Ducks

All of my things are in boxes. After living in Idaho for some years and completing graduate school, I have returned to my parents' home in Bellingham. I am waiting for the next thing, for my man to pack his 4x6 U-haul and move to Washington next week, for us to move together to the city. Home alone and dreamy (my parents have gone to San Francisco for the weekend), I get the idea to look in my Dad's closet for the knit sweater with the stitched ducks, circa Randy Pries 1979. I remember the duck sweater from old photographs of my father, bundled on a grey coast of California winter, on his honeymoon stay in Pajaro Dunes (my mother could confirm this, I'm not positive it was the honeymoon, that could have been his perfect flannel coat). My father doesn't save much, but I know the sweater's back there, somewhere deep, near his starch white tennis sweater from Alameda High School. I find it. The ducks on the sweater are orange and golden brown and look like Thanksgiving. I miss a crisp autumn. I feel it passing.