December 24, 2005

Christmas Eve.

St. Rt. 589 comes to a stop sign like an end a ball of bailing twine unrolled in a hay field. If you drive through the stop sign it becomes main street, Casstown Ohio. If you look to your right there is a white house with a sign on the porch that says 'Karen's'. There is a window in the front corner of the house. On the other side of that window i sat with my father and ate breakfast.

The sun shone in through curtains in the windows and through the steam in his coffee. Pictures of high school sports teams and class portraits hung on the walls from the 1950's and the linoloum tile by the threshold cracked along the edge of the floor where the foundation had settled. There were plenty of things in front of us to talk about. But instead we talked of things we couldn't see. And things that had already happened, and some things that hadn't yet happened.

After breakfast we drove south of town. We pulled into the Lostcreek township cemetary and drove to the back and stepped out into the snow. the sun met us down by his parents grave. It was cold and clear and bright and i stood there in wide open field while he brushed the snow from their names on the stone. Plastic poinsettas sat in the snow around us and the dogs hung their heads from the back of the pickup truck and waited patiently. There were no birds in the sky. The sun was in my eyes and in the snow like a flash bulb that forgot to go out. I felt time move like a photograph fading on the wall. like crack creeping through the foundation. like snow melting on the stone. I stood there in time until my pupils contracted enough to see him find some peace.

I let out a long breath and watched it blow away in the air, and then together we walked back to the truck where the dogs hung their heads from the back of the pickup truck waiting patiently in the sun.

Posted by Todd Roeth at December 24, 2005 09:30 AM