Susan Aizenberg

Before the train screamed him through tunnels to his windowless office, the idiots he had to "sir," my father needed a space without us, so in a crack of light from the bathroom, he dressed, held his shoes by two fingers, and left us sleeping. That walk to the diner, the last stars fading out, the sky lightening from black to blue to white, was his time. He walked in all weather, let each season touch him all over, lifted his face to rain and sun. He liked to watch the old houses stir awake and nod to the woman in her slippers on 27th, smoking as she strolled her little mutt. To step back, smooth as Fred Astaire, from the paperboy's wild toss. Milk bottles sweated on doorsteps, sweet cream on top, and once, he lifted a quart from its wire basket, drank it down beneath our neighbor's winking porch light, and left the empty on the stoop.