Remembering

I see him in my face, especially in my eyes; hear him in my voice when I am too loud in public and friends attempt to shush me.

I wear his helmet when I ride my bike, carry his backpack to classes, and it’s his winter jacket that keeps me warm when the snow flies.

It’s been four years since I talked to him.

Four years since the last time he hugged me.

Though my mind is full of memories of him, I sit here soothing a sore throat with a frosty and choose to remember this:

My Dad is seriously sucking orange jell-o through a straw.

He could have been offering a dissertation on the collapse of capitalism with the amount of concentration he shows on his face.

The jell-o finally gives in to the pressure, uncorks like a champagne bottle and slides up his straw. The other people eating at Wendy’s SuperBar that night turn and look as his enormous laugh fills the fast food restaurant.

“You just made root beer come out my nose.” I say between gasping laughs.

“Better that than chocolate pudding.”

He was always so logical.