I Miss That Man and I Always Will

 He was so rarely still. And even in the still, there was not much silence. But his activity never seemed like cribbing. Mine feels like cribbing entirely too often. Anxiety all coming out in chewed gates.

He worked so hard. Six days a week for most of the year. He never had much money to show for it. I don't really think that was the point. I think he was probably cribbing, you just couldn't tell. Keeping his hands full kept them off the bottle.

I remember the way he held a paintbrush. I guess if you do anything enough times it starts to look natural. The pendulum bend in his wrist at the end of every stroke on the turnaround. My wrists are his. My hands. I wonder if people see me paint and think it looks natural. I wonder how much of me is him and I don't know and no one knows.

He barely stopped to eat most days. Probably why he always looked a little bit like a scarecrow if you didn't know how to look. Impossibly narrow through the hips. That illusion because his legs were just so long.  Knobby knees. Got those legs, those knees too. He could take a whole room in a few strides. But he rarely did. He truly ambled most places. Anyone that tall ought not look that way when they walk. It's art in motion.

I never realized until very recently that I got that grace too. That tall grace. I always wanted to be like that. Tall and poised and graceful. Like Nicole Kidman. I was getting up from the floor and I did this thing I always do, no hands, feet where they are, stand and twist my body. Change direction and stand at the same time. And I saw someone else do and thought it looked amazing. Only then did I realize I've always done the same thing. I then wondered if that fluid efficiency was mine. And it must be. That thing about doing anything enough times.

And I've heard people tell me so of late. That I'm graceful. That I walk every room like a peacock. The world is my runway. And yours. And theirs. Pictures of myself and I look slim and graceful. When did that even happen? I guess when I wasn't paying attention. Thank you, Daddy.

His shoulders were broad. Mine are not. He had these caps of deltoids and long biceps and you could see his back muscles working through his cotton shirts. Too big to move that easy. 6'3", I think. About a buck seventy. Carried all across his shoulders, which just made him look more narrow everywhere else. To a child, he looked like he just went up and up forever.

When I was still small enough to be picked up, he'd fill his the pocket of his white button-down shirt with old fashioned candy from the Jeannette glass cake box that sat atop a small bookshelf in the dining room. The sound of the lid clinking back into place still takes me right back to the way he'd scoop me up on his nonexistent hip and offer that pocket to me. If I close my eyes, I can go right back to that place. I wish I could go all the way right back to that place.

I eventually bought one of those dishes from eBay. Same color. I keep candy in it. It's those small reminders of a time when I was cleaner that keep me going some days. His locket with me and that photo of us when I was a baby. 

It's the time of year, I suppose. He wouldn't work in this cold. He'd say the paint would freeze. I have no reason not to trust that as fact. I hate the cold, but I sure do think fondly on the days he would be in the basement woodworking in front of the gas heater with a cigarette hanging from his lips instead of out there where I didn't get to sit in the quiet with him all day, the loudest sounds the slight hiss of the heater and the snick and snap of bits of wood and furnishings.

He would always say that it got coldest just before the sun came up. I've found that to be true in more than the literal way. Holding on to that idea right now. It sure is fucking cold.