The Eleventh

The unexpectedly smooth and warm skin of my father’s cheek against my lips as I kiss him hello, hugging him carefully around the tubes.  The warmth of his hand as I hold it, his unruly hair, his shoulder exposed where his hospital gown had slipped away.

 “I’m going to fuss over you and adjust this,” I said, pulling it back up over his shoulder.  “You’re getting all seductive here with this exposed shoulder thing, Dad.”

 Mom smoothed his hair back from his forehead.  “Yes,” she said, “Don’t give me any ideas.”

 “Okay,” I said, “Just let me excuse myself.” But I sat down and Mom sat on the other side of the bed and we all watched cop car chases on the hospital room television.  After about thirty minutes, Dad was ready to nap.  We promised to come back in the afternoon.

 I said I’d see him later, and left ahead of Mom, who wanted to kiss him and murmur encouragement in his ear. 

 “I miss you, Papa,” she whispered, kissing her fingers and touching them to his lips.  “God bless you.”  She stood up.  Dad’s eyes were drooping, but he squeezed her hand.  She got to the end of the bed.

 “Now don’t get up and go dancing while I’m gone.  If you’re going dancing, let me know,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

 At my mom’s house, I’d left a pot of chili simmering on the back of the old wood cookstove.  We sat down to eat with my brother, and he kept us entertained.  “Oh you kids,” my mom said at one point, after we unpacked groceries, answered phone calls, carried in firewood, washed dishes, did laundry and told her about the other siblings soon to arrive to sit vigil during surgery on Monday.  “What would I do without you?”

 And THAT, my friends, is why anyone who mocks us for having a large family and “breeding” and “being a drain on resources” and “being irresponsible” by bringing twelve kids into the world—-THAT is why they are wrong, wrong, wrong.