My father and I were at the county fair. Swallowing my hand was my father’s hand, a hand I remember well: it was worn and weathered, like an old baseball mitt, and the dried calluses that canvassed his flesh felt old and alien. Corn dogs and elephant ears saturated the dirty air, and greasy pedophiles and hair spray-stained beauty queens wandered aimlessly. The flashing lights and spinning machines dazzled my eyes. I wanted to escape the rusting anchor of my father’s hand, but his hold was strong; his stride, however, was weighted, slowed by the cancer digesting his brain.
Three months before that night at the fair I realized something was wrong with my father. He was tending our overgrown garden, and I was out there, with him, fascinated by the massive lapping leaves of a cabbage, when I heard him yelp – a sound I had never heard from my father – and collapse. Invisible forces were jolting his body, and I yelled, “Mommy!”
I yelled, “Mommy!”
And I yelled, “Something’s wrong with daddy!”
I ran from the wild overgrowth.
I ran from my father’s convulsing body.
I ran for help because something was wrong.
After the ambulance driver removed my father’s body from the garden, my mother told me, “Daddy’s sick.” The white-washed walls and sterilized smell of hospital corridors would become very familiar after that day in the garden.
Away from the garden and hospitals, my father and I roamed the fairgrounds. We approached a balloon-and-dart game, and my father, pointing to the prize board, asked me which one I wanted. “I want the giant penguin!” I responded excitedly. My father would have to pop eight balloons with ten darts to claim the prize. He exchanged four tickets for ten darts, of which only two would strike their target. A plastic dinosaur was his consolation prize.
Whenever I think about that balloon-and-dart game I become angry. Angry because I feel as though the game was rigged, fixed to take advantage of my dying father. Other times that anger turns to my father, because, aware of the advanced stage of his disease, I don’t know why he chose a game dependent on hand-eye coordination. I’ll never know how badly he wanted to win that penguin for me, but I know his failed attempt haunted him. For him, that giant penguin represented something greater than a token from the county fair – it was a closing verdict on his fatherhood. He failed to come through for his son = he failed as a father.
We turned our backs on the penguin and walked toward the looming Ferris wheel. All day my father had promised me a ride on the giant machine. He spoke of it as if it were some miraculous apparatus built by the gods of the universe. In those passenger cars were his ghosts, memories of his childhood, memories of his father, memories of a life that was slowly crawling away from his weakening grasp.
Six tickets bought us a ride, and inside that rickety carriage we sat, the rotating wheel making circles, endless circles. Each time we climbed to the top my breath would shorten, my pupils would dilate, and I would try to swallow as much of the panorama as possible. I saw street lamps burning in foreign towns. Glowing billboards selling the promise of American dreams. I saw stars and distant galaxies. I saw everything from that carriage.
The spinning wheel began to slow. The passenger cars began to empty. And I looked to my father. Tiny beads of tears rested in the crevices of his eye sockets. “What’s wrong, Daddy?” I asked.
No answer.
Again, “What’s wrong, Daddy.”
One of those weathered mitts patted my lap. He couldn’t look at me. Couldn’t speak. If he had tried, he would’ve fallen apart. I saw his chin tremble. I looked away. I tried to find a distant billboard that promised to cure my father’s sickness. I couldn’t see one.
“It’s slowing because the ride is over,” he managed to mutter.
Two weeks later, away from the garden, away from the hospitals and away from the giant wheel, my father lay in a bed inside a room that I cannot remember. I was bedside, watching him as though I were waiting for some miracle to wash over his flesh and erase all the bad things from the past few months. Through the cracks of his eyelids, a flame struggled to remain lit. I wanted to believe that behind those eyelids was the flickering picture of a Ferris wheel, decorated with a million multi-colored light bulbs, all blinking, flashing. All this as his heart fluttered. All this as there were circles. Endless circles. And in those circles we sat, overlooking the creeps and queens, the wild weeds of overgrown gardens, the seeds of our failings, the roots of our glories, all the ghosts and colors of our existence.
The cracks of his eyelids narrowed. The rise and fall of my father’s chest slowed. It’s slowing because the ride is over.
Strange dreams lately.
xx
Three months before that night at the fair I realized something was wrong with my father. He was tending our overgrown garden, and I was out there, with him, fascinated by the massive lapping leaves of a cabbage, when I heard him yelp – a sound I had never heard from my father – and collapse. Invisible forces were jolting his body, and I yelled, “Mommy!”
I yelled, “Mommy!”
And I yelled, “Something’s wrong with daddy!”
I ran from the wild overgrowth.
I ran from my father’s convulsing body.
I ran for help because something was wrong.
After the ambulance driver removed my father’s body from the garden, my mother told me, “Daddy’s sick.” The white-washed walls and sterilized smell of hospital corridors would become very familiar after that day in the garden.
Away from the garden and hospitals, my father and I roamed the fairgrounds. We approached a balloon-and-dart game, and my father, pointing to the prize board, asked me which one I wanted. “I want the giant penguin!” I responded excitedly. My father would have to pop eight balloons with ten darts to claim the prize. He exchanged four tickets for ten darts, of which only two would strike their target. A plastic dinosaur was his consolation prize.
Whenever I think about that balloon-and-dart game I become angry. Angry because I feel as though the game was rigged, fixed to take advantage of my dying father. Other times that anger turns to my father, because, aware of the advanced stage of his disease, I don’t know why he chose a game dependent on hand-eye coordination. I’ll never know how badly he wanted to win that penguin for me, but I know his failed attempt haunted him. For him, that giant penguin represented something greater than a token from the county fair – it was a closing verdict on his fatherhood. He failed to come through for his son = he failed as a father.
We turned our backs on the penguin and walked toward the looming Ferris wheel. All day my father had promised me a ride on the giant machine. He spoke of it as if it were some miraculous apparatus built by the gods of the universe. In those passenger cars were his ghosts, memories of his childhood, memories of his father, memories of a life that was slowly crawling away from his weakening grasp.
Six tickets bought us a ride, and inside that rickety carriage we sat, the rotating wheel making circles, endless circles. Each time we climbed to the top my breath would shorten, my pupils would dilate, and I would try to swallow as much of the panorama as possible. I saw street lamps burning in foreign towns. Glowing billboards selling the promise of American dreams. I saw stars and distant galaxies. I saw everything from that carriage.
The spinning wheel began to slow. The passenger cars began to empty. And I looked to my father. Tiny beads of tears rested in the crevices of his eye sockets. “What’s wrong, Daddy?” I asked.
No answer.
Again, “What’s wrong, Daddy.”
One of those weathered mitts patted my lap. He couldn’t look at me. Couldn’t speak. If he had tried, he would’ve fallen apart. I saw his chin tremble. I looked away. I tried to find a distant billboard that promised to cure my father’s sickness. I couldn’t see one.
“It’s slowing because the ride is over,” he managed to mutter.
Two weeks later, away from the garden, away from the hospitals and away from the giant wheel, my father lay in a bed inside a room that I cannot remember. I was bedside, watching him as though I were waiting for some miracle to wash over his flesh and erase all the bad things from the past few months. Through the cracks of his eyelids, a flame struggled to remain lit. I wanted to believe that behind those eyelids was the flickering picture of a Ferris wheel, decorated with a million multi-colored light bulbs, all blinking, flashing. All this as his heart fluttered. All this as there were circles. Endless circles. And in those circles we sat, overlooking the creeps and queens, the wild weeds of overgrown gardens, the seeds of our failings, the roots of our glories, all the ghosts and colors of our existence.
The cracks of his eyelids narrowed. The rise and fall of my father’s chest slowed. It’s slowing because the ride is over.
Strange dreams lately.
xx
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