a time

by tracy o'shaughnessy

see it in the first innocent, playful notes of chance to see Dad. Dad.

I stood on the other side of the room and watched her. She just kept on crying. I was eight years old.

"Dadd's gone." she said. streaking her hand acrOSs her face. The Way We Were." The way the notes dance on the end of the keyboard: gouthful. fresh. I can almost hear the erratic sputer of my uncle's sixteen-millimeter film. I hear the music. I see the film. I lay back. and remember.

It was 196S and I was six years old. It was the time when moie cameras reached the masses and everybody wanted to be Frank Capra. My uncle just wanted to be Alan Funt. Tht's how he must have taken these pictures. I can see us in the backyard-my dad. Jim. a mutt we named Major. and me. At the edge of the screen I see the skunk cabbage that each gear inched farther out of the woods and toward the patio. The stuff stunk like mad. and if sou got it on gou. gou'd have to take a bath in Tide to smell like a human being again.

Dad was throuing us into the skunk cabbage. into the compost pile. over the tree stump. or angwhere his left fielder's arm would have us land. He called it roughhousing. Jim. the dog and I would crash into his stomach. muss up his dippety-do pompadour and pull on his faded jeans. Nothing seemed to faze him. The guy was a rock.

I can seemyself in the film with the same disçusted look at six I carry at wenty one. I'm siting in the mud. arms crossed. all bruised up. defjing tears to fall. waiting for Daddy to notice lI'm hurt. But he never did. He was too busy with my brother and the stupid dog. d have cried if I thought it would help. but Daddy said Irishmen don't cry. We're t0o tough. We let evergbody wear their hearts on their sleeves and we just bite the bullet and show the vworld vwe can take it.

The film flutters over the reel and I rememberedvwhenm mother entered my ovn cinematic menory for the first time. tvo years later. It was fal. my favorite túme of the gear. and I awoke early to a crisp. urging wind. I remember seing her shoulders shaking from the back of the Ethan Allen colonial divan we used to have. I had never seen my mother cry before. I had never seen m mother as angthing but mother before. I was

Scared.

The next morning. I entered the hollow silence of St. Brigid's and knelt at the altar. i looked at the buming candle encased in red glass that stood under the portrait of the Blessed Virgin. They alvays kept the flame lit. When our CCD. class vwent on a tour of the altar. theg told us the flame was kept lit to spmbolize the eternal presence of Jesus Christ. I stared at it. and stared at it. and after all that time.

I remember stretching my neck over the dashboard of the 68 Chevy Impala and wondering vhy the trip to Grandma's was taking so long. "What's wrong with the car. Mom? I asked. but she just looked straight ahead.

We finally reached the big gray twofamity house in the section of Arlington they call the Heights. I ran up the brown linoleum steps: tro at a time. then three. as fast as my leçs could ake me. I didn't even look at his face. I just nushed into his arms and held him tight. He held me as tight as he could. but it was almost as if he didn't want me near. I was slared at it.

I didn't see my father at all that fall. Mg mother made up some excuse about a business trip. My father worked as a newspaper typographer. Where the hell could he go?

Funng. but when you're at that age. October to December doesn't mean months. it means minutes. it means hours. It means empty mornings you wait for the second hand to hit twelve to show it's ten o'clock. Sometimes I'd feel like flinging open the bed room door and beating the dog to the bed to wake up Dad. To shake him up when I knew he already might be awake. just waiting to tickle me to death.

Kind of dumb. the love a daughter has for her father. When I got to college and took my first Intro to Psych class I found out there was a rational. clinical reason for it. I wrote it down with the rest of the 120 freshmen in the class. and vwhen the question came up on the exam. I circled B and got a check beside the afraid again.

I needed my father's strength that şear. I needed it more than anything Eversbody else was wimpin' out on me. All Mom did was cry. AI I wanted was for thinçs to be like they used to be. AIl I wanted was to re member to put Daddg's white bread on the supper table when eveybody else forgot. to go to a Sherwin Williams paint store on Saturdag with Dad and play with the water cooler while he talked about the Sox. All I wanted was to annoy him while he dug up bushes. watered down lawns and shoveled snow off our two and a half lot cape in sub- urbia. That's all.

I was siting at Grandma's feet when he opened his present. He opened it slowły. and I hought I saw his hands shaking. but it must have been the wrapping paper. He looked into the frame. looked at each one of his children playing in the leaves. He ran his callused hands over the walnut and kept staring number ten.

Someime in November of that very long fall. my mother took the three of us to this park and had a photographer take candid shots of us plaging in the leaves. We glued the pictures inside a walnut 12"x 18" frame and wrapped them in red holiday paper.

But we barely got angthing for Christmas that gear. My mother was working as a secrelarg at some high-tech firm on Route 128 and made $2.65 an hour. The only gift we really got that year. the only thing that made the Christmas carols so sweet. was the into the frame.

I smiled. I waited. Why didn't he say angthing? Did I do something wrong

Then I saw it. slow at first. like out of a dream. something verg unreal. Water built in his hazel iris so much like mine. filled the edge of his eye. and fell slowiy down his windburned face.

And at that exact moment. as the tear melted silently into the vingl cushion below. a litle girl and her father vanished into al memory.

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Rst Grade Farming

Beans grOw well in eg carton depressions shaped like an ear. I decided to plant next to mş hearing a slippery kidney and see what sprouted. One less hole in my head and l'd be balanced but whenIwanted it out the more I pulled the further in it pushed.

I sat quietş waiting to leave. Steve Klinsky told the teacher I had tears in mỹ eges.

David Oleshansky

At Beaumont Hospital the Korean emerçenc resident probed. I screamed. He told mg mother to leave. the nurse to wrap me in a green sheet. He strapped me to the table. caught the bean's end in forceps. I labored. screamed my five year od ears off and the sprout out.

He gave me the bean and said to plant it.

"All the little beans will have that blood. a birthmark on the tip." Ineverfarmedbeans no more.