A Moment of Clarity, by Taylor

In preparation for reading "Beowulf," students wrote vignettes about people in their lives who they considered either good or bad. Taylor chose to write about a complicated moment from her experiences with her father.

We're sitting in our silver and black Expedition driving on Interstate 91 going North toward Meriden. It's around 8:00 at night and my father has just picked me up from choir rehearsal. Like always, his window keeps going up and down, depending on his whim. The car is silent. It's so silent that I can hear the rhythm of our breathing. In and out, out and in. I guess my father hears it too and doesn't like its sound, so he turns up the radio and his favorite song is on, Cameo's "Word Up!"I begin to smile and so does my dad. He turns up the volume even more and now the song is blasting throughout the entire car. The smooth grey leather seats are rattling with the beat. Then Cameo begins to sing, "So tell me what's the word? A word up!" and so does my father. He's laughing, smiling, and dancing to the song. I laugh too becasue my father's form of dancing is to move his arms around in a circle, but he's all off beat.

As I watch him, I see the good side of my father. The side that tuaght me how to ride a bike, that would dance with me when the teme song from the T.V show "COPS" would come on. The side that made me love my dad. The side that rushed me to the E.R. when my finger needed to be saved from the sharp metal of a partially opened can. The side that would comfort me when I woke up crying because I had a nightmare about the monster in my closet. I couldn't see the side of thim that would make countless promises to take me to a friend's party or to a dance and then come home two hours late and say, "Sorry, I forgot." I couldn't see the side that left me waiting by my bedroom window for him after he had left becasue of an argument with my mother. The side that would leave for hours and come back smelling like liquor and tobacco smoke. I couldn't see those things that constantly make me want to hate him.

Cameo's song is on its last "Hey" and the music begins to fade. The song has ended and my father routinely turns the radio back down and the fun goes down with it. Silence returns and I lay my head on the window's cold glass and the rest of the ride home I ask myself: "What happened to the good side of my dad?"