Pouring the Milk

My dad, Joseph Winters, holding me as a baby.

I woke up this morning feeling out of sorts and couldn’t quite figure  out why. Then I saw this poem by Louise Erdrich posted on Facebook by one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Berg. She commented that she just about came undone after reading it. So did I.

The Glass and the Bowl

by Louise Erdrich

The father pours the milk from his glass
into the cup of the child,
and as the child drinks
the whiteness, opening
her throat to the good taste
eagerly, the father is filled.
He closes the refrigerator
on its light, he walks out
under the bowl of frozen darkness
and nothing seems withheld from him.
Overhead, the burst ropes of stars,
the buckets of craters,
the chaos of heaven, absence
of refuge in the design.
Yet down here, his daughter
in her quilts, under patterns
of diamonds and novas,
full of rich milk,
sleeping.

In my post yesterday, I was very rough on my dad. I’m not saying it wasn’t an honest account of my feelings about his alcoholism, but I didn’t write anything about how he got up each day before the sun came up to go to a job he detested just so that he could support our family. I didn’t write about how he gave up his own dream of being a writer because he had to raise three children. I didn’t write that he probably suffered from severe depression his entire adult life which most likely manifested in his alcoholism. I didn’t write that he was extremely intelligent, witty and well-read. I didn’t write about how he came to almost every one of my piano recitals. I didn’t write about how at Christmastime, when we all watched the black-and-white version of  Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” he would cry silently, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. I didn’t write about how much my dad loved me, and even with all of his faults, managed to tell me that regularly.

So I’m writing it now.