When my friend Phyllis told me about the One Good Memory Series hosted by Silver Birch Press, I immediately thought of this memory with my dad … amazing to me how much we are shaped by a moment early in our lives. I am so grateful to SBP for publishing it on October 9, 2022.
Walking 5th Avenue
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
I am again fifteen
with my father,
my first trip to New York,
and he is not yet
in life-changing pain,
and we stare
in store windows,
eat street pretzels
and look for sales racks.
I don’t know yet
how he will hurt
too much to walk,
how even standing
will become impossible.
No, in this memory
we are walking
and laughing
as if we will forever,
as if there won’t
be a morning
when I wake in New York
almost four decades later
and reach to call him
and thank him
for that long-ago trip,
only to remember
he can no longer
answer the phone.
All day, I hear his laughter
as I walk. All day,
I feel his hand
reaching for mine.