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| 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.
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