A Love Like the Sun

What I Remember

WHAT I REMEMBER

Ten years ago. Vanessa Thompson’s business card.

Printed double-sided on thick cardstock, bright green for eye-catching quality, a buy-one-get-one-free product special on the back to attract customers, gifted by my father, who wanted my mother to feel more confident dropping them all over town. Upon receiving them, she twirled around the kitchen, thinking the prospects of her small business were only going to get brighter because of this thing my father helped her do. But it was fifteen-year-old Issac and I who walked around on weekends, leaving them everywhere from local libraries to department stores, happy to get out of our houses while doing it.

We had just come through the door after dropping some at a hair salon a few streets over and ran into my parents on their way out. They were heading to my father’s doctor appointment together, something that had become more frequent to align with the progression of his illness, when he spied the stack of business cards in my hand and reached for them.

“Oh,” he said, excited by an idea, “let’s leave some of these at the front desk with the receptionist when we get there.”

But my mother, who was becoming a quieter woman in certain regards, shook her head, saying simply, “Not there.”

And I remembered a visit I went to with them, how she clutched my father’s arm before they called him in the room, how she didn’t speak the whole time he was away from us, how as soon as she saw his face she seemed to return to herself. When they kissed hello as if they weren’t apart for a short time, I felt the way their love brightened the room.

Afterward, I’d make excuses so I didn’t have to go to any more visits with them.