Last century when I was between duty stations and en route Japan from the United Kingdom, and K. and I were stateside again, albeit for a few weeks only, we stayed with my Mom and Dad at their big Northern Virginia house, the same house of my youth.
K. and I would sleep in my old young adult bed in my old young adult bedroom.
And we’d laugh, she and I, at night as we lay together because even though we were husband and wife, and our bodies were so close and familiar side-by-side in that old squeaky bed and my parent’s room was just down the hall, that moment, that mutual feeling, would usher us back to an innocence long forgotten, a blush if you will, so much so that simply be being in that bed we were committing some unsaid trespass, especially when sleep time took us down and we’d fold back the bedsheets and slip between those high-thread count flannel sheets, and, turning out the light, our kiss lingered a little too long, her body familiar and near as we bundled under the cocoon of warm sheets and blankets as if somehow we joined at that moment, a chrysalis, one that underwent metamorphosis in the ice cold Winter night only to emerge in next day’s bitter dawn.
Renewed.
Reborn.
And it was Christmas, and we were like children, again. Innocent and naive, again.
And there was this one night during our stay when my father and I stayed up late.
And now, I seem to only remember this night at Solstice and Christmas; times when my father’s shade, for whatever reason by my mind’s rational, seems near to me, but in small and fleeting ways as if he’s a moving shadow in the corner that, when you look hard at it, is gone.
His shade is with me in the way I wonder aloud if the rain will short out every circuit breaker in the house when I string the Christmas lights outside.
He’s left a remainder, embodied in me.
Perhaps this is due to my fond recalling of Christmases Past when life seemed simpler, more straightforward. More carefree, perhaps, but with the angst of youth ever pressing. The impatient demands of youth. Or perhaps this is all nonsense and nonsensical musings on my part.
In any event, back to that one night: my father and I got drunk while we both sat at the old kitchen table, the same table I remember from when I was first able to recall memories, the same table I now have, since my mother’s death, in my house.
And my father and I drank into the late of the night which passed over to the early, early morning, and we talked and talked of nothing of consequence, and yet talked and talked of everything of consequence, until when my mother called to my father from upstairs for him to come up to bed, he told me “he’ll cover for me,” and that I should get to bed.
And it was a moment. A simple moment. Never to reoccur.
Yet time has passed. He doesn’t haunt me as much anymore. Not like he used to.
And, unlike Aeneas, the shores of Cumae are as distant to me as the Undiscovered Country, and the Sibyl now silent.
But, alas, Charon still waits at the edge of Stygian.
And I’m cognizant I will one day trace my father’s path over those waters.
But, not now.
Not yet.
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