Language Skills

Sculpture by Melissa Zink

A man in the kitchen navigates a note to his daughter

pressing his large fingers against the tiny, flat alphabet

on my telephone. He is her father and this is a slow and

unusual communication. He is learning to link as the

children do, tapping the pint-size letters on a platen that

hardly resembles a typewriter. There is a pound key to

create space and an enter button that is a circle of silver

to Send. Our daughter has driven all day, 11 and one half

hours toward the Pacific Ocean, and having just arrived

in San Diego, transmits us a beach sunset in one dimension

while we, in New Mexico, prepare our dinner of sweet

potatoes and chicken in the oven; snow outside falling

in soft flakes like white Morse code that doesn’t stay

on the ground very long, and the dog is confused when

we open the French doors to let her out. She just stands

there looking. The house is quieter without the teenager

who by now would have roared in dropping blue clothes

and then darting out again in black ones. Instead, we slide

a film into the player and sit on the sofa to eat as our parents

did before us in front of the screen, hardly talking. Our

daughter’s faraway words linger ghost-like on the small gray

pocket-size wall. I tell her I am fine, pressing my thumbs 

against the keypad this Friday evening and that her daddy

is going to write to her next. We are nostalgic for her,

learning a new language tonight, typing on the three inch

rectangle, these love notes to our child.