Fathers, Part I

I wake up on this Saturday morning and go to the kitchen. I grind coffee and pour the grounds into the french press. A memory comes to me. I go to my computer and start writing. I call it "Fathers." I write about Safeway as a kid and the coffee aisle there. I imagine I am sitting in the seat of the grocery cart, a perched supermarket explorer. From my vista, I suggest which cereals Dad should buy (always the ones with the coolest toys). While he picks bananas, I scan the cornucopia of squashes, oranges, grapefruits, garlic, tomatoes, and lettuce. I see him pick ingredients for dinners I love and dinners I don't. Other kids drive pass me and we look at each other and then we get caught up in the aisles that have everything and they vanish. But my favorite aisle is the coffee aisle. It smells like what I imagine my wife's hair will smell like. It smells like adventure, exotic lands, like soft perfumed dirt. It smells like what I imagine the loveliest places on the planet smell like. It's rich and addictive. My dad scans the containers of coffee, selects one, places the coffee bag over the nozzle, and lets the beans falls and splash and deepen with sound, like water. He pours his beans into the steel machine, selects the right grind, turns it on, and I watch the bean fall into the grinder the way characters fall into Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi. He places the bag in my hand and I smell it the rest of the tour of Safeway before he removes the bag from my hands, before he slides his hands under my armpits, pulls up, brings me to his chest, holds me for a moment, and then sets me down on the parking lot concrete. We go home, eat dinner, and every morning I smell his coffee.