Last year I posted about a topic which interests me: memory, and how it percolates through the brain. So much of what we call memory impacts our lives daily, even subconsciously, it would seem. Guilt, I believe, may impact us in similar ways. Please share thoughts or snippets from your life.
Years before I was even a thought in my father's mind, he was gunning his '65 Mustang up the interstate away from Miami Air Force Base and listening to his first wife complain about the heat and her hair slapping her face. He was afraid of turning on the air because the car was running hot. In the backseat the baby was crying and red in the face; no, she was bleating and screaming.
"Hush!" my father says, passing an oil tanker
"Don't yell at her! She's hot, too."
My father closes his eyes and bites his lip. " I'm sorry, but I just changed her thirty minutes ago and she ate not long before that. "
She pinches a hair from her tongue and wipes sweat from her forehead with a towel. "I know you are stressed out about where we are going to live but we need to stop."
He refused and at a rest area an hour later, the baby still crying and face wrinkled red, he unsnaps her onesie and removes the safety pin and cloth diaper. Two pricks of blood appear on the purple blotch of her chubby side. My father gasps and looks at the bloody pin. He wipes his eyes and cradles her to his chest like a lamb as her sobs subside. His eyes burn again and stomach rolls like a wobbly melon. He wants to hurt himself. Burn himself. Shove that pin in his eye.
He holds her a long time and watches his wife approach across the steaming parking lot with two Cokes. How long until he tells her?
Years before I was even a thought in my father's mind, he was gunning his '65 Mustang up the interstate away from Miami Air Force Base and listening to his first wife complain about the heat and her hair slapping her face. He was afraid of turning on the air because the car was running hot. In the backseat the baby was crying and red in the face; no, she was bleating and screaming.
"Hush!" my father says, passing an oil tanker
"Don't yell at her! She's hot, too."
My father closes his eyes and bites his lip. " I'm sorry, but I just changed her thirty minutes ago and she ate not long before that. "
She pinches a hair from her tongue and wipes sweat from her forehead with a towel. "I know you are stressed out about where we are going to live but we need to stop."
He refused and at a rest area an hour later, the baby still crying and face wrinkled red, he unsnaps her onesie and removes the safety pin and cloth diaper. Two pricks of blood appear on the purple blotch of her chubby side. My father gasps and looks at the bloody pin. He wipes his eyes and cradles her to his chest like a lamb as her sobs subside. His eyes burn again and stomach rolls like a wobbly melon. He wants to hurt himself. Burn himself. Shove that pin in his eye.
He holds her a long time and watches his wife approach across the steaming parking lot with two Cokes. How long until he tells her?
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