The Metal Snake
A Short Memoir by Stacey Crowley
I work in stealth to clear forgotten artefacts from my mother’s closets as she surfs the night with the blessed deep sleep of a mildly demented woman. Lifting a final box from the floor of the hall closet, I catch a glimpse of black metal lying on the floor, a linear version of a coiled snake resting in the cool dark, the cane that carried a hunch-backed, broken man through his final years.
I am too slow closing the door and the memories strike. The stale, fruity tobacco scent of cigar as I kissed his ruddy cheeks. His socked feet shuffling worn Birkenstocks to the dinner table where Oxycontin lulled him to sleep mid- sentence, fork in hand. The bottle of small white pills riding in his shirt pocket above a beating heart that I longed to know, the “medicine” numbing his back pain and mind in equal measure.
As a younger man, he tried to outrun the unspoken pain of childhood trauma with speed. Those feet ran miles along the abandoned train tracks behind our house. His hands steered Harleys through New York state parks, kayaks through Adirondack white water, and our family’s party boat across the cool waters of Conesus Lake.
Decades later, driving him home from the Whit’s Frozen Custard in our North Carolina mountain town, my hand abandoned the steering wheel to find his. His silent grip spoke for him. This will be our new language, I thought.
A week later, the cane lay next to him on the floor of his bedroom. The smell drove me away before I thought to hold his hand for the last time.
That metal snake in the back of the closet is the last thing my father held. I can’t open the door fast enough.
Author: Stacey Crowley is a speech-language pathologist, literacy specialist, and neurodiversity coach. Her private practice, Learning Tree Literacy, is located outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Her work has been published in The Great Smokies Review and Yoga Chicago. She lives with her wife, Babs, and her pandemic rescue dog, Ruby Biscuits.
Felt tenderness through all of this writing. Thankyou for sharing.
Beautifully written. Well done.