My Story 1

Two young girls sat on the old, brown couch dressed up on a weekday afternoon. We were doing less sitting and more squirming within twenty minutes. My mom had prepared us, at least in attire, for my fathers arrival. Several nights before during “his weekend” I remember sitting on my bed as he told my sister and I our great grandmother had died. It was the first time I had seen my dad cry. Now we were waiting for him to come take us to the funeral.

Waiting and waiting and waiting in fact. After half an hour had past from my dads expected entrance my mom finally let us off the couch and pull out our Polly Pockets. Initially we were only able to bring out one. My mom had watched children for many years and understood that more than twenty minutes of asking them to sit still and not wrinkle dresses, without anything else to occupy them, was beyond reason. Allowed one toy, my sister and I grew distracted.
I had never been to a funeral before. The weekday afternoon was not one that was traditionally my dads. He came every other weekend and every other Thursday. This was not one of those days. We rarely dressed up. In general the whole afternoon was set apart for an hour or so while we waited to see what would happened.

Time passed. We had been waiting for more than an hour, begging Mom to let us drag out our other toys and added to the miniaturized world of Polly. We enjoyed setting up whole towns in circles around us and disappearing into the roles of the little girl with all the interesting things to do and places to see. Polly’s world was there at the ready, all Mom had to do was okay our departure.

The moment she agreed to our living room take over it was like accepting defeat. He would not be coming. Promises and plans that had been made were broken. Expectations and new wonders about unlived experiences were delayed. Dad wouldn’t be there, the waste of time waiting, of preparing our clothing, of trying to keep the dirt and wrinkles from our dresses was futile. There was nothing special about the afternoon except that our routine had been broken, we were almost given the chance to look past our day to day worlds in the strict customary schedules we followed, and then we weren’t, and life went on for us girls.

It should probably be said, life didn’t go on so easily for mom. She was tired by the end of the day. Sadness and rage seemed to push toward the top after plans changed by my dad, in particular without a word from him. It hurt her, she would rant a bit about it, maybe step into the kitchen and cry, or just wear the look of a worn, older woman. She had no Polly Pockets to play with and wouldn’t take ours.