31st
Dad and the Roll Top Desk
My father, Merrill B. Scott, M.D., died unexpectedly 17 years ago today. This poem expresses merely one facet of a brilliant and loving man. Miss you, dad.
Dad and the Roll Top Desk
Eager, I toddle into the study,
where dad does his figuring
at the tall oak roll top desk.
I creep under the secretary
he has extended, looking up
into brown eyes of love, regarding
me softly over the demi-readers.
Even at three, I can grasp
that on paper, he is calculating
columns of substance,
strings of numbers behind
the slide rule that went
along on their honeymoon,
near the Pogo cartoon book.
I scrootch myself into the spot
barely left to me, settlin’, while
commodities receive value, yet
what I see is my father’s love, to
let me squeeze among the
queues and the roll top desk
while he ciphers, approving me.
Teary, I storm into my dad’s study,
in my eighth grade year, sure
that all is lost for me and the
figures I discerned as wondrous.
Geometry proofs were to blame
as I wished I could crawl under
the roll top desk of my father.
Bending to look over those
same black demi-readers,
with brown calming eyes, dad
talks me patiently through theory.
Restoring my faith and awe in
scribbling numbers down,
through repose in his being.
The slide rule is retired for an
electrified calculating machine,
but rows on papers remain.
By now a closet is overflowing
with stacks of statistical witness,
to the faith of my dad in family,
of hope and provision abiding.
Later, I stride into this study to
have many talks beside my dad.
Welcome, the brown eyes bright,
though the caterpillar-like brows
are germinating gray nowadays.
As time is fleeting, I help him to
marshal his protective forces.
Left under the oak secretary
is taped his directive memo,
so my mother will know, the
fruit of cryptic charts, spun
upon the span of father’s time.
Duty and love intertwined,
a synergy, his life’s proposal.
My sister now has the roll top
and the slide rule is my own.
Brown eyes don’t see nor arms hold,
but sparingly, in surreal spaces
I dream we have our vital
affinity restored, like once we
shared snugly in his study.
by Susan Ardith Lee
