Commonality
We
by side holding hands out on the patio, the warm sun in our laps, between pots of red geraniums. He gripped too tightly as if afraid I would let go--his flat thumb with the soft, loose flesh on its pad like an over ripe plum worked over the back of my hand. He squinted his bleary, cataract-grayed eyes at me trying to clear the blurry blob my image made on his retina. I pulled away uncomfortable with his close proximity and sat side
looked for a bridge—a social bridge, a time bridge, something to I tried to imagine his eyes clear and brown, his life young and new. I tried to imagine his 87 years away and put him connect on. 19 like me.
fragmented stories of his I asked all the questions I could think to draw the gap together. But he tired of telling me his complicated business stories I queried him about. The words came too slowly and his memory globbed whole decades together. I quizzed him on the fine Cadillac in his garage—the make and year— and tried to look interested, but the I
tried to put together the
past and construct a commonality between us.
conversation was as limited as his eyesight. So
I
recited poetry,
Edwards and Shakespeare, Poe and Pope, Cowper and Bunyan. Out of poems, I asked if he wanted to learn one. He pressed his flat forefinger to his lips as if trying to decide and nodded his head. We began phrase by phrase. "This "This "I
hill hill
though high," though high,"
covet"
"I covet"
"To ascend" "To ascend," he paused to hear me repeat the line again. We never even got tot he part that said, "The difficulty will not me offend" before his eyebrows bunched and I promised we'd take it up again tomorrow. A silence as sticky and heavy as scrambled eggs lay splattered between us. "Just talk to me. Princess," he said and I sighed-at a loss.
"What about?" "Oh, just about you." I knew he had grown up on a ranch-he blamed back on his younger years of breeding unwieldy colts. describing
my summers
at
home
in California.
his I
bum
began
Not much
the
