Dad only smoked a pipe when he was at the end of his rope. Though sometimes I contributed to its fraying, more often, the harsh realities of his crushed dream of becoming an architect led him to wander the neighborhood, puffing away, as he contemplated how he, without an education, could have designed its houses better.
Mom and Dad were high school seniors when she became pregnant with me. My grandfather made Dad quit school to support us. He lost his chance at college and found himself raising me alone when, three years after I was born, Mom suffered the first of a series of strokes that eventually killed her. She never left hospital.
Despite everything he had lost, I never heard Dad complain, and he never took it out on me. Instead, he poured all his love and passion into his only daughter, working tirelessly to give me the opportunities life had denied him.
Dad’s single bookcase overflowed with architecture books and magazines. He eventually bought a drafting table and taught himself how to design houses and then more elaborate buildings. When the factory job that provided us with a decent life got to him, he pulled out his pipe and away he’d go, not returning home until he had redesigned our neighborhood and his mood had brightened.
I suppose my studying architecture was only natural. Dad never pushed me toward it, but his bookshelf called to me. By the time I was ten, I was already reading books aimed at college students, and Dad and I would spend hours together at his drafting table the way other kids worked on car engines with theirs. He was so proud when I graduated at the top of my class and landed a job with a prestigious firm.
Evelyn wheeled her chair away from her desk as tears blinded her. Ned, her partner in both life and work, rose from his own, kneeling down beside her.
“He was an amazing man, Ev.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Evelyn replied. “Writing his eulogy is so hard.”
“Let’s take a break,” Ned said, pulling Evelyn to her feet. “We can grab a coffee and redesign the neighborhood.”
This BMAC story actually made me mist up as I read the ending today while preparing to add it to the monthly queue. I built it with the words pipe, rope, and dream.
What a lovely story and a good reminder of how who we are influences the children and grandchildren in our lives. 🥰
I love this story