youth I've tried to forget and run away from, a youth that brings me back to him.
The garden is fine, and I'm doing the job of a patient gentleman farmer, except the raised beds give me splinters when I reach across to grab a weed and steady my hand on the rough wooden sides.
There's a splinter in my palm now that's red and painful. Before going to bed last night, I tried digging it out with a pair of dirty tweezers. The wine I drank dulled the pain I was inflicting on myself.
I make a poultice of baking soda thinking it will help to draw the splinter out like a bee sting, but it doesn't. I'll have to dig it out later with a sterilized needle and pour hydrogen peroxide over the wound.
My father's telephone number is the same one my parents have had my entire life, the one I memorized in kindergarten in case I got lost or stolen and needed to reach home. A number I can't forget even though I’ve left my childhood home 25 years ago.
My mother answers the phone so I talk to her for a few minutes, which is easy to do. We talk about the weather and vacation plans. She asks me if I'm going to join the rest of the family for vacation this year on the shores of Lake Michigan. I dance around my answer but we both understand that I won't.
We talk about the family, about my father's health, which is fading everyday. We talk about my job. She asks me if I'm happy. I am. We talk about the recent funeral of her younger sister, which I couldn't attend, and which she didn't expect that I would.
Eventually, I say that I haven't called to talk to her. She laughs.
'Hold on,' she says, 'I'll get him for you.'
When I was younger, after I'd just left my hometown behind, the phone calls with my father were painful, torturous exercises that I performed only three times a year: Christmas, on his birthday, and on Father's Day. Short conversations about inconsequential things. But I'm older now and he hasn't much time left. We still only talk three times a year, but the phone calls are less stressful and border on being pleasant. I think this is