Memory #365

I am sitting here, in a hospital room, holding my dying father’s hand. There was a time when I feared it. It could, his hands, reign terror on any of his children or, when its fingers played across the keys of the Hammond, belt out the most profound array of molasses-like notes any person would glow to. His face is round like the moon, and sprinkled with the minutest moles across his face. His nose is round at the end, without a bridge in that space between his eyes and the tip of his nose. His eyes are small: chinky we called them and as he slept, with his hand in mine, I could not help but ponder, How did he conceive me when he could never, I think, in his wildest dreams ever conceive of me? His snoring becomes a bit more pronounced and I rub my thumb against the skin of his hand. He flinches a bit. When was the last time someone touched him with the taste of love on her fingertips? I try to envision my father as a little boy. “Dolly” his mother called him, because sh...