smoking jacket

Her father died when she was 13 and it was quite a surprise to all even though it should only have been a surprise to some. Her mother was one of the surprised and in her grief she listened to her friend who told her “help yourself, then help your daughters”. The mother needed a really good friend then. A really good friend who would say “help your daughters first, this is the defining moment of their lives and therefore your life. you must do this for them now”.  Sadly the mother she did not have such a friend so she sent her eldest and must vulnerable daughter (because of age not character) away to europe. On a vacation the mother’s well advised friends guaranteed would be good for both of them.

And when the daughter got to europe she found she didn’t fit in with any of the other young girls on the trip. she just didn’t care about that nonsense they were talking about. didn’t they know her father was dead. dead as in forever dead. so when the other young girls ate and played she decided not to eat and play. she would build a wall inside of herself that no one could get into. inside of that wall it was just her and her pain and her memory of her father. and she nursed that pain, touched it, and knew it was real. the only real thing in this world. certainly more real than those other teenage girls.

and when she landed at SFO later that summer the mother met her. and the mother could not recognize her. and the mother’s horror at losing her husband and now her daughter. but then the mother’s shock turned into denial and she told herself her daughter was just a little bit skinny, as 13 year old girls are want to be. and wasn’t skinny all the fashion now.

and the daughter spend the rest of the summer and into the fall watching the watergate hearings on tv. sitting with her father’s smoking jacket across her chest. sneaking a cigarette or two when not one was watching, which no one ever was.