When I consider my father, who disappeared almost entirely from my life in my infancy, I think of what I don’t know. I don’t remember his hands, or his voice, how he formed arguments, whether he was a sore loser or told a good joke. All I ever had of him were brief encounters that I could count on one hand, but which burned flashbulb-bright in my mind. Everything I know about him came from other people’s thin anecdotes and contradictions. Silences, too.Article continues after advertisement
I recall one of his rare visits during which a baby cousin of mine sat on a glass coffee table, shattering it. My father snatched her from the air before she could hit the floor, saving her from the shards of broken tabletop and porcelain figurines. Though I remember the moment vividly, I wonder sometimes if the coffee table incident really happened that way. After all, my father’s visits always made everyone tense, and it was possible that the table pulverized from the atmosphere alone.
In the final year of my MFA studies, someone called to say my father was dying. I was twenty-two. I went and sat by his deathbed for a little while, this stranger with my face. This would become another memory I would turn over infinitely, examined like an experiment with inconclusive results.
