Dad would lie on his back
in the middle of the living room.
I would step into his open palms
on either side of his shoulders
and slowly, he’d lift me into the air.
I loved the wavering, the bobble
before the balance, the moments
of freedom when I floated above him.
Today, when the concert ended
with “What a Wonderful World,”
it was only in the last verse I realized
they’d played Dad’s favorite song
on this day, his birthday, almost
five years after his death, and
I felt it again, that sense of being
elevated by a power greater than my own.
Tears falling even as I started
to laugh. Laughter rising even
as I started to cry. The gift of it all
swirling in me as ecstatic as the violins,
primal and playful as the drum beat,
unexpected as the riffs on the piano,
familiar as my dad’s hands wrapped
around my soles pressing me higher,
oh wonderful world, higher.
Posts Tagged ‘father’
July 5
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birthday, childhood, dad, daughter, father, memory, music, remembrance, what a wonderful world on July 5, 2026| 2 Comments »
Different Paths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, father, Father's Day, hiking, poem, poetry on June 20, 2026| 4 Comments »
It used to annoy me,
the way my husband
cleans every trail
he walks on, slowing
down to kick off the
smaller rocks,
stopping to pick up
and toss the larger ones.
Every. Single. Rock.
Perhaps it still annoys
the part of me that loves
a heart pumping pace,
but now I honor how
he has chosen this one
small act as one way
he can serve the world.
But if he could, on our daughter’s
paths, pick up all the obstacles,
I don’t think he would.
Such a gift for a father to give:
An open hand and heart that says
I will pick you up if you fall.
An open hand and heart that says
I trust you enough
to let you stumble at all.
How He Loved to Fish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, father, fishing, love, memory on November 5, 2025| 4 Comments »
Dad could barely walk,
but put a rod in his hand
and pass him a bag full
of tackle and bait
and that man could traverse
over mountains or swamps
to get to the place
where the bite was on.
I remember him reeking
of fish, his thick hands
covered in slime,
his smile wide as a river
is long. He was chatty,
then, giggling each time
he’d feel the sharp tug
on the line, whistling out
a long ooooooh-eeee as he
reeled and pulled.
How he thrilled in every
part of the act—
the planning, the waiting,
the catching, the gutting, the eating.
Years later, I can almost
scent it here on my hand—
the pungent, sour smell
brings me back to when Dad
was most alive,
not those hours in the ER,
not those years in the chair
swaying back and forth
to dance with his pain, no,
a straight path to those days when
his eyes were bright with ecstasy
and the current of his joy so strong
it still carries me, even now.
Still Learning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, grief, silliness on May 7, 2025| 12 Comments »
Dad used to love to say of strangers,
We went to different schools together.
He always did love the silly, the goofy,
the nonsensical, the absurd.
Loved making funny noises,
like the time he sent me a cassette
while I was living in Finland. He
squealed high into the recording, saying,
Have you ever heard the sound a sock makes?
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
I learned from him to narrate the world through sound.
I, too, might find a noise for setting down a plate
or pulling up a window blind, or tugging a weed
or dropping seeds into the ground.
I, too, have heard myself say of a stranger,
Oh yes, we went to different schools together.
And though I’m the one speaking,
it’s Dad’s voice I hear. His hee hee hee
when I’m giggling, laughing till tears spill free.
His squeal when I pull on a sock.
And I don’t pretend to know how it works,
but I believe we are, even now, somehow
in different schools together—me in the school
of life, him in the school of death.
I don’t know what he is learning, but I
am still learning how to love what is
and what isn’t here, how to show up,
how to listen to and interpret
the secret sound of a thing.
Y-Linked Inheritance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brother, father, football, legacy, love on September 29, 2024| 4 Comments »
My brother paces the length of the football field,
following the play, unable to sit. I watch him
pause in the end zone, hands in his pockets,
eyes focused to the game, chin up, body tense.
How many times did I watch my father watch him
the same way he now watches his own sons play?
“Hold your blocks,” he yells, his voice hoarse
and deep, full of certainty from his own days
in cleats. “Come on, Defense,” he growls,
half admonishment, all encouragement,
and I fall in love all over again with my father,
now dead, and my brother, so alive, how they give
of themselves as if every moment is a goal line.
I hear how every hoarse syllable, barked out
in harsh urgency, carries inside its violence
an almost unbearable tenderness,
a spiraling toss of light.
Dairy Queen Drive Thru
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, father, food, grief, ice cream, memory on July 6, 2024| 19 Comments »
Plain vanilla. Soft serve.
You loved simple things, Dad.
On this day of your birth
I am a pilgrim who arrives
by car at the drive up window
at the closest DQ, an hour away.
There is devotion in the way
I savor the cold. The cake cone
melts on my tongue like a wafer.
There is joy in sampling
what brought you joy.
I ate the whole thing, Dad,
though it was too much.
But I didn’t want to waste
a bit of it. For those few sweet
moments, it tasted like
having you back.
A Closer Look
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, curiosity, daughter, father, lake, science on June 18, 2024| 6 Comments »
I recall how dad gave me glass vials
and encouraged me to go to the lake, take samples,
then bring them back to the house
where he’d taught me to use a glass dropper
to put a small bead between slide and slip,
then focus the microscope
to spy on all the life pulsing there—
thin oblong shapes and zooming dots,
spinning green circles and segmented strands—
it was like eavesdropping on adult conversation,
like being given the key to enter life itself,
and I, an eager traveler into invisible realms,
spent hours staring into that intricate world.
Memory is, sometimes, a chance to meet
a drop of the past, then wonder about the world
beyond what we first see. I thought this
was a memory about lake water, glass slides,
a microscope. I look closer. I see trust.
Pulsing love. A father teaching curiosity.
Time Travel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged father, pond, swimming, time on June 16, 2024| 6 Comments »
Slipping alone into the pond is like slipping
deeper into the world—how alive every
inch of skin is then—as if I’ve slipped
through an hour glass and
swum into the timeless
self
and my father is here, my
son is here and in half an hour
I live a lifetime surrounded by blue
damselflies, opening to the bluing sky and
goodbye is not a word I know, only hello, hello, hello.
Inner Fusion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, driving, father, gratefulness, grief, memory, New York on January 11, 2024| 8 Comments »
How does it happen,
you’re driving and the mind
opens a door closed for decades
and suddenly you’re sitting
at an elegant white table
with white linen napkins
and a single white rose
in a restaurant in The Plaza Hotel
in downtown New York City
and your father sits across
from you, his smile wide,
his eyes bright, and you’re fifteen
and you’ve never before
been in a place like this
and it’s wonderful, this strange
and beautiful scene where
you don’t belong and yet
all worlds seem to merge into this one
where you’re driving through snow
on the winding river road and
your father is here holding your hand
as you look at the menu and
accelerate through the curve
as he taught you and
he loves you and though
he is dead now, you can’t stop
saying thank you.