It must have been something she read in a book. Or something a psychologist told her to tell a young child who sought some explanation for the sudden disappearance of her father. When I pushed Mom for more information about what part of his body was all done living, she told me it was his heart. It just stopped working.I don’t know what book or psychologist told her it was a good idea to tell a young child that her father’s heart stopped working, because I used to think that if only I’d given his heart more reason to work, it would never have gone and shut down.But it did.He was dead.And I was too young to miss him. Or at least to remember missing him. I told myself as I grew up that I was lucky. I had my mother to myself. I didn’t have to share her with anyone else. Those poor kids, I’d think. How do they get by, how do they even hear themselves think, with all those other people in the house?My mother kept a picture of him on her dresser. His red hair mussed from sleep, holding his bundled baby with her dull brown hair on his bare chest.
What do You think about The Summer I Learned To Fly?
