365 Memories

As a daughter who enjoys a deeply bonded relationship with her father, a memory springs to mind now, on the eve of my wedding anniversary; a memory concerning a tradition I imagine might be perfunctory for some, but that for me was anything but: the father-daughter dance. I remember, in the months leading up to the wedding, agonizing over what song we should dance to. Whose idea was it, finally, to choose a song by Alan Jackson? By default, I assume it was my idea, but I can't remember the notion actually coming to me; it's possible he made the suggestion. Really, it seems just as appropriate (emotionally, if maybe not technically accurate) to say that we found the song together, both of us owning the idea equally. My father had been a fan of Alan Jackson since way back. I remember being college age when I first borrowed his album, Don't Rock the Jukebox , and heard Jackson's accented voice and his clever lyrics, humorous and soulful, for the first time. I appreciated h...

Father's Day is coming to an end. I have been thinking of my dad throughout the day, though, and wondering what I could possibly write to do him justice, to honor him. A lifetime of memories—forty years of them, shy some months—often simply blend into a constant, comforting knowledge: less a specific image or recalled dialogue, more just an ongoing certainty that he is there for me, always has been, in every interpretation of the phrase. We are bound by more than our blood, our cells, our DNA . . . and without him, I would be a sorry shadow of the person I am. And yet, he reminded me of something the other day: our first trip together, just the two of us, in the summer of 1978, when I was almost nine years old. In August of that year, we drove from Chicago down into Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains, before continuing on to Georgia, where we'd meet other family members. We stopped and stayed a couple of nights in Gatlinburg , Tennessee , a quaint rustic town proud of its simple...

In the summer of 1999, while I was still in grad school pursuing my MFA in Creative Writing, my father and I planned a brief getaway—a bit of time for the two of us to change the scenery, to reconnect, to share simple meals, and to write and read and talk together. My father selected the destination out of a guidebook to monastery guest houses: we were to stay at Mount Saint Mary's Abbey, a community of Trappestine nuns in Wrentham , Mass . Mount Saint Mary's, it turns out, was the first monastery of Cistercian nuns in the United States. The first sisters had arrived from St. Mary's Abbey in Glencairn , Ireland, back in 1949, so our stay coincided with the Golden Jubilee anniversary year of foundation. We arrived, checked in, and were then shown to our rooms in the retreat house by the "guest sister." I remember two interesting things about the guest sister, though I don't remember how I learned them. Did she just volunteer this information? It would be unli...

"Mama's little baby loves shortnin ' shortnin ', mama's little baby loves shortnin ' bread." My father would slap his knee as he sang. If I ran into the kitchen to fetch a pair of soup spoons, he would put them back to back and clack them together, good as any member of a washboard band. He'd do "Swing Low," "Dry Bones," "Old Man River." George Jones, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Alan Jackson. When I talked to my grandparents on the phone, they called me "sugar"; they asked " when're  y'all fixin ' to come down and visit?" When we visited, there was always a trip to Morrison's Cafeteria. Southern vegetables are cooked within an inch of their lives. Collards and pot likker ; string beans, okra, and black-eyed peas. Butter your corncob using a slice of white bread. Cornbread dropped in a glass of buttermilk, dug out sopping with a spoon. For a while, our northern kitchen boasted a set of h...

Almost exactly seven years ago, early April 2002. It was three months after my small civil marriage ceremony, performed in Connecticut by a justice of the peace; it was three months before the church wedding and reception planned for family and friends in southwest France. Married, yet somehow not, in a state of transition, I embarked with my father on a "heritage trip" by car, driving down into the Deep South. Georgia, Alabama: the roots of my father's childhood, the seat of a civil rights revolution in its infancy. I had really never explored this part of the country, not in any important way, and in no way with a feeling of connection. My grandparents, Southern to the core, had moved to a Florida retirement town before I was born, and visiting them never really seemed "Dixie" to me. This was a bonding trip, a time to pause and honor ancestry before the life of the future (my separate, legal family life) came to assert itself, forcefully, everywhere. We had pl...

Am I five years old? Seems about right. At this age, I took a plane by myself from Chicago to Florida to visit my paternal grandparents. (Being the mother of a boy the same age now as I was then, I shudder to think of this.) I remember I was in a window seat and, I think, in a bulkhead row on the right-hand side of the plane; I have a memory of seeing the exit door to the left of where I sat. I recall the widening space between myself and my parents, their worried withdrawal (or was it just my father I glimpsed at that last moment?)—also my sense of perfect security despite being alone. I don't remember the flight itself, what I did to pass the time, if I talked to anyone. I don't remember arriving in the airport in Florida, don't remember the drive to my grandparent's house (in an overly large dull green American boat of a car), but I can clearly see their driveway and the garage through which we entered into Mimi's kitchen. This is the central memory, though: the ...