He was like a distant land known only through travelers’ tales, an inhospitable realm where strange and shocking customs survived. There, moths and butterflies were stalked, caught, dried, labeled, and displayed on the walls of every room, as if they were charms against evil spirits. Pea soup and bagels were the staple foods. The Boston Red Sox were noisily worshipped there and the tobacco leaf ritually burned, its foul-smelling smoke, unknown in our house, constantly rising upward like incense. My mother had been there, carrying me out of that country when I was eight months old. As my father, in the sixteen years after, hadn’t found time to once call or write, I grew up to be grateful she’d taken me with her. She was his ex-wife; I was his ex-daughter. I’ve found myself musing on all of this while making my way down Hatfield Road. I gaze out across the field to my left, hear a meadowlark singing, smell freshly cut hay, amazed by my present circumstances: to be strolling at dusk in North Hooton, New Hampshire, having started the day in Berkeley, California; to be in my father’s town, walking down his road, heading intentionally toward his house, a destination I’d long vowed to avoid; to find the sight of the “Eggs”
