The book about my Father
During the summers of my childhood, I would sometimes wake up early in the morning and sit with my father while he ate breakfast before going to work. I was fascinated with the way he would carefully measure out exact portions of cereal and milk. When he left, I would stand on the porch and watch his truck go down the road until I couldn’t see it anymore. I’d often sit on the edge of the porch and skim my feet along the grass, wet with the morning dew. It’s one of my favorite memories.
My father passed away a month after my eleventh birthday. For a long time, I was afraid that as the years passed, I would slowly forget about him. I mostly remember him in flashes, as if our time together is the memory of a movie I saw only once, a long time ago.
When I became a member of the Methodist Church, I received a standard edition bible with my name on the front in small gold letters. Although I read it a great deal in those days, it now resides on an overstuffed bookshelf in my living room, wedged between other books of similar size and shape. While writing a post for this site the other night, I decided to pull it out to reference several passages.
When I sat down at my desk, I realized that I had accidentally picked up my father’s old bible instead. I can’t remember how it came to be in my possession, but I had never really looked at it before. There was a small sticker on one of the first few pages with his name and our home address. I had forgotten that he used to put those address labels on all of his letters. It struck me that he always used his full name on correspondence, and that I used to practice writing in the same block letters that he would use.
As I turned the pages, I realized that the inside of the bible smelled exactly like he did sitting in church. He must have carried it with him hundreds of times over the years. I’m not sure that I remembered how he smelled before I opened that book, but in those moments, I remembered him more clearly than I have in the sixteen years since he left us. I will probably only lose more memories as the years pass, but it’s comforting to know that some part of him is locked in that book and waiting on my shelf. If I have children of my own one day, I may never be able to tell them who he was, but maybe it will be enough that I can share how it felt to sit with him on those early summer mornings when I was a boy.
