Monday, July 4, 2011

Twilight, and there is noise everywhere.

Fireworks.

There is the soft, cottony pop of the small ones and the sudden flat-slap of the ones thrown against a wall or sidewalk. There are the whistles and explosions from across the street, and small echos of the same somewhere down the beach. The air is vivid with sound, and I know that Reva's dog, Buddy, is in a closet... four buildings down.... shaking like crazy. Meander doesn't even notice. Fireworks can be like storms, to some.

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My Dad is in the hospital. He's eighty-six and really wants/sometimes attempts to be twenty-something again so he can go out with all the girls he didn't pick back then. He's in Florida. I am, of course, in Illinois. He has some internal bleeding, so he's drinking that juice that will make tomorrows colonoscopy go ... well, well; and we talked between his visits to the bathroom.

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It's dark now and there are pops here and there, but the day is almost done.... hotdogs eaten. Grills extinguished. Just a few more flowers in the sky and the holiday is over.

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Dad said he was thinking about me the other day and how we used to sit watching storms roll in, in the.... he couldn't remember the word.

Carport.

"Yes. And you would say, 'That was a BIG one, Dad!"

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I never knew I said that, until tonight. All I've known is that I've never been afraid of the weather. Respectful, yes... but never afraid because I'd always been in a lap with an outstretched arm, pointing out the truth... Thunder is caused by a lightening strike and lightening is caused by....

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It's about time he gives up the freedom he has now. I and my step-sister have tried so hard to let him be but it's time to quit.

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When I was little, he had an airplane... a Cessna. He tells me there was a day when I was small that he, I and my mother were in the plane during the storm. He was handling it, my mother was freaking and I was calm.

Of course, I was. I knew him, even then.

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She made him give up the plane. I don't know how it happened, but that plane sat in the front yard for a while, before it was gone. It must have killed him, to give up the sky.
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Of course, there are renegade fireworks going off this late. I suppose they will go off all evening.

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1 comment:

  1. It is comforting to have nice memories of ones parents, especially as they age and the roles become reversed. I hope all goes well for him.

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