Looking for My Father

My parents were married for 67 years and lived most of those years in a big old house that needed a lot of care. It was my father’s project and my mother’s pride. This poem is based on an incident when my father was 90; it was inspired by James Crews’ “Telling My Father.”

I found him in the cellar

holding a piece of hose attached to nothing,

holding it gently in two hands, as though

it were a piece of delicate machinery.

He looked up perplexed

when I appeared partway down the stairs.

“I don’t know what to do with this.”

He gazed at the piece of orange hose,

voice thick with sadness.

The piece of hose – it had a purpose, but what?

This not-knowing from the man who knew how

to fix everything in the house.

“Me neither,” I said, “Do you think it matters?”

“She said it wasn’t working.”

Subtext: he would do anything for her,

because he loved her, because he couldn’t

stand her nagging. Because for the moment

this hose held his worth as a husband,

a fixer, the one she could depend on.

“Let’s go upstairs. She has lunch ready for you.”

While they ate, I attached the hose and

directed it to the drain. Later I would find

him running the vacuum cleaner

because she asked him to, because

this much he still remembered.