I’ve been distracting myself from COVID, not with writing, but rather, with cleaning out closets. I’m coming across important artifacts from different times of my life (not just expired medication and ancient toothpaste). One such artifact was my long form Canadian birth certificate. I realized it wasn’t typed or filled in by some anonymous bureaucrat, but rather, was populated by my father’s familiar capital letters. The sight of his documentation of my entrance into the world makes my heart hurt.
I also came across, my father’s notebook from when he was teaching himself English in the thirties,
a tiny note to my mother with a hand-made envelope, written the year they were married:
and one of his mimeographed problem sets from the sixties:
Going through these and later writing, I see the disintegration of his typewriter-like script graphically displayed. His note to me outlining his medications. Parkinson’s inserts a waver in his voice and his writing:
And the slanting script of one of the last things he hand-wrote, from the last pages of My City.
I see my father, young and hopeful, then older and less so.