Measure of the Heart
A Father's Alzheimer's, A Daughter's Return
Chapter One
Missing Moments
The farmhouse where I grew up has that sweet musty odor of a century-old wooden
home. Ever since I left for college, whenever I came home, it seemed as if the
floorboards and walls contained secrets that seeped from each knot in the wood.
I used to have a ritual whenever I returned: I would place my hand against the
wall next to the front door. When I held my palm there, it was as if I could
feel-even see-the various stages of our lives that this house has contained
since my sisters and I were small. There is my little sister at age three with
her stiff blond hair that grew straight up in the air from the day she was born.
There is my older sister strolling by in her bell-bottom blue jeans and Indian
print top in high school. There is my mother in what we call The Big Hair Days
with her white cat's-eye sunglasses in the 1960s. There is my father, holding
his briefcase and wearing a suit as he comes home from work in the 1970s,
opening the car door and rubbing the ears of ... read full excerpt from: Measure of the Heart ebook
