My father’s hands are much like my own. We share the same stubby fingers, the same thick thumbs. Our smallest digits, the pinky fingers, spin off at an alarming angle at the last knuckle although my father’s are more pronounced than my own. They are good hands and ones that […]
The Unfit Father
The Apple Tree and the Grave
“Daddy what’s that sound?” my daughter Darcy asks. “Crickets,” I respond in the clipped manner of a father who just wants his child to go to bed. “I don’t like them,” she answers with the certainty that only a six year old can muster. It’s a new and strange sound […]
Breathe
“Just breathe,” I say to Darcy, my six-year-old daughter. “Look in my eyes and just breathe.” She’s taken a fall on the sidewalk, running in the ill-advised flip flops I told her to trade in for more sensible shoes. “I told you so,” however, holds little satisfaction from a parent […]
Being There
The guest bed in our house, the one in the room that smells like something old and musty and unused, is covered in the detritus of my daughter’s art projects and school work. These pieces were first housed in my wife’s office in overspilt piles, but Laura needs the space […]