Day 312 - Knee Story

Knee Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

There was one clear image that came to mind when Kyle thought or his father – his father’s knee. He couldn’t remember his father’s face or the sound of his voice. If he was shown a photograph, he knew the man in the pictures was his father, but he didn’t really know it. It was just something he had been taught and he had learned. It wasn’t in his mind, or his heart, or his soul, or any of the other places where people felt emotional attachments to the past and its people. The man was a shadow, or a ghost. Kyle had heard stories and facts. He knew they were true. He knew he had a father. He just couldn’t remember the man.

Kyle could remember his father’s knee. He remembered climbing up and sitting on his father’s knee. Maybe the television was on – sports or news or something like that. Sometimes his father would be talking to family or friends – politics or the economy or telling something anecdotal. Kyle didn’t remember those details. He was too young to understand or care about them. What he remembered was that no matter what his father was doing at the time, he made time for Kyle. It was his entire world, shared only with his father, with Kyle in the center of things.

There was also the bouncing knee game. Kyle would wrap his legs around his father’s leg and then his father would bounce his knee like crazy and Kyle would try to hang on. His father was very good at the game and could have probably thrown Kyle any time he liked, but he always slowed down or grabbed Kyle’s shirt or did something to help Kyle hold on. Kyle didn’t realize it at the time. Kyle was just having fun. He didn’t realize his father was cheating for him. As an adult this realization seemed obvious, as probably every parent ever had let their children win the games they played. But Kyle hadn’t realized it at the time and it was one thing that made him remember his father fondly.

Kyle had never gone out of his way to look for this father. If his father didn’t want him, he had no need to go looking. Kyle’s father had left when he was barely five. He had been told that he shouldn’t remember much or anything at all about the man. Kyle was too young and memories just didn’t hold on that way. But Kyle was sure that his father’s knee had been real. He was certain he hadn’t imagined it. It was his one real image. He couldn’t have just imagined it. If it had been imagined, if it was a false memory, or just wish fulfillment, then Kyle would have nothing. There would be nothing left of the man. Nothing to hang on to. No way to pretend that his father had been there and that Kyle had been loved.

He clung to the knee and was tossed around, thrown in different directions, thrown from trial to tribulation, but guided through them all as life presented them. Kyle wasn’t going to let go of that leg. No, he was never going to let go.