Where the Dog Star Never Glows by Tara L. Masih

Author:Tara L. Masih [Masih, Tara L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611870565
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sunday Drives

It was what we did every Sunday for many years, while our neighbors sat in church pews. My father insisted on piling our family into the car for a drive. Destination is unimportant, he said. What matters is that we are all together. In his own way, he was worshiping America’s roadside stops and tree-lined vistas from the dashboard of his ’63 Thunderbird—the ’Bird, as we came to call it.

Togetherness was my father’s dream. It was something he worked for on those afternoons. Today I know more about his lonely childhood, but then his need only felt like a burden, to always be happy with each other. When my younger sister Gracie and I fought in the back seat, claiming our territory with a sacred line imagined down the center of the car’s interior, my father grew upset. My mother, with two sisters of her own, would repeat that it was normal for siblings to fight. Not in my family they don’t, he’d say. I could feel the anger in the way the car moved, sharp and abrupt, and I sensed it was time to quiet down.

I think it’s accurate to say the ’60s was the final decade when most middle-class families had just one car, mainly for the father’s use. It was the same in our family—my mother, basically, was stranded during the week. She relied on the soaps and her neighbors for distraction, and had to be content to live a life of waiting—for her children to come home from school, for her husband to come home from work. I still see her rushing to open the door, see her standing and waiting for my father, weary from his job as a plumbing engineer for Grumman, shoulder bent with the heavy contents of his briefcase. She would take his felt hat and overcoat, so eager to show her love in this way. My father insisted on kissing each one of us hello, another ritual to show our togetherness.

I remember my father as being a great lover of hats. He wore one even while mowing and raking. When preparing for Sunday drives, he would pull from the hall closet a canvas hat, decorated with a checkered ribbon around the brim. It spoke of the breezy casualness with which he took these trips. My mother wore her gauzy scarves, triangular folds tied beneath her chin, looked bug-eyed in her large, round Jackie O. sunglasses.

Aside from these items, my father’s idea was to leave the house with nothing—no purses, no toys, no food or umbrellas. He did bring his alligator wallet, with special money set aside for whatever might come up. Learn to be yourself, without props and supports, he preached. Learn to be free of it all. Learn you don’t need things, but be grateful to go back to them.

My memories of the early drives are sweet and filling. Long Island’s moving panorama of forests and harbors, strip malls and farmstands never grew tiring. But sometimes the ’Bird’s blue, polished exterior, catching the sun, and the warmth building up within lulled me into a light sleep.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.