“Wow,” I gasped at the picture of my mother at a party. Her smile was the most radiant thing I had ever seen. But I had never really seen it… maybe glimpses of it, when I would sing for her and do her hair, but never a true smile.
My dad sat across from me and peered over to see which picture I had began to marvel at. His eyes instantly drooped and caught the floor. I went to grasp his shoulder but he stood quickly.
“Well, I’m done for today,” he turned and headed for the garage, where he would continue aimlessly staring at the floor and keeping himself busy with the old boat, or the new car.
This pile of pictures began to look like a pile of sand, sitting on the coffee table. There, each picture was like a single grain, slowly slipping off of the table and turning into the time that we couldn’t get back. There were two more stacks of pictures I had not gone through, but I sat back down at the table and began reliving these key moments that lead me to where I am now.
The next picture was my mother and I at the local playground, my feet in the air, my mother supporting my back as I wanted to swing higher and higher on the swing set. There was that smile, the smile that made my skin raise and my lips part taking in more air. I felt her hand on my back and the wind hitting my face as I closed my eyes to remember the swing, with the clunky tennis shoes flailing in the air and the rusty chain I was grasping for dear life, although I know my mother would have caught me any way. The wind from the swing felt even stronger until I opened my eyes to find my sister opening the front door.
“Oh, sorry. The winds are crazy, must be a hurricane or somethin’,” she stated not realizing she had taken me out of the daydream I was growing so fond of.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I quickly assured her, fondling the pictures.
She shuffled quickly into her room and I resumed the revival of my childhood events. The next picture I grabbed was a picture of my mother cradling me, looking at me with love in her eyes and my two older sisters tugging at my father’s arms. I closed my eyes and saw my mother’s arms. They were like noodles but had the strength of a man’s. I knew this because she would hold me whenever she could. How I craved that warm feeling of my head pressing against my mothers chest, sharing a laugh and smile or a cry about a broken crayon or a lost shoe lace. Either way she was there cradling me, assuring me everything was going to be perfectly…
“Terrible. Just terrible,” My dad muttered when he walked into the kitchen.
“What is?” I asked, slightly startled from the interruption of my comforting thoughts.
“It’s like you go at something once, and if it doesn’t work, you go at it again in a different way trying to make it work, and then you convince yourself it’ll work the third time! And there you are! Lookin’ like a fool when it doesn’t work at all,” he slammed his mug against the counter and his head dropped shortly after that.
“It’s about the car”, he clarified, stiffening his shoulders and turning on the faucet, “darn paint won’t dry.”
I sat there and stared at him. I looked at all of his wrinkles, looking like they pointed to all of the ways he went wrong, what he could have done better, how far gone his marriage was.
I grabbed the last picture in the stack. The iconic wedding picture that my grandparents had shared so many laughs about. There is my father, shoving my mom’s face in the cake. At that time, this forceful air was laughable, but now, not so much.
“Hey dad,” I squeaked out before croking into a cry.
“Yeh, sweetie?” He said sipping the coffee he just poured.
“Is there cake in heaven?”