Happy Father's Day

I'm not afraid of ghosts. It's an honor--a sort of miracle--those visits from the other side. Call them what you want. Visitations, hallucinations, hauntings. If I could call them up at will, I would. I've often tried to dream of the dead, but with little success.

When my older daughter was a few days old, and I was woozy from lack of sleep, I saw my father, fifteen years dead,  in our kitchen. I was getting some orange juice out of the refrigerator. When I turned to reach for a glass from the cupboard above the sink, my father was sitting at the table. I stood there with the empty glass, "Never saw your son," he said. “I wanted to see your daughter.” He got up, looked down into C’s cradle, and then, with the smell of his Chesterfield’s lingering in the air, he was gone.