Dads

We laughed in a room of
the color of wilting irises,
once beautiful, now old.
We always had the cheap light bulbs.
The yellow light tiredly tinted the shadows.
And then after buckets of color,
we laughed in a room with a color my dad calls pear.
But not the pale dusty soft pear from the copper-colored fruit bowl.
No.
The bright yellow-green pear you slice with a knife,
crisp like stepping on an ice cube.
It was the same color as the kitchen,
where, on hot summer nights, we’d open the windows
around a plate of bibimbap, Mexican chorizo and eggs, or raisin chocolate chip cookies.
It tasted like the light cast from a warm lamp.
Hazy but comfortable.
Then, finally, 
we laughed in a room of deep blue
like the foggy Gatorades we kept in the back cupboard.
It wasn’t the same when we left.
No, it's just not the same.

During weekends there we saw our dad.
No, our other dad.
He was surrounded by walls of white.
His walls were hospital white.
Not eggshell white.
New printer paper white.
His living room
was his dining room,
was his kitchen, 
all in his bedroom,
which was the thread-worn lazy boy he slept in
in front of a leaning MDF TV stand without a TV.
My sister and I,
we used to fight about whose turn it was to use the solitary dining chair.
My other dad likes oatmeal raisin cookies.
But Dad doesn't.
I asked Dad what the difference was.
“Well,” 
he said,
“It's just not the same.”

I don’t remember the old house well.
I left when I was six.
It was when we all were still living together.
But I know there was a red deck outside the kitchen
that stretched far, far out above our backyard.
Not sea or ocean far.
Like Great Lakes far.
Our living room had tall ceilings.
I guess my being short helped.
I remember looking up at it,
after staring at the sun for too long
through the large smiling window at the front of the room.
And I would see glittering lights raining.
I later learned it's called photo-bleaching in the retina cells.
I was so much younger then.
No, it's just not the same.

Before everything changed again, 
when we still had a step-dad, 
when I was still being asked what it felt like to move to a ‘big city’
in Vermont ...
(For my English teacher that's an oxymoron.
Well, kind of,
not really.)
We lived in a house like old white sneakers with fraying aglets.
Our kitchen table wobbled.
And the dusty green pear couch was stained dark with grease.
But,
now I laugh in a room of lavender grey
with a pink flamingo wall,
with my family on a well-loved couch.
We eat in a baby blue kitchen
on a weathered grey round counter table.
I eat bibimbap and raisin chocolate chip cookies.
There is only Spanish chorizo here.

No, it's just not the same.