showing up

My dad was the kind of man who didn’t talk about emotions. About how he felt. Not a huggy guy. Product of his era and his parents’ way, I suppose.

He would show up. That was his way of saying he loved you.

Later as my brother and I grew up and moved away, he found another way. He would send newspaper and magazine articles.

They would pile up here, unopened for weeks. He would almost never include a note – something about the way he posted them and the incredibly stringent Royal Mail rules – and I would puzzle over several pages, wondering which thing exactly he meant me to read. Often I’d wish he’d included a few more pages since there was invariably a bit of something that looked compelling.

Sometimes they were never opened. Other times, wrenched open on Saturdays ahead of the weekly phone call and hastily scanned. Then tossed, or, very occasionally, slapped onto a clip magnet and onto the fridge.

One had been slowly turning crisp, taking on a creamy hue for almost a year, facing a sunny window near the sink, when I learned he was ill.

It was a piece about not scheduling up your kids’ time with activities and sports. I’d kept it, I suppose, because I’d agreed, and because, unusually for him, this one had come with a note, written in his staccato left handed scrawl.

I’ll keep it forever.

Especially for those days when my children swirl about me, and it feels like I’m adrift in a sea of choices, with no clear idea which one is right