I remember one summer day when a yellow cab stopped in front of our house. A handsome soldier in a crisply starched uniform exited from the cab. He stood for a moment gazing at the house, his face shielded from view by the sun’s rays. As the soldier started up the gravel walkway I yelled to my mother, “ Mama! “Somebody’s coming!” A few minutes later, the screen door burst open with a whoosh that pierced the sultry humidity and Mama ran past me stopping abruptly at the edge of the porch steps, standing like a statue. The soldier dropped his beret and duffel bag unceremoniously to the ground freeing his arms to receive Mama’s body as she hurled herself down the stairs and into his waiting arms. Unnerved I stood hesitantly on the top step, clutching the handrail, bewildered by the spectacle I was witnessing. My mother was in the soldier’s arms, her toes straining to stay anchored to the ground as he swooped her up and swallowed her in his embrace. I stood there, rooted to the spot, shielding my eyes with my hands, watching.

“Mama! Mama!” I cried, not knowing if I should run for help, cry, or be silent.

Mama turned to me clutching the soldier, her free hand patting his chest with the same smoothing motion that I watched her use countless times before whenever she returned the holiday tablecloth back to its drawer.

“ Sarah Anne, it’s your Papa, Sarah Anne!” she said.

I watched unable to move from the worn porch step as they twirled in front of me like two leaves drifting downward towards the earth after a gush of wind on an autumn day.

Immediately the evenness of our daily routine turned into busy chatter and activity punctuated by moments of portentous silences. For several days I wandered about the house feeling like a displaced boarder, partly included, partly excluded. I hardly had a chance to get reacquainted with this stranger who was suppose to be my father, a man I knew only from photographs and an occasional strange voice on the phone. Still the combined sounds of the doorbell and the constant ringing of the telephone accompanied by the aromas of freshly cut bouquets are seared in my mind like strains of a favorite melody heard over and over again.

One morning Mama entered the family room carrying the newest arrival of colorful blossoms and absentmindedly said, “Sarah Anne, go get on your Sunday dress now. Papa is going to take you shopping.”