Notes From the Bridge #3B

My first memory of my father:

I was laying in my crib.

He said,’ You can’t throw up anymore, we are out of sheets’.

My second memory of my father:

He was reading ‘Fox in Sox’ to me and getting every bit as much enjoyment out of the tweetle beetle battle and the poodle eating noodles as I was.

My third memory of my father:

He paid my sister and I 50 cents a load to move a pile of firewood across the yard in my Radio Flyer. It cost him 4 dollars, I could see the regret in his eyes for not making it 25 cents.

My fourth memory of my father:

He didn’t yell at us for borrowing his saw and cutting down all the pine trees in our woods to build a log cabin, even though we gave up at knee high when we couldn’t figure out how to make a door and never moved in.

My fifth memory of my father:

I assisted in spaying our cat Mitten on the pink Formica kitchen counter. I found out a lot about cat reproductive organs.

My sixth memory of my father:

Driving down a dirt road at 70 miles an hour between my crazy Uncle Jimmy and my father in the cab of Uncle Jimmy’s pickup and seeing a huge oak tree at the ninety degree bend. We were still alive.

My seventh memory of my father:

When he started to work for Yale and the movers dropped all of his glass research slides in the middle of the hall, he hired my sister and I to pick up all the whole ones and then foisted us on the woman chemist who gave us Petri dishes to grow bacteria from our finger prints.

My eighth memory of my father:

When I asked him why he smoked, he said ‘I just enjoy it’.

My ninth memory of my father:

He took me to the library and plonked a big book of colleges in front of me. He said , ‘Pick three’.

My tenth memory of my father:

Over the years, whether I took his advice or not, he never held it against me. He said, ‘You can always ask me when you need help.’