My mother understood more than any of us the hard work necessary to take care of a large family, and she saw my father's schemes as dangerous distractions. She knew that our lives were always perched on a precipice that only vigilance and dogged determination could keep us safe. When my father came up with a new venture, she’d remind him of his shortcomings, his misanthropic nature, his inability to balance a budget, and his tendency to grow bored and restless and anxious. She’d say, “You hate the summer and the smell of cotton candy.” She’d ask, “Where on earth do you think you’ll get the down payment for that?” She’d remind him, “You trust people too easily.”
My father loved my mother. He believed that she was smarter than he was, better raised and with a clearer understanding of how the world worked. He felt that she married beneath her, and that at any moment she might have second thoughts. He doubted himself but he never doubted her. But still, he kept on dreaming and still he kept on coming up with ways to make a name for himself, to make my mother proud of him.
He knew, though, that the window of opportunity was closing quickly. It was one thing, he thought, to be a dreamer when he was the father of three, but it was another thing when the fourth and fifth child was born, and down right negligent when the sixth and seventh came along. By the time the baby of the family arrived (his eighth child), he resolutely put away his dreams and became an accountant, which, my mother said, was the best idea he’d ever had.
I'm foolish like my father. I think of myself as a writer with unmistakable talent. A gem that comes along every so often. A natural. In the exhilarating rush of finishing a story, I hurriedly send it off to The Paris Review or The New Yorker or Harper's as if they've been waiting for me, wondering where I've been all this time. I still believe that fortune will smile upon me, even if all the evidence points to the contrary.
My father is at the end of his life, now. He forgets things easily and has little time for fanciful things like a son, who seems always to have his head in the clouds. My father spends all of his energy taking in enough breath to fill his crippled lungs and expelling the rotten air from his dying body. I, too, think that one day I’ll wake up and my body will start to crumble, and that I’ll have no choice but to stop and pay attention to