"Father" by Armin Tolentino

I had other things planned for the day.  I was going to see a movie and go to the church, hadn't been in several years, but felt it would be nice to light some of those candles, one for my mother, one for my little brother.

I should have stuck to the plan.  But the paranoia made me skip everything and head straight to the docks.  It was December and had snowed recently, maybe a week ago.  Now piles of muddy slush lined the sidewalks.  The sky was eternally gray.  The only boats in the marina were privately owned sailboats and so the place was dead until spring.

There was a sidewalk with a ledge along the water from which docks poked out like fingers.  I have a vague recollection of street fair around this area that I attended as a kid, maybe I was five or six, trying to keep up with my father, not get lost in the crowd.  He bought me a model airplane that day that still sits on my dresser.

I sat on the stone ledge and looked down.  You couldn't see into the water; below me was a sea of old coffee.  A pole in the water said it was only about five feet deep where I was.  I had a back pack that I laid down and I sat for a moment, breathing in the coldest air I can ever remember, the wind whipping off the Chesapeake and beating me full in the face.  My eyes watered from it and I couldn't feel my cheeks anymore.

The street lamps were still burning, but would probably turn off in a few minutes as daybreak approached.  I was curled up in the shadows of a mast, knees to my chest, and I began clapping as loud as I could, my frost bitten hands feeling like they would crack.  It was stupid of me, there were coffee shops nearby opening for a new day and someone was bound to hear me.  But I felt uncontrollably crazy with excitement and couldn't resist the urge for ceremony, some sort of celebration.  It seemed anticlimactic for it to end so quietly.  If I had stuck to the original plan, then there would be people walking the sidewalks at that hour to see me off.  I couldn't stop my numbed hands from shaking as I punished myself with each brittle clap.

"Congratulate me!  Come on, people!  Congratulate me!"  I thought I screamed that, remember it as a scream, but it was probably very quiet because no one took notice.  My heart was jack hammering with the influx of adrenaline.  But in my head it was loud; I felt I was growing hoarse from it.  Again, I was thinking too much and tried to stop all that movement going on in my head by saying over and over, this is right, this is right.

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