The morning cool was fading under a slow building heat. Papaw sat in the rocking chair, the one everyone wanted but always gave up when he was near.
Blackbirds singing on power lines.
The river murmuring.
The clink of dishes inside.
A baby crying.
The hum of a box fan.
I sipped my coffee. Sweat clung to me.
It was just the two of us on the porch, with all our differences between us. I never quite know what to say to him. So I let him talk, and I follow along.
“Right there,” he said. “That’s the spot my dad caught all those fish. 125 in one hour.”
“That’s a lot of fish,” I said.
“That night my mother fried them.”
“All caught in that spot?”
“Yes.” He stared out at the river, looking into a memory I couldn’t see.
The cabin sits quiet on the banks of the Greenbrier River in West Virginia. We spent childhood summers here, all packed in with aunts and uncles, no air conditioning, no cell signal. Days filled with swimming and sunburn. Skip-Bo and ice cream.
I always slept in the junk room on the bunk bed beside shelves of tangled fishing gear. I was scared of the dark then.
This was the first time in years we all came back. And we all knew, even though it remained unsaid, it was Mamaw and Papaw’s last time here.
The cabin is mostly unchanged. Evening light still pools through the windows. The crickets sing their love songs at night. I feel eight again, surrounded by all my authority figures.
Papaw tells me the story again. This time the facts are jumbled. His dad caught 273 fish, not 125.
Five minutes later he starts telling it once more.
At dinner, everyone is crowded around the old table, helping themselves to pizza and salad. A photo of Papaw sits on the bookshelf beside a stack of untouched National Geographics from the 70s. In it, he’s with his dad, young and strong.
Now he can barely grab himself a slice of pizza.
Mamaw looks older too.
We all do.
My aunt is getting ready to retire. My mom has two chemo treatments left. My brother is trying to find a house four hours away from my parents.
It’s unbearably hot. The days growing relentlessly hotter.
Mamaw says tomorrow it’s time to go home. She can’t take the heat anymore. Every year, for as long as I can remember, she’s written in the journal she keeps at the cabin. I’ve never read it, even though I know exactly where she hides it.
This time, my mom told me she took the journal with her home. I helped them load the car with all their bags. I watched as my aunt drove them away, and they disappeared.
That was their goodbye.
Now I sit on the porch with my mom. Just the two of us. Coffee in hand. We go over the same family stories again and again.
Just like we will for the rest of our lives.
