My father, the farmer

You remember how the house almost shook when he walked. You remember flipping through his passport before he left and noticing that it said he was five feet eight inches tall, and back then, your last thought was that he must be the tallest father in the world. But now you know he isn’t. He is, after all, not taller than most men. You yourself have been with much taller men, and you know this early that there will be other taller, darker, more powerful men. But still, even when away from him, you feel a certain warmth wash over you. It’s as if your father’s gentle presence is slowly forming over your immediate world, and it is now crossing the mileage of the years, creating a particular irrelevance of time. You feel your father thinking of you at this very moment, wishing away the last moments of your separation. And then it’s as if he is already the sky over you, hovering over you, covering you with sunlight, already there where you are now, and then finally you see him before you, his face looking exactly the way you remember it, as large and as perfect as the days you spent running across the lawn while looking up to the sky with your arms outstretched, running on and on and on and laughing, knowing that you will never fall.