Happy birthday, Dadio.  I’m playing counter boy in memory of you at this greasy spoon.  I squeak on my vinyl stool and toy with a paper napkin.  I try folding it into an angel.  You’d tell me to act my age.  My counter mates?  A model-thin blonde in a Reed College sweatshirt and a bald man thumbing The Oregonian. The stink of fried eggs makes me nauseous.  The waitress slides over a menu—she’s doubling as the cook.  I contemplate specials as steam fogs my cup. 

Moments of indecision always summon you.  “Learn to be decisive,” you barked.  I was your thorn, a chronic pain infected by the disgust of never making you proud.  “Worthless,” you mumbled one New Year’s Eve.  I learned defeat in our closed-door sessions, when screams and I’m-sorry-Daddy’s joined the beat of the belt.  I touched my wall and felt sorrow moving in waves through the redwood.        

I vow to quit remembering.  Memories send me beyond blue, into the indigo sky before twilight.  Dadio, you carried hate into the hospital bed, where I spoon-fed you vanilla pudding and rubbed your feet under the sheets.  Cold feet, I thought, icy heart.  A nurse checked your pulse.  “No more flowers,” you scolded when my Christmas antheriums arrived.  I swore you’d never die but, if you did, I’d lug you like an overstuffed suitcase into the future. 

A coffee refill comes—steam rises like a ghost.  The blonde leaves and I crumple the angel napkin.  The bald man retreats to the restroom.  I feel as if I’m not human at all but a cold-blooded creature propped on a stool.  The truth?  Dadio, I’ve been shaped by you, folded by a lifetime of disappointment into a wrinkled toad.