In a conversation with a friend today we touched on the subject of another friend getting hearing aids. We also talked of gardens and our parents. My memory went to my Dad who was deaf as a door nail without his hearing aids. One day right after my mother died I went to talk to him. I was very upset and we sat on the porch of the Maine house. At first my lip began to quiver, then I cried and ranted and felt as if I was drowning, gasping to expel the fluids in my lungs. When I got to a stopping point and caught my breath I floated for a moment in silence in the sun as my dad held my hand. Finally, he said to me, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I feel for you, and I am completely in your corner.” The bad news is that I don’t have my hearing aids in and I didn’t hear a word you said. It was amazing his sitting and not hearing, with his hand on my hand, conveyed complete understanding, a heartfelt raft of support. It helped me navigate the waters which lay in front of me.
We straighten when his lip begins to quiver.
It’s not my place to tell you what he shared that day.
But I can tell you how M. put his hand on B.’s back
and said, maje, desahógate,
which translates roughly to un-drown yourself,
though no English phrase so willingly accepts
that everyone has drowned, and that we can reverse that gasping,
expel the fluids from our lungs.
I sit quietly as the boys make, with their bodies, the rungs of a ladder,
and B. climbs up from the current, sits in the sun
for a few good minutes before he jumps back in.
The dice finish the round and we are well over time.
I resist the urge to speak about rafts, what it means to float.
Good, I tell them, let’s go back to class.
After handshakes and side hugs, I’m left alone in the small room
with a box of unopened tissues, two starburst wrappers on the ground.
–Benjamin Gucciardi, excerpt from The Rungs in West Portal, University of Utah Press, © 2021 by Benjamin Gucciardi