guiding me home

Dear Dad,

Happy Father’s Day. This is your daughter telling you I thought of you today. If I were home I would lay flowers at your name. Red roses for remembrance. I remember you. Instead I paused to smell the blooms still on the bush, crushed the silky petals between my fingers and pretended to be running wild with mud speckled bare feet, tangled hair flying behind; I heard you calling me home. I’m late for dinner again.

We spent the day on the water and I remembered a boat of a different shape, remembered water of a different color. I thought of skin bruised red by the sun, salty to the tongue. We picnicked on the waves and I thought of you, your laughing eyes behind dark sunglasses, your pocket knife hooked at the hip, your military issued blue shirt stained with grease as only a mechanic could. How you let me steer our way home. A spur of the moment navigation lesson.
We flew over the water and the spray was just the same. I could have been hanging over the Atlantic instead of a river. I leaned out to touch the flying droplets, searching the water’s surface for murky secrets, ghosts in the spray. As usual I didn’t find anything. I never find anything.
Tying at the dock I had one more brush with your past. “1500 hours, driven in by the rain. Lunch on the water aborted. Headed for home. 1512.”
Dear Dad, this is your daughter telling you I missed you today. Happy Father’s Day.