Daddy watches me as I imagine he sits on the brick front porch of my house.  His clear, blue-green gemstone eyes twinkle as he joyfully chuckles to see me.  I know his laugh.  He wears a Mom-iron-pressed white shirt, sleeves rolled up, collar unbuttoned, white t-shirt peeps out, beige trousers, neatly cuffed at the ankles, all 1950s vintage clothing now.

Silly, I think, I know, I dream.  Silly, old me.  He’s gone over thirty years, yet I feel his presence still, in wistful moments, as I pass by the porch to throw the trash to the curb in the early morning light, or walk up the drive to the kitchen door in the twilight of the soft sky at the end of the day, when night is just beginning.  Daddy is in twilight, a state of my childhood cloudiness, waning in my mind.

His gemstone eyes will never see my children, one with eyes the color of a cloudless blue summer sky, one with eyes the color of the deep, ocean blue.  They are the gems of my eye.  They would have been his, too.

“Hello, Daddy,”  I say, waving to the porch to resurrect him.

Wistful moments wondering what could have been, what should have been, what wasted wishes got rollered over by his phantom alcoholic twists-and-turns that made him abandon me and my sisters.  A spiritual resurrection comes late in life as pain lets go of wondering what to say about Daddy, how to tell about Daddy, how not to be embarrassed and hurt over Daddy, of letting go of the crumpled cursed tears of what I imagine are a daddy’s moments with my first date, high school report cards, college maneuvers, wedding aisle, father-and-daughter dance, first house, first baby, first, first, first.

With my spiritual resurrection and after Mom’s gone, I reunite my parents on my front porch.  They don’t fight as in the old days.  She sits close to him as in their early days of lustful love.

Those were ugly, the old days of fighting that fell between blessed spells.

Hateful, shuddering screams over just about anything fill our house.  Mom’s yell to Daddy to get the hell out often ends fights, as he goes his way, to Tony’s liquor store, to the Colony Bar and Grill, his brother’s house, or to god only knows where else.

“He’s an alcoholic,” said Mom, her only explanation, as if I know what that means.

Many fights are about money.  No, all fights are about money.  I think money is more valuable than me.  It is scary when they fight.  Why don’t they know how I feel and why don’t they just shut the hell up?

With one fight, the remains of Daddy’s business, a jewelry-making shop, are on the kitchen table.  In the gem-polishing business, friction is key.  In madness, Daddy grabs a box filled with aquamarine, garnet, opal, ruby, emerald, and amethyst gemstones, throws open the kitchen’s back door, and out on the porch, slings the box to the backyard.  The gems sail, skitter-scatter, settle in the grass.  As in so many of his starts-and-stops, Daddy abandons Joseph’s Jewelers, then cuts and runs from the house.

Mom orders Donna and me to collect the gems.  I use my eagle eyes to find them in the summer-green grass, turn it into a game, guess how many feet the distance is from where Daddy stood on the porch, to how far he could throw, and how much flexed muscle force is needed to make gems fly.  I think of hunting for Easter eggs, Jesus’ candy jewels in the grass.  I find a lot more gems than Donna does and tell her so.

Instead of doing this, instead of wondering what is so important about these shimmering gems to make my parents act the way they do, instead of trying to figure things out, I want to push my dolly in her carriage, ride a tricycle, pet the cat, jump rope, roll about and watch ants, pluck-and-suck sweet blossoms from the honey suckle bush, all things a six-year-old girl should do, not shudder-shake a scare in my stomach.

“Did you get all of them, Jeanne?” asks Mom.  We dump the precious gems into her cupped hands.

I silently nod yes.

“Can’t we leave Daddy and go and live with Nanny?” hiccups Donna, out of a blue dream.

Mom hands my sister a napkin to dry her tears.

“No, that’s just silly,” said Mom.