I do, it is certainly for the
right reasons.
