That last line has me sobbing.
I love to read, and hardcopy only. I've been on a classics binge: Little Women, anything Dickens, The Jungle, and am halfway through The Plague right now. I don't think I could fall asleep without an hour of a good book. And from my local library for the most part, so I don't need to dust books.
I love that bit about the mandarin. xo
Ohhh sorry.
I loved the Plague. It's been years since I read it but I remember him standing at a balcony or window looking onto world with utter despair. It shaped my love of Apocalypses, hah!
Who would have thought a tiny orange speck could undo me. On the last conversation I had with Dad, which was perfect but never enough and often thought about, he was eating blueberry and strawberry - just a couple. He slid the bowl toward me in the long tradition of fatherly affection shown through the offering of food, though he was a day or two off dying then. All his being was Father in that moment. The shared laugh as he dropped a berry on his lap. Asking me how the surf was. Saying he was good, when he wasn't.
The speck of mandarin was the last remnant of all that.
You will find more remnants of his fatherly love, some in memories, now and then a whiff of something, or the sun hitting a wave just so. May these be many.
Thankyou! Today it was in ordering a new custom longboard - it has a dog on the logo and he would have loved that, let alone the longboard!
