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To All the Keychains I’ve Loved Before
The mementos I gave my father became reminders of our estrangement.
In the winter of 2014, my pop and I are finally in a cab traveling to the center of Dublin, my pop’s birthplace, his home. While he looks out the window and takes inventory of what has changed, the taxi driver asks where he’s from. My pop’s accent is faint; no longer the thick brogue of his youth spent carousing in pubs and drinking pints, it’s been thickened by a country of coffee and wants. My pop says, with pride, “I’m from right here. Dublin.”
Our trip was planned after months of persistent badgering (“Show me your home, your parents’ graves, and where you grew up”), a call on Christmas Eve that had me predicting our imminent doom (“We could die before we’d see your brothers again; we’re not getting any younger”), a daylong delay due to a plane with mechanical failure, and a combined total of seven hours of sleep in two days.
Next to him, I made lists of all the sites we needed to see. Not realizing what it must have been like for him to come home and find himself a stranger. People trying to figure your accent, decide where you fit. For me, this is another country ticked off a list. Another place to go.
In the countryside, my pop goes quiet. Looks outside of the tour bus we ride and…
