The day is quiet and mostly empty with small sounds to fill it. Lily, born 15 years ago tonight. That first house was small but warm with a banquette table squeezed into the corner off the galley-style kitchen with the bead board and built-in spice racks. 1920s craftsman, never fucked with by bad renovation. The master bedroom sunken, a working fireplace in the corner! That Sunday morning the roof started to leak and the rain poured through the ceiling and I had to put a kettle on the floor to catch it and shimmy my way through the attic with a headlamp looking for the cause but never finding it. Lily, born today and growing up in that little house in West Seattle behind the Sub Shop #9 and the corner bar we never once visited, Chuck and Sally’s. The day I saw two shifty-looking guys there and called 911 and my hunch was right, they’d just stolen a car. The cops wanted me to identify them, to just amble by nonchalant while they were in the backseat and say yes or no. Getting my head shaved then. Days of good light in the house, late afternoon. Lighting the grill out front and partying with the neighbors. Young still with a baby girl named Lily, short for Elizabeth. Putting her on my back and walking down to the park with my coffee on the weekends. Breaking the cobwebs when September came. That time when there is no future, only the long expanse of the now.

Categories: Memoir, parenting, prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, Memoir, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, parenting, prose, Seattle, William Pearse writer, writing