Today's writing

When I was six I learned to tie a tie.

I was taught from example. My father knelt before me with red-rimmed eyes and lifted the collar of my white shirt. He smelled like something woodsy and somber, something that had spent years crying, decades maybe.

“Chrissie,” he said, “you’re learning early.”

With steady hands he looped the small blue swath around my neck. My father’s hands were too dignified to betray emotion, no matter the occasion, regardless of circumstance. His was the touch not of any father, but of my own: solid but not overbearing, warm without excess heat. It was the touch you feel in your sleep when you need comfort. It is the feeling you remember when the floor goes missing and the roof tumbles down.