The following five pieces are from last week's online.

The prompt for this one was "What I want to say about my father.." This little half page piece took me two gut-wrenching hours to write.


FATHER'S DAY


Every father’s day before dad died I used to stand in front of greeting card racks in Hallmark or the drug store, searching for a card that I could bear to buy. Sometimes it took hours. It was a refined form of torture for me.

The mushy ones made my gut clench and my hands shake. If I could read the words on the front of the sentimental ones without sobbing out loud, I might look inside –I rarely got past the covers of those. Joke cards were easier, though most of them didn’t say “I love you”, which I did. But I could always write that in.

Some years I made my own, carefully crafting the text inside to be as innocuous as possible.

It’s been a burden I’m glad to be shed of. Because in the last seven years since he died, I don’t think the card situation has changed much. I’m pretty sure that there is still no sub-section in the aisle of father’s day cards in Hallmark, titled “child molester.”