101 Words

One day, as I was walking my dog along the local beach, I saw a goldfish in its small fishbowl, floating along the edge of the ocean. Someone had obviously taken pity on their imprisoned pet and given it a taste of unbounded freedom, convincing the poor fish it was swimming without restraint.

At once it struck me—this is what my own existence has been all along; all this time convinced I was swimming freely in the vast ocean of life, whilst actually stuck in an impermeable puny fishbowl of my own making, carried along helplessly by the inexorable currents.

It was when I visited I knew, knew, things were going to happen that very day. I looked at you in your club chair, a blanket tucked around you like a child, while the tea cooled and biscuits crumbled on the table next to you. Your right hand, which held a book, sagged towards the floor. A snore eventually popped out of your mouth. You had fallen into a deep sleep, unaware of the world around you.

I brushed a stray lock from your face and delicately kissed your warm, smooth forehead. I knew then exactly what needed to be done.

Melsh cautions himself repeatedly: be patient, be easy. “Son, learn this, you’ll have a trade.”

“Alright, Dad,” responds Lenny, with trepidation rooted in his father’s legendary edginess.

“Dump out some mortar into the hod,” the patriarch instructs.

The mortar mix splays over the edges, wasting a quarter.

The son recoils. The father bites his lip.

“It’s alright, son, you’ll get the hang of it,” says the father, proud of his forbearance.

The son hears the chastisement in the encouragement and hangs his head. “It flowed more’n I thought it would,” clawing an exculpatory explanation.

“Yeah,” the father accepts over his shoulder.

When Lucy finally let her daughter have a sleepover, she didn’t refuse when they ordered stuffed crust and double chocolate ice cream. She let them stay up late, forgoing church in the morning to make pancakes.

Katie’s a good girl, Lucy knew. Forget the cost, the inconvenience.

Lucy wouldn’t budge on the sleeping arrangements, of course—boys downstairs on couches, girls upstairs on mattresses. The children didn’t argue.

At her rehearsal dinner, Katie tells the story of her eleventh birthday.

“And thanks, Momma, for my first kiss with this cutie,” Katie says, to laughter, as she smiles down at her bride-to-be.

Sunday, my 88-year-old father-in-law seemed at death’s door. At the nursing home, Curtis fell in and out of consciousness. Susan, my wife and a nurse, spoke later of last-stage physical movements, and time to say good-byes.

By Thursday, Curtis appeared more his old self. This had happened before. To my surprise, he agreed to a ride. Without his wife and daughter. Just us men. With difficulty, I got him into the car. We traveled down the wooded roads for fifteen minutes.

When I asked him afterwards what the best part of the drive was, he whispered to my wife, “the driver.”

She runs from the cottage, hands dripping red, mud squeaking between her toes. Along the cliff top. Down, down the steps, gathering her dress and petticoats.

She cannot go back.

Under the cliff, she laughs at the scabrous outcrop. She will get to the end. Moon cuts the clouds.

She is silhouette.

Scrambling, stumbling over slippery, silver rock. Restless sea, angry sky, swarming rain. Where the rock dissolves to sea, she stares; she remembers; she weeps.

She is shadow.

The sea ignores her. The sea considers her. The sea despises her. Spray caresses her. Now, she is silent.

Empty, barren, rock.