Mugs

I guess I never understood why my dad collected coffee mugs from places he traveled. When he died, I inherited them because we shared an apartment and they were left in a dusty cupboard that was hardly used. No one wanted them. But I couldn’t throw them away before I moved out. For months, I’d look at them and wonder. They are from all over the place. Vegas. San Diego. Canada. Niagara Falls. Cancun. Arizona. Ft. Lauderdale. New York. Texarkana. Dozens of places I’d never been.

When I came back from Ft. Lauderdale last month, I think I understood why he collected coffee mugs. I happened to pull a Ft. Lauderdale mug out of the box in the closet, no longer still in that cramped apartment we shared, but now in a larger house. There is plenty of room to stow the box away somewhere and forget them. To not throw them away, but to let them die in the compassionate obscurity of darkness and dust. But, struck by the coincidence, I put that Ft. Lauderdale mug on a baker’s rack where I could see it everyday. It is something we share, other than blood and blue eyes.

I wonder if my dad ate at any of the same restaurants there that I did. Or if he stayed at the same hotel, or walked the same part of the beach, or felt the kind of peace I felt in that warm water. The sound and feel of the waves lapping over his body as they did mine. Maybe he looked out into the ocean like I did, as though he could see Havana, or looked at the woman he was with the way I looked at the woman I was with. Maybe he was in love like I am in love. Maybe he was happy like I am happy.

When you’re on a factory pension, you don’t have money for much more of a souvenir than a coffee mug. He was poor like I am poor. But maybe he felt rich like I feel rich. Maybe he had dreams like I have dreams. Maybe he wanted to remember Ft. Lauderdale the way I remember Ft. Lauderdale. And maybe I feel that I know him just a little better than I ever did, by looking at that coffee mug.

Maybe I’ll unpack that whole damn box of coffee mugs one by one, without looking, and go everywhere my dad went. Whatever place is on whatever one I pull out. Amarillo. Hilton Head. Hershey. Duluth. Nashville. Or maybe I will go someplace new and buy a coffee mug because my public employee salary doesn’t afford much more of a souvenir. And maybe my son will stop just before he throws all of my coffee mugs in the dumpster someday.

Maybe is a big word. A word that doesn’t promise anything, nor exclude anything, either. A word that just leaves it there in the open, for consideration. Maybe. Maybe I miss my dad a little less holding on to something he once held. Maybe.