[from “This Is How They Come Back to Us” by Barbara Kingsolver”, the October 25 Wild Writing prompts]
I think of Daddy when I go to my childhood home, him sitting in the recliner and turning on the TV,
telling stories that may or may not have some embellishment. After all, he came from a family of story-tellers.
I think of him when to go to my old church where he sat on the third pew from the front on the right-hand side, in front of the pastor’s pulpit.
I can hear him singing those old, familiar hymns and smile when I remember how I knew if I was playing loud enough to support the singing: If I could hear Daddy singing, then I wasn’t playing loud enough. It became a kind of competition to see if that little Hammond spinet could drawn out Daddy’s baritone.
I think I Daddy when I drive by or walk through the fields I inherited from him, the hours he spent on his tractor plowing and sowing the seeds, cutting and raking the hay, baling it and loading it on the truck, and drinking ice water from a Mason jar (or a mayonnaise jar) wrapped in a brown paper bag on those hot days.
I think of him during the he was recovering from the surgery, me riding the combine and tying the sacks of oats whle he watched from the front seat of his old blue Ford pickup.
He would read recipes from the State newspaper of the coop’s Living magazine and give them to me to try. We canned tomatoes in the “play house” that summer before I left home to live on my own seventy-five miles away.
I think of him when I stand on the remains of the garage floor he helped my husband pour and spread and smooth.
I remember his voice,
the thin, papery browned from years of working in the sun with the dark bruises.
I think of him when I see my sons and the lessons he taught them about hunting, the land, stewardship, love, and family.
I think of him on Veterans’ Day and V-J Day and how narrowly he escaped being deployed to the Pacific during those last days of World War II.
I think of him when I’m with my brother and hear Daddy’s wisdom coming from that brat who irritated me so when we were chldren.
I think of him and know he has left a legacy.
Telling Stories 