Fathers are complicated things, made all the more complicated in their losing.
A squeeze of the hand; a daddy’s secret code of love to his daughter, and a checking-in after long intervals between embrace.
— Squeeze-squeeze: “Love me?”
Squeeze-squeeze: “Sure do.”
— Squeeze-squeeze: “How much?“
And I’d Squeeeeeze my dad’s hand as tightly as I could—to show him how much I loved him, and a little, to show my self-impressed, proud increase in strength since the last time we’d played this reminder-game of palm-in-palm solidarity: to me, that he was still there and not only loved me, but wanted my love. There is not a sweeter thing to a girl than a mighty father’s deference to, and even need for, his daughter’s love; to him, a way of reconnecting when even he in all his might falls short of expectations, but always a conveyance of the father lion’s warm paw—a reassurance of the protective power that lies within its fierce tendons and claws. Truth that cannot be made a lie no matter the world’s turnings.
One day, the ground beneath us both gives way to time’s tragedy. a test of tendons.
The balancing mother dies and the world loses its own feet, her one hundred and twenty pounds were all that kept the heavens from crashing.
A separation of sentiments
A fathers daughter falls away
Weeks go by
Perdition: a family affair, a wedding
The aging lion timbers in and sees his baby girl in her grown woman’s body, but with a daughter’s miffed-but-missing-her-daddy countenance.
“Let’s sit together” he said to me.
“Okay, dad.”
Dad held out his hand.
We went to sit for the procession.
His paw was warm like always–like childhood.
— squeeze, Squeeze…
My heart leapt.
He still remembered the hand game.
—“Love me?”
Squeeze, Squeeze: “sure do,” I squeeze back.
— Squeeze, Squeeze: “How much?”
My hands remember every squeeze of those lion’s paws, my father’s hands.
My hands are too light these days. They raise up in alms and wishing and missing.
Perhaps in death we seek not only our return to mother earth, but also to the protective hands of the father, for a squeezing game.