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Over eighty years ago, my father
made a miniature Model T Ford
from scratch to scale out of
paper, paint, cardboard, wire and glue.
He could cradle it in his palm
the size of a small teapot,
half globe used like a cake cover,
glossy black chassis, red trim,
a circular base of green felt.
Posing like a shiny eight ball
waiting to be struck by
our pent up kid hands.

We pined to push it across
the basement linoleum floor.
But never could.
Keeping us back was the glassy globe
and Grandmother Lil's wary warning,
"Children, look but don't touch".
Same stern voice our mother heard
many times growing up,
we knew she meant business.

So when arriving at Grandmother's,
we'd march to its stately shelf
in parochial school procession
fascinated with this classic in glass.
As little more than toddlers,
we knew nothing of the "Tin Lizzie" saga.
So impressionable was I in the 1950s,
could there be a secret world in there?
I wanted to go in. But never could.
Didn't lift that glass till my mid-forties.
By then, the model was too fragile to touch.
Like an old, dried leaf ready to crumble.
It reminded me of those snowflake globes,
if turned upside down, snow scatters.

The wonderment of my dad's deft hands,
his piercing blue eyes focused on crafting -
bending, cutting, painting, gluing each part.
Thinking of what he was thinking then.
Concentrating more, I feel his essence -
his scent, his voice, his humor, his breath.
Today, when I recall the car in the globe,
I see a tiny cosmos, a bubble much like
the one I create to protect my privilege now.
Grasping for solace in other worlds is 
a childish ambition only achieved in delusion.
Through the globe, my father still speaks.
Sometimes my eyes get glassy to think of it.




2/27/20 written
A Tender Moment From Childhood
Sponsor: Malaika Ray Choudhury

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