I had a dream, the kind that happens just before you wake up. In my dream the phone rings, and I answer and it is you.
You speak my name, your voice tipping up in a quesiton, and I know what you are going to say before you say it. Why else would you be calling? You only call on birthdays, and since that last argument I had with him - could that really be a year ago now? - not even then.
“Your father died,” you say, and then we listen to one anothers' silence.
“I’m coming home,” I tell you. I use the word automatically, though it has not described the place where he is for nearly thirty years.
I wake with the word home on my lips and the sound of the phone ringing. I open my eyes and the tears that were stealthily collecting there slowly retreat to their home, which is - and has always been - the place where he lives.
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Yawp
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Comments
Home is where........home is where?
These dreams go on when I close my eyes,
Every minute of the night I live another life.
Thumbed.
I do not consider your writing inelegant or lengthy. You have the same kind of compactness of thought as that story long ago, and the same efficient delivery. THAT'S what I meant. :-D
Jane, and Tom - at least on some level I guess I've been thinking just that.
Bill - of course you didn't sound like you were criticizing me, but thanks for being so sensitive.
mamoore - for me, the best stories aren't the shortest, but the most memorable ones have always been.
thanks for sharing this.
Marcela
i thought of that with the 'I wake with the word home on my lips'.
when I was twenty-one, I dreamed my father had died. I woke up, crying. Such relief: just a dream.
A month later, he died. I woke up the next morning. Such a relief: just a dream. And then I remembered.
I think we could all learn a lesson from this piece. So full but not long. Potent and organized.
Home on your lips...mine too, sister.