Simple thing

It seemed like such a simple thing that he should walk in the garage door, put his bag down on the breakfast table, and ask my mom about her day, like he always did. Over thirty years I observed this ritual, except when I went away for college, teaching, or grad school. The light that came in the breakfast room window, hot and lazy on a Texas afternoon, imparting shadows on the curtains on the side, is still sharp in my memory. The sound that his bag made on the glass overlay of the breakfast table is also clear, as is the picture of my mother at the stove, cooking up a dish for dinner, sizzling vegetables in a pan. The smell of steaming rice coming up through the hind half of the house. The little interaction between my mom and dad that transpired in those few moments, concurrent with the bag on the table and the light through the window, a few choice phrases in Taiwanese, that was matrimonial harmony to me growing up. That he should walk in that door today still seems such a simple thing. A quick laugh, a stupid explanation, just a word or two that the joke's on us he was away these past nine months -- didn't we get the message from his workplace? wasn't it a coincidence about that accident the day he left? didn't we get the message? -- would redeem it all. But of course that simple thing has never been done past the date of a man's due. There are no mistakes there and no sound that seeps through the gate.