Yesterday Mary, elegant, eighty, dressed like myself in jeans and plaid shirt, comes into my shop and over fine art photography done by her husband now eight years’ gone, we speak of toaster ovens.
Shortly after her husband died, she told me how much she missed him in ways like the long walk with the trash barrels down to the edge of the driveway, and a broken toaster oven and I told her to bring it by and I’d have my dad take a look at it. He loved tinkering, fixing, making things work and he did. My mother was pretty far gone at the time and he needed something to give him some peace. Mary, a week later brought me a freshly baked English muffin loaf to bring as thanks to my dad. And a sparkle in her eye that I wished I could give him too.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology