求亲情的英语散文……
My Father’s Gift
Long inters and loneliness aren’t good for any man, especially a seventy-five-year-old ho has lost his ife. That’s hy several times a eek I call my father in Montana and pepper him ith questions: Ho’s the eather? What’s for dinner? When are you ing to Tucson? The ansers seldom vary: cold, beef, soon.
Weeks go by until one day in February he calls to say that he has booked a flight. “No need to pick me up,” he says. “I’ll take a cab.”
I don’t argue. He likes being in charge. Whether I am suffering from a broken heart or a broken leg, I kno that I can count on him for a strong cup of coffee and a strong piece of advice. I don’t alays ant either one of them, but I sallo them anyay.
The day of his arrival, I head for the airport. By the time I arrive, the other passengers are alking into aiting arms. At any moment I expect to see Dad charging out of the gate just as I remember him charging his horse straight up Bull Mountain, hat pulled don lo, reins held tight. The crod thins to a trickle and then ss. I orry that he missed his connection, changed his mind, hen I see him ander out of the tunnel.
“Dad,” I call, aving above the crod. He blinks in the sunlight. “Dad,” I call again, making my ay toard him. I stand in front of him, touch his arm and say, Dad, it’s me.
He puts his arms around me as if I’m a life preserver on a rough sea. “Oh, honey, I’m so happy you came.”
“Of course I came,” I anser, hugging him back, my arm registering the change in his appearance before my eyes have a chance to.
He’s leaner than he as last summer. His red rag-ool seater, too heavy for the desert heat, pads his narro frame. Instead of a coboy hat and boots, he’s earing an Irish teed cap and black running shoes.
We drive north toard the foothills, straight for the Catalinas. The desert is foreign to him, but hen e get close to the mountains, he relaxes as if he knos e’re almost home. As e turn into my driveay, here bougainvillea cascades over a stuo all, he shakes his head. “Your mother ould have loved this place,” he says.
When my husband es home, he grills steaks. Afterard e sit outside and Dad smokes a cigar. The talk is general this time — no one mentions my mother. Dad insists on doing the dishes, stacking them helter-skelter in the dishasher. I resist the urge to rearrange them.
The next morning, hen I’m making coffee, I hear him histling in the bathroom.
“Any horse races today?” he asks, ing don the stairs. “Let’s go look at horses.
After checking the paper, e drive through South Tucson toard the fairgrounds. When he sees a sign for a panshop, he orders me to pull over. There are steel bars over the doors and indos, like a small-ton jail. He pushes open the door and e alk inside. The back all is lined ith rifles, more rifles than I’ve ever seen. Simply being inside this secondhand arsenal makes me nervous.
“Dad,” I hisper. “Let’s go.
“Slo don,” he says, draping his arm around my shoulder.
A man earing a vest, possibly bulletproof, alks over to us. The scent of cigarettes and gunpoder hang in the cold air. “Let me see your diamond rings,” Dad says.
I s short and echo, “Diamond rings?” Does Dad have a girlfriend? I ask myself. I can’t remember him mentioning any names.
“For my daughter,” he adds, gesturing me.
“For me?”
“Come on,” he urges. “I ant to buy you a diamond ring.” He casually leans one elbo on the counter as if he is used to shopping for jeels.
In an instant a black velvet tray of rings rests on the counter in front of me. “I don’t ant a ring, “ I tell him.
Ignoring my response, he points to one. “That’s pretty,” he says.
I look at the glittering ros of rings, symbols of eddings gone sour, marriages gone bad, promises broken. Some are the size of bullets, some the shape of tears. I finally sup a ring on my finger and hold up my hand. It’s a gesture I learned from my mother. Every no and then she held up her hand to admire her diamond solitaire in its Tiffany setting. “Let me try it on, “ I ould say, knoing hat the anser ould be. I never sa her take it off.
When she as dying, she asked each of her five children to make a list, tell her hich of her belongings e anted. I usually did hat she asked, but this time I didn’t follo through. I didn’t ant her Limoges china or string of pearls. I anted my mother.
“Pick hatever one you ant,” my father offers.
The ring inks on my finger; another oman’s ring. “You don’t need to buy me a diamond ring,” I tell him.
“I ant to, he says.
“Let’s go eat and think about it,” I hisper. “We’ll be back, I call over my shoulder to the man in the vest.
Later, as e spoon tortilla soup and listen to Mexican love songs on the jukebox, Dad clears his throat. Then he confesses, “I gave your mother’s ring to Sheila.”
Suddenly the shopping trip makes sense. Sheila is my younger sister, my only sister. Before our mother died, Sheila told me that she anted Mom’s ring, that to her it represented maternal love. She cried hen she said that.
Just as he never lost hope, my mother never got around to dividing up their things. While my layer brothers orried ho to disperse her estate, my Aunt Bern suggested that I should inherit her ring. “You’re the oldest daughter,” she reminded me. “You should insist.
That planted a seed, made me greedy for a hile. But over time, I sa the irony. Bern, my mother’s youngest sister, plained often and loudly that her mother favored the older girls. Each time I imagined Mom’s ring on my finger, I couldn’t get the picture of my little sister out of my mind: the middle of five children, groing up earing my hand-me-dons, inheriting my old teachers ho called her by my name.
“I hope you’re not upset,” Dad says.
“It’s okay,” I anser. I just ish that Sheila herself had told me.
To daughters. One ring. To possibilities. Or neither one of us could have it. The ring could be sold and the money divided. Remembering the rings at the panshop, sparkling beneath the guns, I close my eyes tightly so no tears leak out. Specks of sunlight filter in, sparkle like tiny diamonds. I say good-bye to my mother, happy that her ring is on my sister’s finger and not in a black velvet tray.
I think about the gifts passed don from mother to daughter, gifts that don’t have to be divided. The ay she pinched the crust on an apple pie. Where to look for ild asparagus. The ay to hold a atercolor brush. Firstborn, I made her a mother. She fine-tuned her mothering on me. Sheila her middle child, she held right in the middle of her heart. I suddenly realize that she didn’t ant to choose. That she loved each of us, all of us. Dad did the choosing, gave my sister hat she anted, her symbol of a mother’s love. No he ants to give me a ring so that I kno I. too, am loved.
As e alk to the car, kicking up dust in the unpaved parking lot, I keep my eyes on the ground. “You’re not earing your boots,” I point out. Back home in Montana, my father rides horses almost every day. “They hurt my feet,” he admits.
Suddenly I have an idea. I drive a fe blocks south to Steart Boots, a tiny shop in an adobe house ith coboy boots as soft as caramel. After looking around at the leather uppers stacked like loaves of bread in bins around the room, Dad peels off his shoe like a boy and riggles into a tall coboy boot ith a pointed toe. “It’s too tight,” he says.
Victor, the oner, caresses Dad’s instep and remends a ider size. Within minutes my father is standing tall in a pair of boots the color of alnut bark, made by the ise hands of old men, men ho learned their trade from their fathers.
“Why don’t you get a pair?” Dad suggests. I already have an old pair of Stearts on the floor of my closet, but this time I don’t refuse his offer. No e stand together in front of the mirror, one of us old and the other no longer young. I think of the ties that bind us: our sense of family, our sense of place, our sense of fairness. The old man next to me stands tall, alks softly and says nothing, even hen his heart is full of feeling.
I ant you to have them,” he says ith a grin. I smile back at him, thinking of the gifts that he’s given me that I can’t hold in my hand, can’t ear on my finger, but hold in my heart. When he is gone, as I kno he one day ill be, I ill have my boots, a symbol of a father’s love, and the memory of a day he set out to make things right.