Home for the Holidays

Home for the Holidays

This ornate golden dragon’s head, the glass flask secreted inside its wooden shaft, isn’t the cane Grandpa used most often after his knees’ parts were re-engineered with metal and plastic, but the one given to him as a gift―half joke―willed to Dad.

I’ve just graduated crutches, home on holiday, and I fit the dragon in my palm. Cold, short like the fireplace poker, it bites: I know why Grandpa rejected it —his great hands could smother my own.

My brown cane, bought at a medical supply store in a southern Illinois strip mall, has a candy-cane arc nearly at my hip, a sturdy third leg, utilitarian, not flashy, a necessity when balance is fragile. I reject the ill-fitting, cold head, lean it against the hearth, picture it nestled with other novelty canes at Grandpa’s home ―gifts from people who’d not yet needed a prop.

Try as I might, I cannot conjure his daily cane —was it aluminum or wood—the third appendage that lent him swagger to my school plays, ballet recitals, midnight church services in Decatur, the dinner table my Grandma set—it remains translucent in my mind when I picture him, like the exact denim hue he wore, the twangy song playing on the bathroom radio, the L’Amour or McMurtry title that sat near his recliner.

Details fade like tonight’s snowflakes on the panes, but when I feel my cane’s heft, its smooth curve pressed into my palm, I remember his grace, the affectionate poke he gave Grandma’s bottom when she served dinner, the grip of his hand when we played later while dishes were cleared: he’d grab my fist and I’d pull and pull to let go

and he’d chuckle until his fingers sprang open, catching me, always catching me, before I fell.