Hold me again

When you’re 26 years old and your dad has been dead for a little over a year, you forget you’re still sore. It’s like a bruise that you forget you have until something bumps it. It’s a small thing, usually, like some guy with the same receding hairline and the frameless glasses he had 15 years ago. And once you remember that you have the bruise, it begs you to push it. So you realize your dad was a little taller, and this guy is a little too skinny, so you conjure the pleasing roundness of his belly that set in with middle age, and you remember the snowboarding lesson you took together when you were 13 and he was starting to realize he was getting old, and the instructor reminded him that his “6 pack” was now a “keg.” You imagine your dad in this same setting. He would have worn that yellow button-up instead of this guy’s blue checked one. He would have feigned calm and tried to ease the room with some bad jokes. He would have had most of his words planned. You could always tell. Did everyone else know? Did his colleagues who’d worked with him for 10 years know when he was nervous? He would have never really admitted it to you, but you could tell when he felt the importance of getting something right. And you remember how he was always trying to do things right. And you have to stop pushing the bruise before you cry out in pain, as the tears swell behind your eyes and your face gets hot. When you release the bruise, there isn’t the instantaneous relief that comes with the un-twisting of an arm or the release from a hair-pull. Instead, a dissatisfaction fills the place the pain was as the unfairness of it all settles in and you realize you pushed too hard, and it will ache for the rest of the day.