“Come on, buddy,” Dad would say, patting the cushion beside him. “Your turn.”
I’d climb up with my little toy guitar and pretend I was performing in front of thousands of people. Mom would stop stirring whatever was on the stove and lean against the doorframe, watching us with that particular smile she had, the one that made the whole kitchen feel warmer somehow, even with the window cracked open in winter.
Then Mom died when I was nine, and the music stopped.
I remember the week after the funeral with unusual clarity, the way grief sometimes freezes certain details while blurring everything else. Dad put his guitar away. Not dramatically, not with any announcement. I came home from school one Tuesday and noticed the case was gone from its spot beside the couch, and when I asked where it went, he said, “Put it in the closet,” in a voice that told me not to ask again.
He started taking extra shifts, coming home exhausted and barely speaking to me. He worked long hours at the auto parts warehouse, kept food in the fridge, and signed my school forms. But he never seemed to care how my day had been.
“Can I get new shoes? These let water in,” I remember asking him once, standing in the kitchen in socks still damp from the walk home.
“Put on another pair of socks,” he said, without looking up from his dinner.
