A Day Late, A Dollar Short

A tale in which my father meets my mother

My dad, during the Korean War
My father died at the age of 53 of cancer. He was born in Oklahoma in the Depression, and his mother left him there in 1935 to travel west with her best friend Opal and join the migrant workers. She made a life in California and had him brought out to her when he was old enough for school.



He was a sad boy that year, said my mother. They met each other in the first grade. Her father had lost the Montana farm in the Dust Bowl, and her family had settled in the same little California town.

Because of that circumstantial meeting, of a girl from Montana and a boy from Oklahoma in small California town, I was born 16 years later.

This is my mother at the age of 35.

(Here's a Friday Flash 55, a day late and a dollar short, as my father would say):

If I were sinking

you would rescue

If I were calling

you would come

If I were weeping

you would hold me

If I were dying

you would mourn.

I am living now

and laughing

you have saved me

from my death

You are living not

yet laughing

no one saved you

from your death.
~~~~~~