Memory triggers

I scramble eggs with green onion and tomatoes, salt and pepper. I recall again my father’s preference for runny yokes. He consumed two eggs in a blink of an eye.
Dad also preferred his toast light. I prefer my toast crunchy brown.

These memories trigger the sad day my sisters and I cleaned out Dad’s last home where he lived alone after his second divorce. Again, I regret we didn’t save his phone with his voicemail greeting. Something to revive him in my life on a surprisingly sentimental March morning.

A sunny day, I stand before the kitchen window, ponder again how many pullets to purchase this spring. Although I missed my hens’ cackling this past winter, the first in a decade without their company and eggs, I did not miss the trek down and up the hill in two feet of snow.

There’s no sense in feeding and watering menopausal poultry.

I butter my toast, recall retrieving my father’s Warren hoe from the shed where he stowed away a handful of tools – remnants of what mattered most to Warren O’Brien.

I take my breakfast to my desk and write, recall Dad’s last days here, in this room, once my firstborn’s bedroom whenever she returned home until she didn’t ever again.

Days before Dad died, we sat together on the daybed Becky left behind. His brown eyes looked into mine. “You’re an angel, Iris.”

My father’s words and sincerity caught me by surprise. “Oh no, Dad. You know better.”

“No, you’re an angel.”

“If I’m an angel, Dad, you have five angels who love you as much as I do.”

Days later, Dad let his last breath, four of his five daughters beside his hospital bed. The fifth daughter who lived in Grand Rapids arrived thirty minutes later.

I sit at my computer in the place where Dad and I sat side-by-side when he spoke his tender words of love. His Warren hoe waits stowed away in my garage. Soon enough, I’ll carry his hoe into my gardens.

Meanwhile, remnants of Becky’s life wait in my study closet with remnants of my mother’s life, my father-in-law’s and mother-in-law’s lives.

And my husband’s.

Photo albums, file cabinets filled with family and community history, and baby books all trigger memories of bygone places and times – all under my care.

Indeed, I am glad to see this long winter behind us, the white petals of the only Hellebores in my gardens to survive the deer.

Now, the blooms turn pinkish. The sun and warm soil trigger green shoots throughout my gardens.

Indeed, this is the risen season.

Dear Reader, one of Warren O’Brien’s five angels, I hear his Warren hoe calling my name.

And this reminds me it’s time to oil and sharpen the hoe’s blade, and all the pruners in my garden caddy.

Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com