Thirty Days with My Father: Finding Peace from Wartime PTSD
by Christal Presley
Prologue
In my dreams, we have a different life.
My father, young and fit, runs on the beach with a Frisbee. His
dark hair is tousled, his skin aglow with tanning oil. Waves crash
behind him. It is a hot summer afternoon with a slight breeze that keeps
it from being totally oppressive. His feet leave wet prints in the sand
along the water’s edge.
I stretch my legs to reach the
exact places he has touched, to put my feet inside the imprints of his.
With all my might, I try to catch him.
In this dream, my mother relaxes in a chaise lounge beneath an
umbrella. She sips a soda and looks up over her sunglasses to check on
us from time to time. She smiles and waves, then goes back to reading
her magazine about flowers. It is hard to decide what color rosebushes
she should plant around our mailbox. This is her biggest worry.
Overhead, seagulls hang in midair
above the waves. Music from someone’s boom box plays in the background.
It is a light and airy tune that makes me want to dance. I do.
In this fantasy, my mother will get in the water before long. We
all will—the three of us. We will swim just beyond the waves and laugh
as the warm water laps against our necks. We are not afraid.
Even when we are in over our heads, when our feet no longer reach
the thick sand underwater, we swim fast and strong. We have no doubts
we will get back to the shore. If one of us gets pulled out by the
current, another of us will reel that person back in.
This is a safe place, a place where
we have come many times. It is a treasured late summer vacation just
before school starts again. Tired and happy, gritty with sand and salt,
hand in hand, we walk back to our hotel room.
 |
| Christal with her mother |
In my dream, we fish for crabs in
the evening. We tie raw squid in our baskets and heave them over the
side of the pier. I catch more than anyone else.
We throw most of the crabs back and cook the rest that same night
right on the beach. My father throws them live into a big pot of
boiling water set over a fire he’s made. I walk on the beach and look
for seashells as the sun sets.
Back in our hotel room, I am
stuffed to the brim and sleepy-eyed. My father rubs aloe on my burned
shoulders. He kisses me on my forehead and tucks me into bed. My mother
reads me a story and lies beside me until I can barely keep my eyes
open. They laugh and whisper in the darkness, holding each other close
in the bed next to mine as I drift into sleep.
In my dreams, my family is whole. In my dreams, there was no war.
To learn more about Christal Presley and her book, Thirty Days with My Father please visit her website at this link: www.christalpresley.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment